Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Analytical tools have their limitations in a turbulent world. These tools work best when parameters are known, assumptions are minimal, and the future is not fuzzy.
All organizations start with a structure that looks like a dynamic solar system. They can be very fast, agile. They attract people who play around with crazy ideas.
Waiting for the Lord in a season of darkness should not be a time of inactivity. We should do what we can do. And doing is often God's appointed remedy for despair.
The Bible is the ultimate authority and infallible, not the pastor and not the elders. And it doesn't mean that you believe everything he says without examining it.
Faith is not a matter of trusting that events will always occur to our liking, but of trust that, whatever happens, our inner resources will be equal to the moment.
The way that I write novels in particular is I don't usually outline; I just write. Part of the fun is discovering what's happening in the story as I'm going along.
A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean question: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well - or ill?
Your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person-a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.
It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth.
The bank - the monster has to have profits all the time. It can't wait. It'll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can't stay one size.
If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.
The problem and privilege we all have is being alive in this century and able to read this language. It makes any list meaningless except the list of an illiterate.
We are just living this moment; we don't have to live 150,000 moments at once. We are only living one. That's why I say you might as well practice with each moment.
I do always know where I'm going in my books. I know the endpoint. I've written only two thousand words of my next novel but I know what the ending will be already.
It is in [the] process of making something... that the creator contacts a concrete reality outside his subjective life and moves into the realm of the transcendent.
Sometimes it takes all my resolution and power of self-control to refrain from butting my head against the wall. I want to howl and foam at the mouth but I daren't.
For the great mass of mankind the only saving grace that is needed is steady fidelity to what is nearest to hand and heart in the short moment of each human effort.
Watch your thoughts. Every thought accepted as true is sent by your brain to your solar plexus - your abdominal brain - and is brought into your world as a reality.
Trying to accumulate wealth by the sweat of your brow and hard labor is one way to become the richest man in the graveyard. You do not have to strive or slave hard.
It was all too easy to make things up, it was like skating on thin ice, it was like doing dainty pirouettes on a brittle crust over water thousands of fathoms deep.
You don't have to understand why anything that has happened nor do you even have to understand what it is that has happened. You have only to live with the remains.
It's always a challenge to discover the most effective first sentence, and the most effective final sentence, in a chapter for instance, and in the book as a whole.
I would suggest the widow do things the husband used to do, so he seems to be there with you. You will feel like just going to bed. It's so wonderful, going to bed.
We suffer much agony because we try to get from people what only God can give us, which is a sense of worth and value. Look to God for what you need, not to people.
You can't live your life to suit other people. The harder you try, the more restrictions they'll put on you just for the fun of seeing you jump through their hoops.
He wondered if she'd mind if he threw her down on the blanket and tore off her clothing. (..) She looked heartbreakingly innocent. Alex sighed. She'd probably mind.
Economics is uncertain because its fundamental subject matter is not money but human action. That's why economics is not the dismal science, it's no science at all.
Our eyes met across the crowded room, like in the movies, except we didn't share a knowing smile and race into each other's arms. Instead I fell into the trash can.
I'm always excited when I make it on anyone's list - even if it's for affirmative action. My attitude is, 'Am I the token woman on this list? Because I'll take it.'
Recognition happens when you see yourself from the inside-out: as someone who can make an impact on the world instead of navigating the impact the world has on you.
Before the Great Chicago Fire, no one took notice of Patrick and Catherine O'Leary, two Irish immigrants who lived with their five children on the city's West Side.
When you were too young and naïve to see the risks, I incurred your wrath to protect you. Scream at me for it if you must. Thank me for it when you finally grow up.
I am going to love you now, slow and sweet, but when you come, I'm going to f*** you the way I need to. The way I've been dreaming about since the moment I saw you.
Dubh is do?" I was incredulous. It was no wonder I hadn't been able to find the stupid word. "Should I be calling pubs poos?" "Dubh is Gaelic, Ms. Lane. Pub is not.
Do we care about these people that are HIV-positive whose lives have been ruined? Those are the people I'm the most concerned about. Every night I think about this.
It is always sad to write about prejudice, but sometimes when we see it being played out in the lives of fictional characters, we can recognize it in our own lives.
The reason fiber helps us control our weight is that it fills the belly yet yields few calories since fiber is, for the most part, not something that we can digest.
Women are such contrary creatures when it comes to sex. You parade around like scantily clad vixens but blush when you're caught staring at the erections you cause.
The will of God for your life is simply that you submit yourself to Him each day and say, 'Father, Your will for today is mine. You lead me today and I will follow.
What is courage? It is the ability to be strong in trust, in conviction, in obedience. To be courageous is to step out in faith - to trust and obey, no matter what.
She loved him because he had brought her back to life. She had been like a caterpillar in a cocoon, and he had drawn her out and shown her that she was a butterfly.
I use a professional researcher in New York who does all the legwork, all that stuff which would take me days and weeks of calling, waiting for people to call back.
You live overseas, you see these exotic places and you want to know about them. But, weirdly, it also made me homesick for all these very prosaic places in America.
The combination of creative energies and the need to perform at the highest level to keep up with peers leads to an otherwise unattainable commitment to excellence.
What do you mean, a ghost? The Honorable James Augustus Peregrine Pympoole-Bothame, heir to the fourteenth Earl of Hardsdale, is taking no insults from young girls!
I'm sorry to keep focusing on the New Yorker, but everybody who was growing up when Calvin [Trillin] and I were growing up wanted to be published in the New Yorker.
[Calvin Trilllin] is not writing about things that I can criticize. I can call these other people out for what I think they are not doing. There's a big difference.
If he wakes up, I swear I’ll do anything. I’ll open gates, I’ll help all the paranormals, I’ll never judge people wearing Crocs again. Just let him wake up. Please.
The original item looked like a little hand cart with the figure of a man mounted on a platform between the wheels. The man's outstretched arm always pointed south.
An eastern contemporary, with a grain of wisdom in its wit, says that "when the whites win a fight, it is a victory, and when the Indians win it, it is a massacre."