Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Freud, Sigmund: A man so dissatisfied with his own mother and father that he devoted his life to convincing everyone who would listen — or better still, talk — that their parents were just as bad.
You look around the world in 2013, and you say, 'How many prime ministers or presidents are in prison?' One or two. 'How many generals or bankers?' Two or three. 'But how many writers?' 850 or so.
In my mind, there's not a great difference between what people call fiction and non-fiction. So in that sense, I'm like an early-18th-century person. I actually believe there's one way of writing.
Every time you make a choice that expresses respect for life, you bring a little more love in your body, into your family, into our society, and into a world that is calling out for this blessing.
Competition is a great thing and critically important in any industry. I respect the companies that build their brand through innovation/great product, packaging, sharp marketing and clever ideas.
Men don't get knocked out, or I mean they can fight back against big things. What kills them is erosion; they get nudged into failure. They get slowly scared.[...]It's slow. It rots out your guts.
All of us have inflated views of ourselves, especially in self-righteousn ess, until we have visited a place called Calvary. It is there, at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size.
The call of repentance is for the righteous and unrighteous, the godly and ungodly alike. If the righteous had been the lights they were called to be, the nation would never have fallen as it did.
God lets us continue to feel much of sin's sting through suffering while we're heading for heaven. This constantly reminds us of what we're being delivered from; exposing sin for the poison it is.
It made you feel very small, very lost, and yet it was not altogether depressing, that feeling. After all, if you were small, the grimy beetle crawled on - which was just what you wanted it to do.
When you are writing literary writing, you are communicating something subtextual with emotions and poetry. The prose has to have a voice; it's not just typing. It takes a while to get that voice.
My grandmother could never have written a memoir, so 'The Gravedigger's Daughter' is a homage to her life, and to the lives of other young women of her generation, which are so rarely articulated.
In three days," he continued, "I will be your husband. I will take a solemn vow to protect you until death do us part. Do you understand what that means?" "You'll save me from marauding minotaurs?
Constructive complaint requires only two things: that what you are complaining about should be different, and that it can be different. It sounds simple, but too often our protests fail this test.
What is it that you're not doing - in your work, in your life - because you feel you need permission? If someone had given you that permission as a youngster, what do you think you'd be doing now?
Creation stories had never been regarded as historically accurate; their purpose was therapeutic. But once you start reading Genesis as scientifically valid, you have bad science and bad religion.
He looked as if he'd stepped straight off the cover of one of those romance novels she ordered from Amazon.com so she didn't have to be embarassed by some supercilious male clerk in the bookstore.
In the streets through which we passed, I must own the houses in general struck me as if they were dark and gloomy, and yet at the same time they also struck me as prodigiously great and majestic.
Other people's creativity inspires me. Seeing great art, or reading a fab book or watching an interesting documentary or an exciting film - these things make me want to let my own imagination fly.
I sound contemptuous, but I am not. I am interested--intrigued even--by the way time erases real lives, leaving only vague imprints. Blood and spirit fade away so that only names and dates remain.
I was raised by maternal grandparents who were born in 1890 and 1899, respectively. They were British subjects; George V was the cousin of the tsar. The Romanovs were very real in their household.
A slightly modified version of the Serenity Prayer: Lord, grant me the serenity to ignore the assholes I cannot avoid; The luck to avoid the ones I can; And the self-awareness not to be one myself
I act freely when I am tuned in, centred and loving, but if possible, I avoid acting when I am emotionally upset and depriving myself of the wisdom that flows from love and expanded consciousness.
The dropout crisis is just the tip of an iceberg. What it doesn't count are all the kids who are in school but being disengaged from it, who don't enjoy it, who don't get any real benefit from it.
Some of us live a Christian life as if we're always under the stern, watchful eye of our Father and he is very impossible to please... No, God delights even in our heartfelt attempts at obedience.
We were taught in school, and I was taught at home and in church, that blacks and whites were equal and we should not discriminate based on skin color, even if my school was almost entirely white.
