Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It doesn't seem to me that anyone has discovered much that's new since the Iliad or the Odyssey.
He learned about life at sixteen, first from Dostoevsky and then from the whores of New Orleans.
What supposedly bound that Commonwealth together was a mysterious shared identity - Britishness.
There's always been something deeply disturbing about the Abbott government's attitude to women.
I can deal with fighting in the arena in Hell, but laundry and dishes put the fear of God in me.
...his job was the very least important part of his life, never to be mentioned except in irony.
I'm trying to read more dead people because I keep having to read stuff for juries and so forth.
I judged about a zillion awards this year so Ive been reading a lot of books that just came out.
If I had my way, I'd remove January from the calendar altogether and have an extra July instead.
If you go back, 'The Great Gatsby' would be a portrait of the rich and fortune made by business.
I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.
All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.
Away down the river, A hundred miles or more, Other little children Shall bring my boats ashore.
It seemed to me as if the stones sang, in the strangest voices, in the language of Ultima Thule.
Schools don't really allow failure and yet it's a valid part of any endeavour, not just writing.
Our lives, our stories, flowed into one another's, were no longer our own, individual, discrete.
Can one drown in one's element... If fish can drown in water, can human beings suffocate in air?
The only way of living in a free society is to feel that you have the right to say and do stuff.
If my child had prejudice in his head, I'd be ashamed. I would see it as my failure as a parent.
beautiful December grapes, blue as plums, every grape a little skinful of sweet, tasteless water
Nobody minded what you did in bed or what you said about God, a very civilized attitude in 1948.
Hairdressers are professional gossips; when only the hands are busy, the tongue is seldom still.
The dense and godly wear consistency as a flower, the imaginative fling it joyfully behind them.
The Law likes to be argued with. Take away words and where is the Law? Silence always annoys it.
It’s much easier not to know things sometimes. And to have french fries with your mom be enough.
It is wrong to ask for more than you give freely. In this way, we come to resemble what we hate.
When you've tried all the salves in the world and they don't work, you start thinking about fire
Raymond Chandler I love a lot, and the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard. I really love his voice.
Will you lie to me and promise to read them? Books need to be read. The pages need to be turned.
Most social problems could be helped or prevented if people had more money and practical advice.
I don't know why women are so mad about flowers. Personally, they leave me cold. I prefer trees.
But even if you have what everyone else wants- if it isn't what you want, it isn't what you want
I think mostly the commodifying comes after I've done something that has some other value to me.
Even the most malignant gods would not continue to inflict life upon humanity, time without end.
In the end, all you want is someone to long for you when it comes time to put you in the ground.
I acknowledge the Furies. I believe in them. I have heard the disastrous beating of their wings.
My opinion is that a poet should express the emotion of all the ages and the thought of his own.
Um, what I found though about the Christian Brothers is this: that they were certainly muscular.
But I was also a brat. I used to belong to a gang that went looking for fights with other gangs.
I actually think that Bandbox, by far the silliest of my books, is the best constructed of them.
People's behavior makes sense if you think about it in terms of their goals, needs, and motives.
I held a variety of jobs - most notably ten years working in universities - and kept on writing.
Behind the hieroglyphic streets there would either be a transcendent meaning, or only the earth.
You can’t judge a man solely on his actions. Sometimes actions are nothing more than re actions.
I need to know that wherever I end up, in the stars or in the gutter, you’re along for the ride.
A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.
The ocean is a supreme metaphor for change. I expect the unexpected but am never fully prepared.
What I'm saying so badly is we're bred now to believe we're in control and should be in control.
It was one thing to use computers as a tool, quite another to let them do your thinking for you.
I have the wonderful pleasure of finishing the book and closing it. And I don't read them later.