Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Life is not so bad if you have plenty of luck, a good physique, and not too much imagination.
The sea only drowns its lovers.
No one ever hates without a cause.
The past is just something that's over.
I'm very militant, you know, in a quite way.
Sometimes awful things have their own beauty.
We live in stirring times- tea-stirring times.
The Quito telephone service is about as reliable as roulette.
I doubt if one ever accepts a belief until one urgently needs it.
One should never write down or up to people, but out of yourself.
Only those who are capable of silliness can be called truly intelligent.
California is a tragic country - like Palestine, like every Promised Land.
What it sees there isn't so much a face as the expression of a predicament.
I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.
You see, Kenny, there are some things you don't even know you know, until you're asked.
I am a camera, with its shutter open. Someday, all of this will be developed, printed, fixed.
If it’s going to be a world with no time for sentiment, it’s not a world that I want to live in.
The paternalist is a sentimentalist at heart, and the sentimentalist is always potentially cruel.
The town is an advertisement for itself; none of its charms are left to the visitor's imagination.
We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers.
Horror is always aware of its cause; terror never is. That is precisely what makes terror terrifying.
Bad writing is bad not just because the language is humdrum, but the quality of the observation is so poor.
I'll bet Shakespeare compromised himself a lot; anybody who's in the entertainment industry does to some extent.
George smiles to himself, with entire self-satisfaction. Yes, I am crazy, he thinks. That is my secret; my strength.
She is sighing deeply now with sympathy and delight - the delight of an addict when someone else admits he's hooked, too.
The Nazis were not right to hate the Jews. But their hating of Jews was not without a cause. No one ever hates without a cause.
I'm like a book you have to read. A book can't read itself to you. It doesn't even know what it's about. I don't know what I'm about.
By helping yourself, you are helping humankind. By helping humankind, you are helping yourself. That's the law of all spiritual progress.
Every writer has certain subjects that they write about again and again, and . . . most people's books are just variations on certain themes.
In order to get the worst possible first impression of Los Angeles one should arrive there by bus, preferably in summer and on a Saturday night.
A minority is only thought of as a minority when it constitutes some kind of threat to the majority, real or imaginary. And no threat is ever quite imaginary.
I seldom try to probe the mystery of my sloth. I have squandered a gigantic fortune of work hours... seems likely that I'll go on squandering till the very end.
Lois and Alexander are by far the most beautiful creatures in the class; their beauty is like the beauty of plants, seemingly untroubled by vanity, anxiety or effort.
I must honor those who fight of their own free will, he said to himself. And I must try to imitate their courage by following my path as a pacifist, wherever it takes me.
I often feel that worse than the most fiendish Nazis were those Germans who went along with the persecution of the Jews not because they really disliked them but because it was the thing.
Someone has to ask you a question," George continues meaningly, "before you can answer it. But it's so seldom you find anyone who'll ask the right questions. Most people aren't that much interested.
I feel it's so easy to condemn this country [the United States]; but they don't understand that this is where the mistakes are being made - and made first, so that we're going to get the answers first.
It seems to me that the real clue to your sexual orientation lies in your romantic feelings rather than your sexual feelings. If you are really gay, you are able to fall in love with a man, not just enjoy sex with him.
What irritates me is the bland way people go around saying, 'Oh, our attitude has changed. We don't dislike these people any more.' But by the strangest coincidence, they haven't taken away the injustice; the laws are still on the books.
I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair. Some day, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed.
I'm horrified to find, as I look at these diaries of twenty-five years ago or more, that I don't remember who the people were. "Bill and Tony were constantly in and out. We went to La Jolla" - or something. I haven't the bluest idea who they were!
I am alive, he says to himself, I am alive! And life energy surges hotly through him, and delight, and appetite. How good to be in a body - even this old beat-up carcass - that still has warm blood and live semen and rich marrow and wholesome flesh!
The prefect evening...lying down on the couch beside the bookcase and reading himself sleepy...Jim lying opposite him at the other end of the couch, also reading; the two of them absorbed in their books yet so completely aware of each other's presence.
His life has been lived, so far, within narrow limits and he is quite naïve about most kinds of experience; he fears it and yet is wildly eager for it. To reassure himself, he converts it into epic myth as fast as it happens. He is forever play-acting.
What’s so phony nowadays is all this familiarity. Pretending there isn’t any difference between people —well, like you were saying about minorities, this morning. If you and I are no different, what do we have to give each other? How can we ever be friends?
Hollywood's two polar types are the cynically drunken writer aggressively nursing a ten-year-old reputation and the theatrically self-conscious hermit who strides the boulevard in sandals, home-made shorts and a prophetic beard, muttering against the Age of the Machines.
In the eternal lazy morning of the Pacific, days slip away into months, months into years; the seasons are reduced to the faintest nuance by the great central fact of the sunshine; one might pass a lifetime, it seems, between two yawns, lying bronzed and naked in the sand.
But now isn’t simply now. Now is also a cold reminder: one whole day later than yesterday, one year later than last year. Every now is labeled with its date, rendering all past nows obsolete, until — later of sooner — perhaps — no, not perhaps — quite certainly: it will come.
But your book is wrong, Mrs. Strunk, says George, when it tells you that Jim is the substitute I found for a real son, a real kid brother, a real husband, a real wife. Jim wasn't a substitute for anything. And there is no substitute for Jim, if you'll forgive my saying so, anywhere.
The Nazis hated culture itself, because it is essentially international and therefore subversive of nationalism. What they called Nazi culture was a local, perverted, nationalistic cult, by which a few major artists and many minor ones were honored for their Germanness, not their talent.
