Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Conditions have changed, but we are still operating financially by the rules established during the Industrial Revolution-rules based on creating more material possessions. But our high standard of living has not led to a high quality of life-for us or for the planet.
I don't think escaping is necessarily a problem, but we can get addicted to almost anything. If you're craving being in this other reality and you don't want to participate in your own reality, those are the times we have to start asking ourselves difficult questions.
My students often say, "My roommate read this story and really liked it", and it's hard to convince them that there are things wrong with it. I say, "well, people who love you want you to be happy. But I'm your professor and I'm supposed to be teaching you something."
My students often say, 'My roommate read this story and really liked it,' and it's hard to convince them that there are things wrong with it. I say, 'Well, people who love you want you to be happy. But I'm your professor and I'm supposed to be teaching you something.'
Rehearsels, actually." "Rehearsals?" "For the-" Oh,no. "-musicale." The Smythe-Smith musical.It finished off what the Crusades had begun.There wasn't a man alive who could maintain a romantic thought when faced with the memory-or the threat-of a Smythe-Smith musicale.
Cooking saved my life! Sure, there were some miserable moments, but that was sort of the point, to find something challenging and consuming enough to take a place in the center of my life into which was creeping a horrible feeling of stasis and the doom of mediocrity.
I start writing with only the vaguest idea about who my characters are and what is going to happen, and the characters and plot come into existence as I go. I've tried doing it the other way, but for me, outlining is a waste of time because I never follow the outline.
I mean... if you're raised as a decent human being, killing somebody is against every moral thing you've ever been taught. And so, generally, in combat it's 'krauts,' the 'gooks,' the 'yanks' - whatever you want to do to try and make it so that it's not a human being.
The older I get, the more I appreciate the idea of being thrown together with a group of people you might have a lot in common with, or nothing at all. You don't have the option of doing anything other than making your family relationships work - forever. I like that.
I did not find that writing a diary with a lead male character differed in any essential way from writing one with a female character. They all had the same challenges in terms of attempting to establish an identity, coping with loneliness, friendships, relationships.
You see, all that I ever held dear has been taken from me," she said in a matter-of-fact tone. "And when you've lost everything-" Her facade began to crumble, and her voice broke, but she made herself carry on. "When you've lost everything, you've got nothing to lose.
I let my face go blank and nodded slowly. "Yes.The trolls.Back. With me. Cannot form.Complete sentences." I shook my head. "Yeah,so not happening." He considered me,annoyed and at a loss for what to do next."I don't kill humans." "Me niether!See,common ground already.
The problem of South Africa is different than the world thinks. There is no native problem. The native worker gets more than white workers do in England! [...] The South African government is not a police state. It's easier on people than the United States government!
I'll not always be here on guard. The stars twinkle in the Milky Way and the wind sighs for songs across the empty fields of a planet a Galaxy away. You won't always be here. But before you go, whisper this to your sons and their sons - "The work was free. Keep it so.
One world on its own is a strange enough seethe of coiling, unknowable veins of intention and chance, but two? Where two worlds mingle breath through rips in the sky, the strange becomes stranger, and many things may come to pass that few imaginations could encompass.
They wanted it because they've got some sort of darkness in them. And maybe because they like pain. Because pain turns them on. Well, maybe it turns me on, too," she said quietly. "In fact, I know it does, because loving you hurts. And yet, I still come back for more.
Over commitment in business is usually due to a lack of faith, which results in fear - specifically, the fear of failure. But if we really believe God is in control, then we also should believe He's able to make us successful while we are keeping our lives in balance.
I loved to be alone in the woods, especially in the late fall when everything is crisp and golden, the leaves the color of fire, and it smells like things turning into earth. I loved the silence - the only sound the steady drum of the hooves and the horse's breathing.
What I've learned is that everybody really wants to sell their story. No matter who they are, everybody feels that what they're doing is the right thing, and if they could only explain themselves to a reasonable person that understands them, then maybe they'll listen.
He must understand that if he is the world's finest plum and someone he loves does not like plums, he has the choice of becoming a banana. But he must be warned that if he chooses to become a banana, he will be a second rate banana. But he can always be the best plum.
We want to gently remind people that we don't have forever. In my work, I hear parents complain all the time that their children grow up so fast. But they don't take the time to sit down and talk to each other. The last bastion of getting together is around the table.
Google is my best friend and my worst enemy. It's fabulous for research, but then it becomes addictive. I'll have a character eating an orange, and next thing I'm Googling types of oranges, I'm visiting chat rooms about oranges, I'm learning the history of the orange.
Before I left the 'Star' last year to write books full-time, I welcomed catastrophe. It was material. Missed planes, broken pipes, dead lawns, digestive disorders, you name it, if it was something that had gone horribly wrong, it was worth banging out 600 words about.
As I say the words, I realize how true they are. And maybe that's the trick to getting through it, through life: realizing that everybody, including ourselves, is lugging around some kind of screwed-up baggage. Maybe we are put here to help each other carry the loads.
