Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
A man is not much if he can't depend on himself, and nothing if others can't depend on him.
Tis e'er the lot of the innocent in the world, to fly to the wolf for succor from the lion.
Las Vegas is the expression, in glitter and concrete, of America's brittle and mutating id.
The love that interferes and knows not how to leave alone is a love alien to Nature's ways.
Walt Whitman's a hell of a lot more revolutionary than any Russian poet I've ever heard of.
The privileges of knowledge have to be bought at the cost of the consolations of ignorance.
The great majority of modern third-person narration is "I" narration very thinly disguised.
Love of beauty is really only the sex instinct, which nothing but complete union satisfies.
The more clearly one sees this world; the more one is obliged to pretend it does not exist.
…there is no nakedness that compares to being naked in front of someone for the first time.
Half my life is an act of revision; more than half the act is performed with small changes.
I'm a very old-fashioned novelist. I write 19th-century novels, where a lot of rules apply.
Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner.
We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable.
Being a famous writer is a little like being a tall dwarf. You're on the edge of normality.
It's complicated.' 'So's quantitative easing. But I still get that it means printing money.
I don't think I could live with someone that I didn't have an intellectual friendship with.
For me, music is sort of the art that I can't incorporate into my person the way I want to.
To foretell the destiny of a nation, it is necessary to open a book that tells of her past.
I think in every country that there is at least one executive who is scared of going crazy.
It is not a matter of ends justifying means: but of the creation of new means and new ends.
Wherever he saw a hole he always wanted to know the depth of it. To him this was important.
Call me territorial or narcissistic, but I avoid novels about people who share my vocation.
The poem has to bear the weight with image, language... the screenplay with dialogue, plot.
And Cape Town is not what it used to be. Foreigners have left their imprint on our culture.
There are things we want, and things we may have.... Sanity lies in knowing the difference.
It's really hard for me, every day, to confront my writing. It never gets easier over time.
I was reading a lot of European history, and I thought Attila the Hun had gotten a bad rap.
You're gon' have to say to your self, am I gon' believe what them fools say about me today?
I find waiting unbearable because it makes me passive and negates me. I hate being nothing.
First of all, writing at best - certainly fiction writing - more and more I think is magic.
When he said to give him the sword, I don’t think he meant for you to stick it in his guts.
But the game involves only male names. Because, if it's a girl, Laila has already named her
Her eyes, walnut brown and shaded by fanned lashes, met mine. Held for a moment. Flew away.
You know, sometimes when you're too close to someone, it's hard to see who they really are.
The future is not as loud as war, but it is relentless. It has a terrible fury all its own.
For I begin with writing the first sentence, — and trusting to Almighty God for the second.
Truth is a matter of direct apprehension-you can't climb a ladder of mental concepts to it.
I can't remember a time when I wasn't trying to figure out what to say at the dinner table.
I have spent many, many hours reading J.K. Rowling's work. I am a known 'Harry Potter' fan.
He who believes is strong; he who doubts is weak. Strong convictions precede great actions.
I have nothing to give but my heart so full and these empty hands." "They're not empty now.
I will make a battering-ram of my head and make my way through this rough and tumble world.
That's the kind of motif I bring to the books - that people take charge of their own lives.
It would have been the equivalent of Jackson Pollock's attempts to copy the Sistine Chapel.
Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.
We are at times too ready to believe that the present is the only possible state of things.
Time passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true.
The one thing more difficult than following a regime is keeping from imposing it on others.
My dragon? save anybody? you must have have him confused with someone else- Smaug perhaps?.