Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
We all feel the urge to condemn ourselves out of guilt, to blame others for our misfortunes and to fantasize about total disaster.
Being free brings a lightness, a carefree surrender to all that is happening around you, and, above all, an acceptance of reality.
I would love to have a battle of wits with you, Bison, but I doubt it would be a fair fight.' 'Shut your face.' 'Exactly my point.
Keep the people ignorant and afraid and control and power becomes a detail - a self generating byproduct of the people's hysteria.
The global industrial economy is the engine for massive environmental degradation and massive human (and nonhuman) impoverishment.
Roger speaking to Brianna: It's too important. You don't forget having a dad." You do remember your father?" No. I remember yours.
I think characters are going to be, if not a reflection of the author, at least some refraction of some part of their personality.
A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically.
Much of life becomes background, but it is the province of art to throw buckets of light into the shadows and make life new again.
No matter how many people care about you, she thought, if you can't be open with them about who you truly are, you're still alone.
It's always been the children who have saved the universe from the previous generation and remade the universe in their own image.
Capitalism encourages entrepreneurs to act with consideration for others even when their ultimate motive is to benefit themselves.
Christianity teaches that this life is not the only life, and there is a final judgment in which all earthly accounts are settled.
All through graduate school, instead of having a television I read murder mysteries: Hammett, Chandler, Ruth Rendell, P. D. James.
Theodore Roosevelt had been enthralled with the idea of Texas since 1883, when he arrived in the Dakota Territory to ranch cattle.
I need to write in a small room - the smaller the better. I can't write in a big room where someone might sneak up behind my back.
Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.
Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
In fact, the collective energy field of presence can be very helpful when people come together. It can give you an enormous boost.
The true genius shudders at incompleteness - and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be.
Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells, From the bells, bells, bells.
sooner or later, if the activity of the mind is restricted anywhere it will cease to function even where it is allowed to be free.
Encouraged, we recognise the importance of living artistically, aesthetically and creatively as creative creatures of the creator.
To die alone, on rock under sun at the brink of the unknown, like a wolf, like a great bird, seems to me very good fortune indeed.
The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.
The most striking thing about the rich is the gracious democracy of their manners -- and the crude vulgarity of their way of life.
I am hopeful, though not full of hope, and the only reason I don't believe in happy endings is because I don't believe in endings.
If you feel that you must suffer, then plan your suffering carefully -- as you choose your dreams, as you conceive your ancestors.
Married couples who quarrel bitterly every day may really need each other as deeply as those who appear to be desperately in love.
Do not blow your own trumpets nor, which is the same thing, ask other people to blow them. No trumpeter ever rose to be a general.
Prayer, in one phase of its operation, is a disinfectant and a preventive. It purifies the air; it destroys the contagion of evil.
I think novels just really show us the deepest parts of people's hearts, and you cannot walk away anymore and say, "I don't know."
Long historical books get written by women, but not contemporary experiments, which still seems to be a very male-dominated field.
It seems to me there are no rules, only instances; but perhaps that is because I learned no rules, and am only an instance myself.
If you want to experience eternal illumination, put the past and the future out of your mind and remain within the present moment.
Vanity is a vital aid to nature: completely and absolutely necessary to life. It is one of nature's ways to bind you to the earth.
As we lay hold upon the truth of God, its influence must affect us. It must elevate us. It must remove from us every imperfection.
Staring prejudice in the face imposes a cruel discipline: to structure your anger, to achieve a certain dignity, an angry dignity.
'I am not adopted; I have mysterious origins.' I have said that sentence many times in the course of my life as an adopted person.
A bore is a vacuum cleaner of society, sucking up everything and giving nothing. Bores are always eager to be seen talking to you.
The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing.
If we want to change something, we must begin with understanding. But if we want to love something, we must begin with acceptance.
Though my friends envied me because I always seemed so cheerful and confident, I was secretly terrified of practically everything.
I like the sound of people's voices, and I think what a man says can very well tell what he's thinking, whether he's lying or not.
It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them.
No subject is terrible if the story is true, if the prose is clean and honest, and if it affirms courage and grace under pressure.
You write a book like that you're fond of over the years, then you see that happen to it, it's like pissing in your father's beer.
The first and most important step in the process of becoming genuinely is to be once again authenticated by the original designer.
There isn't anything that I cannot be or do or have, and I have a huge Nonphysical staff that's ready to assist me, and I'm ready.
Most people are rowing against the current of life. Instead of turning the boat around, all they need to do is let go of the oars.