Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If you're going to sit on someone's tombstone, you might as well know something about them, right?
I do not wish to produce prose that draws attention to itself, rather than the world it describes.
The women's movement is filled with tyrants, just as men's political movements are equally filled.
The fortunate circumstances of our lives are generally found, at last, to be of our own producing.
The hours we pass with happy prospects in view are more pleasing than those crowded with fruition.
The only people who think children are carefree are the ones who've forgotten their own childhood.
In all my study of history, I have never found a time or place I would rather have lived than now.
When you really love someone, you must accept their part of mystery. And that’s why you love them.
Why should we refuse the happiness this hour gives us, because some other hour might take it away?
I am basically analytical, not creative; my writing is simply a creative way of handling analysis.
When I was young they used to say people only threw stones at the tree that was loaded with fruit.
It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves.
Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.
I suppose all writers are crazy, but if they are any good, I believe they have a terrible honesty.
One can easily classify all works of fiction either as descendants of the Iliad or of the Odyssey.
It seems to me that an author who has determined very new domains in literature is Gertrude Stein.
I've been mainly a happy boy in my life. I married the right girl and we did what we wanted to do.
Thrice happy's the wooing that's not long adoing. So much time is saved in the billing and cooing.
That's what you do when the curtain is falling--you give the line that the audience wants to hear.
I understand what you're saying, and your comments are valuable, but I'm gonna ignore your advice.
If my books can help children become readers, then I feel I have accomplished something important.
History is what we bring to it, not just the events themselves, but how we interpret those events.
It implies a slight failure as a writer that you are reduced to being a ghostwriter for the money.
Since hate poisons the soul, don't cherish enmities or grudges: avoid people who make you unhappy.
Keep your eyes open to your mercies. The man who forgets to be thankful has fallen asleep in life.
Love affairs are for emotional sprinters; the pleasures of love are for the emotional marathoners.
The most original thing a writer can do is write like himself. It is also his most difficult task.
When both my editors say 'This is really bad, you need to change this,' I ignore that at my peril.
I think when writers play with dragons, we are simply doing what fantasy writers have always done.
At what point is a person old enough to say, 'I own my body, and I get to do what I want with it'?
Some of the people who look the most normal are probably the maddest people trying to look normal.
I'm not at all sure dialogue is meant to advance the story; I know that sometimes it is the story.
A sigh isn't just a sigh. We inhale the world and breathe out meaning. While we can. While we can.
I learned: the first lesson of my life: nobody can face the world with his eyes open all the time.
I became a writer because I got addicted to story. The first storyteller in my life was my father.
I'm a big-city boy. What I like is big cities. It's not just what I like. It's what I write about.
Write what you know. Write what you don't know. But most of all, write what you'd rather not know.
But I know what darkness is, it accumulates, thickens, then suddenly bursts and drowns everything.
I read more books than you can imagine on all sorts of odd topics, which is something that I love.
The thing of course, is to make yourself alive. Most people remain all of their lives in a stupor.
It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place.
But I didn’t realize then that the consequence of sin is that you have to trample on other people.
When I don't get enough sleep, I am cranky, vulnerable to headaches, and my concentration is poor.
A lot of times, really wonderful things that have come my way have come basically out of the blue.
Every wave, regardless of how high and forceful it crests, must eventually collapse within itself.
I think we can fairly conclude that writer-director Joss Whedon didn't make 'The Avengers' for me.
The soul knows no greater anguish than to take a breath that begins with love and ends with grief.
It is the strength of any emotion, not necessarily its pleasantness, that makes a place important.
The monarchy is finished. It was finished a while ago, but they're still making the corpses dance.
Sometimes I rant, in a comical way, about how the gods give with one hand and take with the other.