Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
An obstacle is something you see when you take your eyes off the goal Few great men could pass personnel
Sometimes I envy religious people for the comfort of believing. It would make everything so much easier.
My mother was the daughter of a poor schoolteacher - well, that's a tautology - a country schoolteacher.
I make sure when I direct that it's a very joy-based set that hopefully is filled with a lot of respect.
The universe is information and we are stationary in it, not three dimensional and not in space or time.
When I was a child... I was watching a snowstorm, and hopefully asked, 'Momma, do we believe in winter?'
Just because one man calls him Allah and another calls him God is no reason for believers to be enemies.
The antidote to hubris, to overweening pride, is irony, that capacity to discover and systematize ideas.
I knew one thing: as soon as anyone said you didn't need a gun, you'd better take one along that worked.
She jerked away from me like a startled fawn might, if I had a startled fawn and it jerked away from me.
There are seductions that should be in the Smithsonian Institute, right next to The Spirit of St. Louis.
A good book ... leaves you wanting to reread the book. A great book compels you to reread your own soul.
I went to study at Oxford University in the 1980s on an imperial scholarship instituted by Cecil Rhodes.
I grew up very strongly with this sense of time being circular: that it constantly returned upon itself.
Did I hurt your feelings again? Sorry. When this is all over I'll send some flowers to your inner child.
The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives.
Oh where, oh where had Snow White gone? She'd found it easy, being pretty To hitch a ride into the city.
For those who are going to learn from books, learning the art of reading would seem to be indispensable.
I still have trouble identifying grammatical structures by name, though I know them as matters of usage.
Tristan and Isolde were lucky to die when they did. They'd have been sick of all that rubbish in a year.
How do you politely explain to someone that you had believed for years he was a moron as well as a Fool?
To claim that music is more important than oxygen would be trite and sentimental. It would also be true.
[On Ian Fleming:] The trouble with Ian is that he gets off with women because he can't get on with them.
No matter how much bullying they inflict on my body, as long as I have this hope, I can endure any pain.
A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.
Too many people had spent too long demonizing or totemizing me to listen seriously to what I had to say.
Anyone who reads my work will see that there are often difficult relationships between fathers and sons.
I saw these new kinds of stores: the Body Shop, the Sock Shop, and I thought to myself, 'I can do that.'
I don't see that books can be written without political context - not if they're relevant and ambitious.
the mysterious moment of death proves to be a moment of waking. How one longs to take it for one's self!
Above all avoid taking the advice of men who have no brains and do not know what they are talking about.
She did her work with the thoroughness of a mind which reveres details and never quite understands them.
Reading is perception as translation. The inert signs of an alphabet become living meanings in the mind.
The brain-mind is not a computer, and regarding it as one has led to a variety of theoretical dead ends.
We were on our way to the twentieth floor, sharing the elevator with two suits that had men inside them.
It seems to me that most people are interested in reading about characters who are richer than they are.
I watched him pull his t-shirt over his head. I could put hin on replay doing that and watch it all day.
Twitter is the perpetual cocktail party where everyone is talking at once but nobody is saying anything.
A man might engage in flirtation with distinterest, even disdain. But he never teases without affection.
Life is made for the strong. There is no mercy in it for the weak– none...Such is the tragedy of desire.
Yes, they are carnal, both of them, love and death, and therein lies their terror and their great magic!
The days will always be brighter because he existed. The nights will always be darker because he's gone.
That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth.
I grew up with the Gene Kelly look at war. The cheerful kind of stories you tell about a horrendous war.
The desert is a spiritual place, we vaguely understand, and the sea the mere playground of our hedonism.
Mostly I sit at home in the evenings watching the box and hoping that one day I'll evolve into plankton.
I have yet to met a liberal who can withstand the attrition of prolonged discussion of the unessentials.
Books ARE a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind.
I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer - its dust and lowering skies.
It was my father who could do no wrong. So I didn't think of it as, oh, look, my father's a violent man.