Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I get rational when I panic.
I leave a lot out when I tell the truth
nothing is ever quite as bad as it could be.
Dreams: the place most of us get what we need.
An idea might spark an essay, but never a story.
I think of the chimp, the one with the talking hands.
Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed.
For peace of mind, I will lie about any thing at any time.
He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn't good.
I often feel the effects of people only after they leave me.
In my head there's a broken balcony I fall off of when I speak.
I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence.
They say the smart dog obeys but the smarter dog knows when to disobey.
We can only die in the future, I thought; right now we are always alive.
He could not wait to get rid of them so he could enjoy remembering them.
I thought, my love is so good, why isn't it calling the same thing back.
I wanted to be a veterinarian, but slipped up when I hit organic chemistry.
I want to know everything about you, so I tell you everything about myself.
When the beer is gone, so are they -- flexing their cars on up the boulevard.
Just because you have stopped sinking doesn't mean you're not still underwater.
Just once in my life--oh, when have I ever wanted anything just once in my life?
A love affair begins with a fantasy. For instance, that the beloved will always be there.
Wear your heart on the page, and people will read to find out how you solved being alive.
My job ... I do nothing, it pays nothing, but - you guessed it - it's better than nothing.
I'm not good at small talk; I'm not good at big talk; and medium talk just doesn't come up.
consolation is a beautiful word. everyone skins his knee-that doesnt make yours hurt anyless.
It is possible to imagine a person so entirely that the image resists attempts to dislodge it.
The year I began to say vahz instead of vase, a man I barely knew nearly accidentally killed me.
I meet a person, and in my mind I'm saying three minutes; I give you three minutes to show me the spark.
The only time the word baby doesn't scare me is the time that it should, when it is what a man calls me.
Look at me. My concerns-are they spiritual, do you think, or carnal? Come on. We've read our Shakespeare.
What I think," Chatty says, "is that if a man loves a woman more than a woman loves a man, then they're even.
I exaggerated even before I began to exaggerate, because it's true — nothing is ever quite as bad as it could be.
Sometimes a flat-footed sentence is what serves, so you don't get all writerly: 'He opened the door.' There, it's open.
I think you would like Warren. He drinks Courvoisier in a Coke can, and has a laugh like you'd find in a cartoon bubble.
The worst of it is over now, and I can't say that I am glad. Lose that sense of loss--you have gone and lost something else.
I assemble stories-me and a hundred million other people-at the sentence level. Not by coming up with a sweeping story line.
And I see that not touching for so long was a drive to the beach with the windows rolled up so the waves feel that much colder.
I do feel that if you can write one good sentence and then another good sentence and then another, you end up with a good story.
Since his mother died I have seen him steam a cucumber thinking it was zucchini. That's the kind of thing that turns my heart right over.
I sleep with a glass of water on the nightstand so I can see by its level if the coastal earth is trembling or if the shaking is still me.
I am not quite myself, I think.But who here is quite himself? And yet there is a way in which we are all more ourselves than ever, I suppose.
The other day I was playing Scrabble. I saw that I could close the space in D-E- -Y. I had an N and an F. Which do you think I chose? What was the word I made?
When my mother died, my father's early widowhood gave him social cachet he would not have had if they had divorced. He was a bigger catch for the sorrow attached.
if it's true your life flashes past your eyes before you die, then it is also the truth that your life rushes forth when you are ready to start to truly be alive.
I could claim any number of high-flown reasons for writing, just as you can explain certain dogs behavior... But maybe, it’s that they’re dog, and that’s what dogs do.
I would like to go for a ride with you, have you take me to stand before a river in the dark where hundreds of lightning bugs blink this code in sequence: right here, nowhere else! Right now, never again!
I'm not first and foremost interested in story and the what-happens, but I'm interested in who's telling it and how they're telling it and the effects of whatever happened on the characters and the people.
I know that homes burn and that you should think what to save before they start to. Not because, in the heat of it, everything looks as valuable as everything else. But, because nothing looks worth the bother, not even your life.
As soon as I knew that I would be all right, I was sure that I was dead and didn't know it. I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence. I waited for the moment that would snap me out of my seeming life.