Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Food is the rare moral arena in which the ethical choice is generally the one more likely to make you groan with pleasure.
For if there is any single thing that everyone hopes for most dearly, it must be this: that the youngest outlive the oldest.
What a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do is re-engage people with their own humanity.
I know I'm a rare person, a trained scientist who writes fiction, because so few contemporary novelists engage with science.
We agreed with him in principal - we were little scientists, born and bred. But children robbed of love will dwell on magic.
The substance of grief is not imaginary. It's as real as rope or the absence of air, and like both those things, it can kill.
You never knew which split second might be the zigzag bolt dividing all that went before from the everything that comes next.
The older I get, the more I appreciate my rural childhood. I spent a lot of time outdoors, unsupervised, which is a blessing.
I've never gotten over high school, to the extent that I'm still a little surprised that my friends want to hang out with me.
How strange to read of a place in a book, and then stand on it, listen to the birds sing, and spit on the cobbles if you want.
There is a strange moment in time, after something horrible happens, when you know it's true, but you haven't told anyone yet.
I attempted briefly to consecrate myself in the public library, believing every crack in my soul could be chinked with a book.
Literature sucks you into another psyche. So the creation of empathy necessarily influences how you'll behave to other people.
Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain.
What life can I live that will let me breathe in and out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods?
Maybe he's been in Africa so long he has forgotten that we Christians have our own system of marriage, and it is called Monotony.
It takes some courage to write fiction about politically controversial topics. The dread is you'll be labeled a political writer.
I don't *ever* write about real people. Art is supposed to be better than that. If you want a slice of life, look out the window.
The important thing isn't the house. It's the ability to make it. You carry that in your brain and in your hands, wherever you go.
My life is a pitiful, mechanical thing without a past, like a little wind-up car, ready to run in any direction someone points me.
It occurs to her that there is one thing about people you can never understand well enough: how entirely inside themselves they are.
Terms like that, 'Humane Society,' are devised with people like me in mind, who don't care to dwell on what happens to the innocent.
Oh, mercy. If it catches you in the wrong frame of mind, the King James Bible can make you want to drink poison in no uncertain terms.
Misunderstanding is my cornerstone. It's everyone's, come to think of it. Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet.
there are people who read my work and accuse me of being political! As far as I'm concerned that's like accusing a dog of having a bark!
Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.
...whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. And peace will be with you.
Mr. Shepherd, ye cannot stop a bad thought from coming into your head. But ye need not pull up a chair and bide it sit down." - Mrs. Brown
I write every moment that is humanly possible. I write every day and every night. The only discipline I lack is the discipline is to quit.
He was getting that look he gets, oh boy, like Here comes Moses tromping down off of Mount Syanide with ten fresh ways to wreck your life.
But I've swallowed my pride before, that's for sure. I'm practically lined with my mistakes on the inside like a bad-wallpapered bathroom.
There was a roaring in my ears and I lost track of what they were saying. I believe it was the physical manifestation of unbearable grief.
In the places that call me out, I know I'll recover my wordless childhood trust in the largeness of life and its willingness to take me in.
It's terrible to lose somebody, but it's also true that some people never have anybody to lose, and I think that's got to be so much worse.
A woman without a man -- a condition of 'manlessness' -- is defined as alone. But a single mother is less alone than the average housewife.
A good title holds magic, some cognitive dissonance, a little grit between the teeth, but above all it is the jumping-off place into wonder.
When you pick up a novel from the bed side table, you put down your own life at the same time and you become another person for the duration.
I'm of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved.
Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, writers will go to stupefying lengths to get the infernal roar of words out of their skulls and onto paper.
Maybe life doesn't get any better than this, or any worse, and what we get is just what we're willing to find: small wonders, where they grow.
Recall that whatever lofty things you might accomplish today, you will do them only because you first ate something that grew out of the dirt.
A human being can be good or bad or right or wrong, maybe. But how can you say a person is illegal? You just can't. That's all there is to it.
Even feigning surprise, pretending it was unexpected and saying a ritual thanks, is surely wiser than just expecting everything so carelessly.
Sugar, it's no parade but you'll get down the street one way or another, so you'd just as well throw your shoulders back and pick up the pace.
He had senile dementia and liked to go outside naked, but he could still do two things perfectly: win at checkers and write out prescriptions.
There are some who'd hardly lift a finger for kindness, but they would haul up a load of rock to dump on some soul they think's been too lucky.
What you lose in blindness is the space around you, the place where you are, and without that you might not exist. You could be nowhere at all.
Because I could not stop for death he kindly stopped for me, or paused at least to strike a glancing blow with his sky-blue mouth as he passed.
A woman knows she can walk away from a pot to tend something else and the pot will go on boiling; if she couldn't this world would end at once.
Root out all the "to be" verbs in your prose and bludgeon them until dead. No "It was" or "they are" or "I am." Don't let it be, make it happen.