Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The calmer thought is not always the right thought, just as the distant view is not always the truest view
To put your life in danger from time to time... breeds a saneness in dealing with day-to-day trivialities.
If landscape is a character for me, then it helps if I'm familiar with it and I already have a take on it.
The marvelous maturity of London! I would rather be dead in this town than preening my feathers in heaven.
Everyone has a past, but that's just it--it's in the past. You can learn from it, but you can't change it.
Their fingers seemed to fit together in just the right way- effortlessly clasped,like perfect complements.
You're still alive. And that means you'll love and be loved...and in the end, nothing else really matters.
In other words, it's one of those books you thrust on your partner with an incredulous cry of "This is me!
Simple narcissism gives the power of beasts to politicians, professional wrestlers and female movie stars.
Taste is the power of relishing or rejecting whatever is offered for the entertainment of the imagination.
As for murmurs, mother, we grumble a little now and then, to be sure; but there's no love lost between us.
Could we see when and where we are to meet again, we would be more tender when we bid our friends goodbye.
The heart of silver falls ever into the hands of brass. The sensitive herb is eaten as grass by the swine.
Certain writers look down their noses at plot, and I think I might have been one of them until I tried it.
I know of few men over 50 that seem to me entirely human, virtually none who has long exercised authority.
Comedy deflates the sense precisely so that the underlying lubricity and malice may bubble to the surface.
Cuba may be the only place in the world where you can be yourself and more than yourself at the same time.
I never base characters on real people. There are people who do that but I really don't know how to do it.
When I finished 'True History of the Kelly Gang,' I realised that Faulkner had not lost his power over me.
I never liked the idea of doing what a machine says. I hate having to salute something built in a factory.
In a nutshell-I fear authority but at the same time I resent it-the authority and my own fear. So I rebel.
She makes life over, he realized. She controls life, whereas I just sit on my can and let it happen to me.
The ultimate problem confronting me all my life has been the senseless injury to and neglect of my sister.
Truth, though it has many disadvantages, is at least changeless. You can always find it where you left it.
... not being liked has a certain virtue about it, if the reason for the dislike does not lie in yourself!
There are two ways of meeting difficulties: you alter the difficulties or you alter yourself meeting them.
...because I rant not, neither rave of what I feel, can you be so shallow as to dream that I feel nothing?
I suppose, I said, it is one definition of love, the belief in something that only the two of you can see.
Man's hope can paint a purple picture, can transform a soaring vulture into a noble eagle or moaning dove.
Two very simple rules: A. You don't have to write. B. You can't do anything else The rest comes of itself.
Philosophical thinking that doesn't do violence to one's settled mind is no philosophical thinking at all.
I didn't know the full dimensions of forever, but I knew it was longer than waiting for Christmas to come.
Strange that only a little problem of your own will take your mind far from a tragedy belonging to others.
People who imagine themselves to be self-made seldom enjoy examining the process of manufacture in detail.
Impotence, fetishism, bisexuality, and bondage are all facts of life, and our fiction should reflect that.
I didn't show up here to give your life purpose now that your life's over. That's up to you to figure out.
To be truly happy is a question of how we begin, and not how we end, of what we want and not what we have.
It is not enough to be ready to go where duty calls. A man should stand around where he can hear the call!
In every part and corner of our life, to lose oneself is to be a gainer; to forget oneself is to be happy.
When you cut pieces out of the truth to avoid looking like a fool you end up looking like a moron instead.
...sometimes it only makes one more lonely to know that somewhere else, one's friends and family are well.
I began attempting to write for children under the mistaken assumption that writing for children was easy.
King Shrewd is expecting me, rather he isn't expecting me, and that is precisely why I must go to him now.
Not that my arms are getting tired or anything, but... how much longer is the hugging phase going to last?
Perhaps I'm just fickle by nature and get tired of countries the way other women do of husbands or lovers.
The west was involved in toppling the Mossadegh government. That ultimately led to the Iranian revolution.
If Islam is to be reconciled with modernity, these voices must be encouraged until they swell into a roar.
I use the words you taught me. If they don't mean anything any more, teach me others. Or let me be silent.
Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world.
I never expected my books to do even as well as they have. I still feel grateful for it, every single day.