Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Fiction. . . . It's like goading a mongoose and a cobra into battle and staying with them to see who wins.
Creativity has always depended on openness and flexibility, so let us hope for more of both in the future.
I don’t want to start thinking again. Not like I have this last week. I can’t think again. Not ever again.
But right now I’m here with you. And I want to know where you are, what you need, and what you want to do.
I was looking at the photographs and I started thinking that there was a time when these weren't memories.
So what's the point of using words nobody else knows or can say comfortably? I just don't understand that.
And I never felt that good in my life. But I also felt bad because I saw her naked without her permission.
If you have only 95 minutes of material, make an only 95-minute movie. Amazing how often that's forgotten.
I think most novelists I know, certainly including me, feel the novels choose them rather than vice-versa.
'Lincoln' is impressive enough to almost make you forget how much Daniel Day-Lewis dominates the endeavor.
There's only one common element that united every writer I've admired... they're all incredibly well-read.
I take life very seriously. I can laugh at it, because what else can you do? But it's a hard daily battle.
He was in a slow-motion mood-one of my favorites, though it meant i'd be driven crazy before we were done.
I wasn't sure I could make it through another hour of his company without throwing my stapler at his head.
My first book was poetry, but I didn't write it first. I wrote it third. So my first two books were prose.
One of my grandsons used to insist, when he was only 3 or 4, that he had been born and had lived in India.
After spending all of her girlhood fervently wishing she could run away from home— she’d actually done it.
The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing alive enough to have strength to die. (from "Neutral Tones")
And it is a folly to try to craft a novel for the screen, to write a novel with a screen contract in mind.
Thomas was my true name but everyone knew me as Mick, except my mother, who knew me as definitely Michael.
Letters had always defeated distance, but with the coming of e-mail, time seemed to be vanquished as well.
Democracy is timelessly human, and timelessness always implies a certain amount of potential youthfulness.
The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.
People do change - individuals, families, nations - and the pace of transformation need not be geological.
There's not some finite amount of pain inside us. Our bodies and minds just keep manufacturing more of it.
Let your face speak what's in your heart. When my kids walk in the room my face says I'm glad to see them.
Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it.
If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to write it.
My Tris should look pale and small--she is pale and small, after all--but instead the room is full of her.
If you are really one of us, it won't matter to you that you might fail. And if it does, you are a coward.
I am no longer Tris, the selfless, or Tris, the brave. I suppose that now, I must become more than either.
That dreams have power only over your own mind. But with money you can have power over the minds of others
It's not the gods But our own hearts We need to fear. The evil starts Against all odds Not there but here.
It's a pity one can't imagine what one can't compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
My answer to your question'Does the writer have a social responsibility?' is NO.You owe me ten cents, sir.
We are far more concerned about the desecration of the flag than we are about the desecration of our land.
Only the action that is moved by love for the good at hand has the hope of being responsible and generous.
The shoddy work of despair, the pointless work of pride, equally betray Creation. They are wastes of life.
She walked on, comforted by the surf, by the one perpetual moment of beach-time, the now-and-always of it.
His teeth sang in their individual sockets like tuning forks, each one pitch-perfect and clear as ethanol.
As far as the filmmaking process is concerned, stars are essentially worthless - and absolutely essential.
Miracle Max: Have fun stormin' da castle. Valerie: Think it'll work? Miracle Max: It would take a miracle.
At some point as adults we cease to be our parents' children and we become our children's parents instead.
She had not character enough to take to drinking, and moaned about, slip-shod and in curl-papers, all day.
Scientology is a model control system, a state in fact with its own courts, police, rewards and penalties.
Writing is a fine therapy for people who are perpetually scared of nameless threats... for jittery people.
You must live life with the full knowledge that your actions will remain. We are creatures of consequence.
Mr. Fitzgerald, I believe that is how he spells his name, seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home.
Hold onto me baby. I'm going to take care of you." The raspy need in his voice only made me more desperate.
I don't like the sort of hierarchical, totalitarian type of room a lot of directors can find themselves in.