Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I just believe that young people need to be able to learn how to write in their own voice. Just like a musician, you pride yourself on having your own distinct sound.
Neither of my parents went to church, but they did everything that you needed to do to be Christian. That's something a Quaker would call an intimation of the divine.
This is where the gods play games with the lives of men, on a board which is at one and the same time a simple playing area and the whole world. And Fate always wins.
The thing is, I mean, there’s times when you look at the universe and you think, “What about me?” and you can just hear the universe replying, “Well, what about you?”
This was not a fairy-tale castle and there was no such thing as a fairy-tale ending, but sometimes you could threaten to kick the handsome prince in the ham-and-eggs.
Most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally evil, but by people being fundamentally people.
In very deed, pestilence, and famine, and wars, and earthquakes have to be regarded as a remedy for nations, as the means of pruning the luxuriance of the human race.
Ah, believer, it is only Heaven that is above all winds, storms, and tempests; God did not cast man out of Paradise that he might find another paradise in this world.
Hannibal at eighteen was rooting for Mephistopheles and contemptuous of Faust, but he only half-listened to the climax. He was watching and breathing Lady Murasaki...
There exists in man a mass of sense lying in a dormant state, and which, unless something excites it to action, will descend with him, in that condition,to the grave.
How much that the world calls selfishness is only generosity with narrow walls,--a too exclusive solicitude to maintain a wife in luxury, or make one's children rich.
Because I'm dangerous. I don't mean to be but I am. I'm dangerous to be around, dangerous to everybody. I cause harm. I might even harm you. And I couldn't bear that.
Look at Jesus Christ. Every time he was in trouble he used the Word of God. When he was tempted he used the Word. When he was suffering on the cross he used the Word.
These are all voluntary resources which help parents sort out the choices without infringing on the artists rights to free speech, which is something that we respect.
That, for me, is a very important test of a young writer's commitment because most of them are going to have to continue doing that when they've finished the program.
Even though people spend more of their waking hours at work than anywhere else, people underestimate how work influences their overall wellbeing and daily experience.
Conservatives understand Halloween, liberals only understand Christmas. If you want to control a population, don't give it social services, give it a scary adversary.
I never outline. I don't work from an outline. I have no idea where the book is going. I mean, even two-thirds of the way through, I don't know how it's going to end.
Our relationship with places is a close bond, intricate in nature, and not abstract, not remote at all: It's enveloping, almost a continuum with all we are and think.
No one's life is a smooth sail; we all come into stormy weather. But it's this adversity - and more specifically our resilience - that makes us strong and successful.
The difference between those who succeed and those who fail isn't what they have'it's what they choose to see and do with their resources and their expertise of life.
There are different points of view about how to approach this experience of ultimate ecstasy, as some people describe it, or ultimate nirvana or ultimate fulfillment.
No one will ever know what 'In Cold Blood' took out of me. It scraped me right down to the marrow of my bones. It nearly killed me. I think, in a way, it did kill me.
I got this idea of doing a really serious big work-it would be precisely like a novel, with a single difference: Every word of it would be true from beginning to end.
If you evade suffering you also evade the chance of joy. Pleasure you may get, or pleasures, but you will not be fulfilled. You will not know what it is to come home.
There's a point, around the age of twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities.
Fake realism is the escapist literature of our time. And probably the ultimate escapist reading is that masterpiece of total unreality, the daily stock market report.
The reason literacy is important is that literature is the operating instructions. The best manual we have. The most useful guide to the country we're visiting, life.
I was in too much haste, and now have no time left. I traded all the sunlight and the cities and the distant lands for a handful of power, for a shadow, for the dark.
We are the nation's watchmen, no other people collectively love the Constitution and honor it and hold it as a divinely inspired document as do the Latter-day Saints.
To solve a problem or to reach a goal, you don't need to know all the answers in advance. But you must have a clear idea of the problem or the goal you want to reach.
Christ is the Son of God. He died to atone for men's sin, and after three days rose again. This is the most important fact in the universe. I die believing in Christ.
For God to reveal His Son in us is not the result of research or searching; it is entirely a matter of mercy and revelation. It is an inward seeing, an inner knowing.
The attitude of saints toward their possessions most assuredly signifies whether they continue to preserve their self life or whether they have consigned it to death.
It is easy to love people when they smell good, but sometimes they slip into the manure of life and smell awful. You must love them just as much when they smell foul.
Be aware of your infinite connection to your source. Know that you're more than an encapsulated collection of bones, blood and organs in a skin and hair covered body.
Remind yourself that the greatest technique for bringing peace into your life is to always choose being kind when you have a choice between being right or being kind.
There are certain things I believe we need to keep in our emotional arsenal as we navigate through life. Hope is a big one. The more of that we can carry, the better.
You open doors when you open books... doors that swing wide to unlimited horizons of knowledge, wisdom, and inspiration that will enlarge the dimensions of your life.
Our challenge is to face up heroically to the world as it is and do our very best to make the most of our lives. To strive to live each day with serenity and courage.
In gratitude for God's gift of life to us we should share that gift with others. The art of giving encompasses many areas. It is an outgoing, overflowing way of life.
Lives don't divide up into chapters. People don't just talk, while nothing's going on in their head, and then respond. You know, none of these things actually happen.
Most of us have had that experience - at around puberty - of realising that, despite whatever efforts we put into our chosen sports, we will become at best competent.
I always wanted to write fiction. Always. As far back as I can remember it's been integral to my sense of myself - everything else was always a displacement activity.
I think it's a misreading of Dostoevsky to think of him as a programmatic theist. He's actually much closer to someone like William James. He's actually a pragmatist.
I suppose that since most of our hurts come through relationships so will our healing, and I know that grace rarely makes sense for those looking in from the outside.
Religion itself is nothing else but Love to God and Man. He that lives in Love lives in God, says the Beloved Disciple: And to be sure a Man can live no where better.
As an individual becomes aware of subliminal phenomena, the shock may cause him some initial physical or emotional discomfort - possibly even concern over his sanity.
Books, like people, can't be reduced to the cost of the materials with which they were made. Books, like people, become unique and precious once you get to know them.
There are books of the same chemical composition as dynamite. The only difference is that a piece of dynamite explodes once, whereas a book explodes a thousand times.