Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I really think that everyone should have watercolors, magnetic poetry, and a harmonica.
I don't consider the first-world concerns any less important than the third-world ones.
Istanbul ... the constant beating of the wave of the East against the rock of the West.
It's the pursuit of love and happiness that is the driving force of the romantic novel.
I've decided that the worst part of loneliness isn't being alone. It's being forgotten.
He buried his hands in the rich velvet of her hair. “I thought I’d die for wanting you.
What is the world coming to, with these modern women? A man can't tell them what to do.
The more you try to be interested in other people, the more you find out about yourself
Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change.
Tears streamed down my face as I crossed the finish line. I was a new person, a runner.
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.
The greatest danger of being gifted, is that you may never learn how to make an effort.
No one wants a masterpiece knocking around when your own book is looking for attention.
Laughter does not deny pain. Laughter - like a wail - acknowledges and replies to pain.
I doubt we will ever be forgiven. All I hope is – they'll remember we were human beings
That's the ultimate pornography. There's nothing more pornographic than glorifying war.
Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it.
Writers do not write about a place because they belong there, but because they want to.
Everyone must imagine his own snakes because no one else's snakes can ever be as awful.
...now and then a giggling trail of mermaids appeared in our wake. We fed them oatmeal.
If they told us what to believe, and we didn't come to it on our own, is it still true?
Leaving us with Eric is like hiring a babysitter who spends his time sharpening knives.
Use unlikely materials. Who would choose Pnin as hero, but how did we live before Pnin?
Humbert was perfectly capable of intercourse with Eve, but it was Lilith he longed for.
do what only a true artist can do ... pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation
Love makes you blind to your own survival. And if it doesn't then it's not love at all.
Our land passes in and out of our bodies just as our bodies pass in and out of our land
The presence of the present has become insistent, undeniable, and I dare not look away.
Failure makes success so much sweeter, and allows you to thumb your nose at the crowds.
It doesn't matter how fast your modem is if you're being shelled by ethnic separatists.
I hold in my hands the very soul of a man. What more dare a woman ask of the high gods?
no one worth knowing can be quite known, no one worth possessing can be quite possessed
I can't say that I ever actually decided to become a writer. It kind of snuck up on me.
I escaped the [Southern-writer] label because I didn't and don't write about the South.
Humility is indeed beatness, a compulsory virtue that no one exhibits unless he has to.
A Status symbol is an instrument you clash when you want someone to know you are there.
The things that one most wants to do are the things that are probably most worth doing.
I didn't go to the lectures. My valet, who was more distinguished than I, went instead.
Any artist who respects himself ought to be, and in every sense of the term, an emigre.
Look at that wonderful moonlight. It makes me long for the time when I can return home.
I'm most honest about writing when I'm talking to family or friends, not to newspapers.
One thing you learn about the novel as a form is that it's always smarter than you are.
I suppose all we can really share with people is a taste for the same kinds of weather.
An odd phrase, "by heart," he would add, as though poems were stored in the bloodstream.
It was like she'd become the sun, and I started revolving around her. She was my center.
Don't go getting all shy on me now, Lana," he drawled, squeezing my sides with his hands
All the lessons you need to learn in life, he said, will be taught to you by your enemy.
I used to get a lift to school every day with a man who was a major in the British Army.
Love has a funny way of showing up when you aren't looking for it and didn't plan on it.
Everything has got its right size. When it is its right size and well run it's the tops.