How old are you? Twelve?" "Fourteen & three quarters." His eyes sparkled. "You're kind of little for fourteen and three quarters." "Am not," I replied indignantly. "I'm a sophomore this year. How old are you?" "Seventeen and two fifths." Hardy Cateses & Liberty Jones.
Of course, like all organic processes, there is an ebb and a flow to writing. One does not exist without the other. The writer needs to be vigilant in protecting both, confident in the knowledge that the village will be there when we choose, finally, to open the door.
I guess there's only two possible places ideas can come from. One is the outside: everything that happens to you and everything that you do in life. And the other is the inside part: your own personality and imagination, and no two people are alike, like fingerprints.
Each year, I pick something new to learn. One year, it was learning how to knit, and I got 'The Sweethearts' Knitting Club' out of the experience. Another year, it was to volunteer at the local domestic abuse shelter, and I ended up volunteering there for three years.
I have read my books by many lights, hoarding their beauty, their wit or wisdom against the dark days when I would have no book, nor a place to read. I have known hunger of the belly kind many times over, but I have known a worse hunger: the need to know and to learn.
There are shadows for the shadows of things, as a reflection seen in a mirror of a mirror. We know there are circles within circles and dimensions beyond dimension. Reality is itself a shadow, only an appearance accepted by those whose eyes shun what might lie beyond.
Knowledge is awareness, and to it are many paths, not all of them paved with logic. But sometimes one is guided through the maze by intuition. One is led by something felt on the wind, something seen in the stars, something that calls from the wasteland to the spirit.
In my view, the future of politics is, without a doubt, social liberalism married to economic conservatism. Which means we have to make an economic argument to social liberals, that it's OK to vote for us. But we won't run the economy into the ground at the same time.
I find writing for children much easier. I don't mean it's less demanding - you've got to have a talent for it and you've got to work very hard - but you don't have to pull your guts out and lay them on the line in quite the same way as when you're writing for adults.
Did you see that? Buffy just staked that poor vampire. He had yet to even do anything untowared, he just crawled out of his grave and she staked him. That is just not right. She is taking out her problems with that Angel fellow on a vampire, that is what she is doing.
The fact is that pictures which are unlike reality ought not be approved, and even if they are technically fine, this is no reason why they should offhand be judged to be correct, if their subject is lacking in the principles of reality carried out with no violations.
Once, when she was six years old, she had fallen from a tree, flat on her stomach. She could still recall that sickening interval before breath came back into her body. Now, as she looked at him, she felt the same way she had felt then, breathless, stunned, nauseated.
Yes, as Rhett had prophesied, marriage could be a lot of fun. Not only was it fun but she was learning many things. That was odd in itself, because Scarlett had thought life could teach her no more. Now she felt like a child, every day on the brink of a new discovery.
Growing up in Vancouver in the 1950s, I was often capricious and temperamental, quick to laugh, even quicker to feel despair, prone to flailing my arms, pouting and crying when things didn't go my way, or I thought something was unfair, or I was bullied by my sisters.
Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.
No. I took this job in self-defense. Quain burns everything. Belen thinks jerky is all we need to survive. Flea's idea of a good meal is something that hasn't been in a garbage can first. And Kerrick poisoned us-' 'Not on purpose,' Kerrick said. 'The meat looked done.
I want to say that of course I want my writing to be read and discussed by as many people as possible, but this is different than wanting personal, "celebrity"-like attention. I'm very introverted and sensitive and dislike being talked about, positively or negatively.
I think it's sad that we live in a world where men can steal and distribute and publish photos of women without their permission all over the Internet and even in print and make a lot of money doing so, but half naked photos that I took of myself are deemed "obscene."
New York publishing is about, 'What's the next Harry Potter? What's the next Twilight?' When I've approached people, I've asked, 'What is the book you've been dying to do, but New York won't do?' I want the books that they think won't sell - because I think they will.
[Do you worry unnecessarily about the future? Remember most fears are just False Evidence Appearing Real. Don't let unfounded fears rob you of the joys of life or you too will say...] There has been much tragedy in my life; [and] at least half of it actually happened.
The cigar-box which the European calls a 'lift' needs but to be compared with our elevators to be appreciated. The lift stops to reflect between floors. That is all right in a hearse, but not in elevators. The American elevator acts like a man's patent purge-it works.
I have observed that you treat a man as an old garment to be taken apart and stitched again. Perhaps you could think of him as good cloth, rich fabric that wants only to be embroidered upon. And perhaps, if you will do that, you will see that you love Tailor yourself.
Anti-Semitism is a horrible disease from which nobody is immune, and it has a kind of evil fascination that makes an enlightened person draw near the source of infection, supposedly in a scientific spirit, but really to sniff the vapors and dally with the possibility.
I could have had a session of defecography, which is a diagnostic test in which X-rays are taken to assess anatomical problems occurring during the process of defecation. I gave it the briefest of thoughts before recognizing that this is beyond the pale - even for me.
Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game.
You'll always face problems. When you experience hard times, immerse your mind in God thoughts. Turn a deaf ear to doubters. Set your mind on a holy cause. Once you find your mountain, no giant will stop you, no age will disqualify you, and no problem will defeat you.