Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Watch out for people who call themselves religious; make sure you know what they mean - make sure they know what they mean!
I write very quickly; I rewrite very slowly. It takes me nearly as long to rewrite a book as it does to get the first draft.
I grew up in a family where, through my teenage years, I was expected to go to church on Sunday. It wasn't terribly painful.
I don't really set out to explore grand themes. I set out to tell a story. And one I have to be able to imagine right through.
You can learn a lot from your lovers, but-for the most part-you get to keep your friends longer, and you learn more from them.
What was even more germane was my study of the history of religion. It was one of the few things in school I was fascinated by.
What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us wind up in parentheses.
I find screenplays easy to write, my novels being very visual. You see what people look like. The physical action is described.
Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.
You live your life at the time you live it -- you don't have much of an overview when what's happening to you is still happening.
The former stewardess glared at her ex-pilot husband as if he had been speaking, and thinking, in the absence of sufficient oxygen.
When people say that German or any other language is romantic... all they really mean is that they've enjoyed a past in the language
It happens to many teenagers-that moment when you feel full of resentment or distrust for those adults you once loved unquestioningly.
(Baseball) is a game with a lot of waiting in it; it is a game with increasingly heightened anticipation of increasingly limited action
You take every opportunity given you in this world, even if you have too many opportunities. One day, the opportunities stop, you know.
My old coach used to say that if you were in it for the match, if you were in it for the trophies, you were in it for the wrong reasons.
It is much easier to be flexible about where a story begins than it ever was for me to change my mind about where and how a story ended.
The ability to see the future can be a burden, and the younger you are and the more isolated you feel, maybe the more of a burden it is.
I'm a worst-case scenario person. I'm only interested in a story because I kind of go, like a magnet, to the worst thing that can happen.
To each other, we were as normal and nice as the smell of bread. We were just a family. In a family even exaggerations make perfect sense.
But who can distinguish between falling in love and imagining falling in love? Even genuinely falling in love is an act of the imagination.
In a school community, someone who reads a book for some secretive purpose, other than discussing it, is strange. What was she reading for?
All I say is: Let us leave les folles alone; let's just leave them be. Don't judge them. You are not superior to them - don't put them down.
I sometimes think that what I do as a writer is make a kind of colouring book, where all the lines are there, and then you put in the colour.
I get up early. I like to read a little before anyone but the dog is up. I also like to read at night, not in bed but just before I go to bed.
I have learned that the consequences of our past actions are always interesting; I have learned to view the present with a forward-looking eye.
YOU LET ME DROWN!” Owen said. “YOU DIDN’T DO ANYTHING! YOU JUST WATCHED ME DROWN! I’M ALREADY DEAD!” he told us. “REMEMBER THAT: YOU LET ME DIE.
If you asked me one day, I might say, "Well, sometimes I feel a little bit religious." If you asked me another day, I'd just say flat out, "No."
Safer than we are.” I told Franny. “Safer than love.” “let me tell ya kid,” Franny said to me, squeezing my hand. “Everything’s safer than love.
This was not of the nature of a Christlike lesson for Owen Meany to learn, as he lay in the manger, that someone you hate can give you a hard-on.
Kids are beautiful, man. And they know much more than grownups think they know. Kids are just perfect people until grownups get their hands on them.
A woman half dressed seemed to have some power, but a man was simply not as handsome as when he was naked, and not as secure as when he was clothed.
I am compulsive about writing, I need to do it the way I need sleep and exercise and food and sex; I can go without it for a while, but then I need it.
I have pretty thick skin, and I think if you're going to be in this business, if you're going to be an actor or a writer, you better have a thick skin.
The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything.
As it was, things went from bad to worse, as they often will when amateurs are involved in an activity that they perform in bad temper – or in a hurry.
Plot is a map and I begin with it. It is what made me admire the novels of the 19th century; that the stories are foreshadowed. TheyÕre going someplace.
I wasn't afraid of anything until I had a kid. Then I was terrified because immediately I could imagine a hundred ways in which I could not protect him.
Death, it seems," Garp wrote, "does not like to wait until we are prepared for it. Death is indulgent and enjoys, when it can, a flair for the dramatic.
I'm not writing non-fiction. I don't feel anything about me as a kid was unique. Except that I had more interest in being alone and using my imagination.
Whereas she wished more of the population were better educated, she also believed that education was largely wasted on the majority of the people she met.
One of the humbling things about having written more than one novel is the sense that every time you begin, that new empty page does not know who you are.
Because abortions are illegal, women who need and want them have no choice in the matter, and you-because you know how to perform them-have no choice, either
The first of my father's illusions was that bears could survive the life led by human beings; the second was that human beings could survive a life in hotels.
Be serious. Life hurts. Reflect what hurts. I don't mean that you can't also be funny, or have fun, but at the end of the day, stories are about what you lose.
You don't have to be in the habit of going to church to listen to such a literary minister; you don't have to be a believer to be moved by Mr. Buechner's faith.
In this world,” Franny once observed, “just as you’re trying to think of yourself as memorable, there is always someone who forgets that that they have met you.
There's a lot of ignorance about how long it takes to write a novel. There's a lot of ignorance about how long a novel is in your head before you start to write it.
I always know more about the ending, even the aftermath to the ending, than I know about the beginning. And so there's a construction that works from back to front.
If you don't feel that you are possibly on the edge of humiliating yourself, of losing control of the whole thing, then probably what you are doing isn't very vital.