Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I've never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It's probably because they have forgotten their own.
Every utopia - let's just stick with the literary ones - faces the same problem: What do you do with the people who don't fit in?
At the very least we want a witness. We can't stand the idea of our own voices falling silent finally, like a radio running down.
It doesn't really matter what "genre" your book is. What matters is that it's a good book of its kind. Whatever that kind may be.
The fact is that blank pages inspire me with terror. What will I put on them? Will it be good enough? Will I have to throw it out?
Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. Solid flesh can never live up to the bright shadow cast by its absence.
We love each other, that’s true whatever it means, but we aren’t good at it; for some it’s a talent, for others only an addiction.
I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one 'race' - the human race - and that we are all members of it.
I have long since decided if you wait for the perfect time to write, you'll never write. There is no time that isn't flawed somehow.
Time is compressed like the fist I close on my knee... I hold inside it the clues and solutions and the power for what I must do now.
You can pretty much trace when the big individual indebtedness kicked in, and it was when the credit card became generally available.
My brother and I were both good at science, and we were both good at English literature. Either one of us could have gone either way.
I didn't want him to become gray and multi-dimensional and complicated like everyone else. Was every Heathcliff a Linton in disguise?
... Remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest.
I am certain that a Sewing Machine would relieve as much human suffering as a hundred Lunatic Asylums, and possibly a good deal more.
Every budding dictatorship begins by muzzling the artists, because they're a mouthy lot and they don't line up and salute very easily.
This is what I miss, Cordelia: not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen. Two old women giggling over their tea.
I am too old to have ever been very worried about what "genre" any given book of mine might be. I read everything. I am easily amused.
Modesty is invisibility... Never forget it. To be seen - to be seen - is to be... penetrated. What you must be girls, is impenetrable.
My favorite author's question of all time - because it's so simple to answer ... 'Is your hair really like that, or do you get it done?
For drinking Life there are two cups: The No Cup is bitter, the Yes Cup is yummy -- Now, which one would you rather have in your tummy?
Writing is very improvisational. It's like trying to fix a broken sewing machine with safety pins and rubber bands. A lot of tinkering.
The astrologers would tell that the U.S. is ruled by fire and Canada is ruled by water. Short version: You pep us up, we cool you down.
It's in Macbeth: "The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon." I seldom have occasion to pull it out, but it's ready and waiting!
I planned my death carefully, unlike my life, which meandered along from one thing to another, despite my feeble attempts to control it.
I walk away from him. It's enormously pleasing to me, this walking away. It's like being able to make people appear and vanish, at will.
The use of "religion" as an excuse to repress the freedom of expression and to deny human rights is not confined to any country or time.
Repeat reading for me shares a few things with hot-water bottles and thumbsucking: comfort, familiarity, the recurrence of the expected.
A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible. Powerlessness and silence go together.
We are very short on organs, and the pig solution is probably a lot better than the human clone solution - though maybe not for the pigs.
If I were going to convert to any religion I would probably choose Catholicism because it at least has female saints and the Virgin Mary.
Human understanding is fallible, and we see through a glass, darkly. Any religion is a shadow of God. But the shadows of God are not God.
The body is so easily damaged, so easily disposed of, water and chemicals is all it is, hardly more to it than a jellyfish drying on sand.
You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it, and this, paradoxically, alters reality. Try it and see.
I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will.
Hatred would have been easier. With hatred, I would have known what to do. Hatred is clear, metallic, one-handed, unwavering; unlike love.
When a man is attacked in print, it's usually for saying what he says; when a woman is attacked in print, it's often for being who she is.
Eating is our earliest metaphor, preceding our consciousness of gender difference, race, nationality, and language. We eat before we talk.
They spent the first three years of school getting you to pretend stuff and then the rest of it marking you down if you did the same thing.
We battled in secret, undeclared, and after a while I no longer fought back because I never won. The only defense was flight, invisibility.
I am nervous about dogmas of any kind, whether they be religious, political, or anti-religious. Too many heads have rolled because of them.
There's more than one way to skin a cat, my father used to say; it bothered me, I didn't see why they would want to skin a cat even one way.
I particularly like Twitter, because it's short and can be very funny and informative. It's a little bit like having your own radio program.
Jimmy found himself wishing to make a dent in Crake, get a reaction; it was one of his weaknesses, to care what other people thought of him.
My brother and I were both teenage writers, and he was, I have to say, better than I was, but he went into science, and I went into writing.
If you disagree with your government, that's political. If you disagree with your government that is approaching theocracy, then you're evil.
Ordinary, said Aunt Lydia, is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary.
Science and fiction both begin with similar questions: What if? Why? How does it all work? But they focus on different areas of life on earth.
We do not know how we'd behave. But a lot of people facing fascism didn't become fascists. I don't happen to believe that we are all monsters.
It isn't chic for women to be drunk. Men drunks are more excusable, more easily absolved, but why? It must be thought they have better reasons.