My dad is a bank president and my mom was an accountant and they didn't think that seeking the life of a freelance writer was very practical, you see. Of course, I was just as determined to do it.
I kind of wanted someone to rearrange the stars so they spelled out his words. I needed them big and bright, and somewhere I could see then when things felt dark. I love you. And I'm so, so proud.
Okay, I like him,” I admitted. “But it takes more than a nice body, Jenks. Jeez, I do have a little depth. You’ve got a great body, and you don’t see me trying to get into your Fruit of the Looms.
Shouts of dismay rose as the red flesh splattered against the table. It was only a tomato, but one would think I was pulping a decaying heart by the noise the big, strong FIB officers were making.
But now it was spring again, and spring was almost unbearable for sensitive hearts. It drove creation to its utmost limits, it wafted its spice-laden breath even into the nostrils of the innocent.
If your heads were stuffed with straw, like mine, you would probably all live in the beautiful places, and then Kansas would have no people at all. It is fortunate for Kansas that you have brains.
God was feeling sardonic the day He created the Universe. So it's rather up to at least one man every few centuries to pop up and come just as close to making him swallow his laughter as possible.
The insanity rate per capita in South Africa is appalling. ...it is easily seen that a primary requisite in any programme of the rehabilitation of the Bantu in South Africa would be mental health.
I'd visit the near future, close enough that someone might want to talk to Larry Niven and can figure out the language; distant enough to get me decent medical techniques and a ticket to the Moon.
Most of the stats say that 90% of people who buy a book or check one out of a library would never get past the first chapter. To me, the title better say everything there is to say about the book.
In my newspaper days, your endings could be literally sliced off in the composing room, so it was dangerous to get attached to them. Yet I think this has made me work harder on endings in fiction.
I wish I had a memory of that first violent shove, the shock of cold air, the sting of oxygen into new lungs. Everyone should remember being born. It doesn't seem fair that we only remember dying.
For a second I think about how easy it would be to pass back to the other side, to walk straight into the laboratories and offer myself up to the surgeons. You were right; I was wrong. Get it out.
"Kent?" I say, and my voice seems to have to rise from inside the fog, taking forever to get from my brain to my mouth. "Yeah?" "Promise you'll stay here with me?" I say. "I promise," he whispers.
An itchy feeling began to work its way through my body, as though a thousand mosquitoes were circulating through my blood, biting me from the inside, making me want to scream, jump, squirm. I ran.
I'm all for lifestyle evangelism, but I'm also in favor of intentionality, where we seek out opportunities for spiritual conversations and are equipped to explain the gospel and why we believe it.
Love can never grow old. Looks may lose their brown and gold. Cheeks may fade and hollow grow. But the hearts that love will know, never winter's frost and chill, summer's warmth is in them still.
She didn’t understand a damned thing about life except that it was arbitrary and cruel, and some people got away with murder while others made one tiny, careless mistake and paid a terrible price.
Sometimes when I'm stuck, I really do need that cup of tea, or that chocolate, or a break, or a walk, but in most cases what I actually need to do is make myself keep writing until it flows again.
If something is visceral and unsettling for me, my job is to not look away, not to punk out. Sometimes the dark things come from places inside me, experiences Ive had, that need to be transformed.
I began writing The Cold Song in the months following my fathers death, when I felt this sense of loss, disappearance, of being right in the middle of life and wondering: What now? How to proceed?
Fate is the malevolent little jester sitting up in the heavens and pondering over how ridiculous we humans are and he does his best to make fools out of all of us. And sooner or later he succeeds.
In any government bureaucracy, they are not working for you but for the mythical blob called the 'public sector,' which is really nothing but a stash of stolen cash divided among the robber class.
No, no," said Taran slowly, "It would be folly to think of attacking them." He smiled quickly at Fflewddur. "The bards would sing of us," he admitted, "but we'd be in no position to appreciate it.