Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Plots are no more exhausted than men are. Every man is a new creation, and combinations are simply endless.
We mark some days as fair, some as foul, because we do not see that the character of every day as identical
Said I, in scorn all burning hot,In rage and anger high,"You ignominious idiot,Those wings are made to fly!
Each of my books is different. Deliberately... I wanted to create my society, my people, in their fullness.
And though some days it is very hard, I try not to live for the future. And I try not to dream of the past.
Intuition is not infallible; it only seems to be the truth. It is a message which we may interpret wrongly.
Bad writing is bad not just because the language is humdrum, but the quality of the observation is so poor.
The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend.
We've spent so much time judging what other people created that we've created very, very little of our own.
You cannot be the person they know and the great, glorious person you want to become. Not at the same time.
I am the all-singing, all-dancing crap of this world.... I am the toxic waste by-product of God's creation.
If there had been zombies on the iceberg when the Titanic hit it, that would have made a much better movie.
To repeat, the way you get to the huge, impossible yes is, you start collecting a lot of easy, small yeses.
It is a hundred-year-old witch book, bound in human skin and probably written in ancient cum...YOU lick it!
For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive.
Since obscenity is the truth of our passion today, it is the only stuff of art -- or almost the only stuff.
I can never decide whether my dreams are the result of my thoughts, or my thoughts the result of my dreams.
Obscenity only comes in when the mind despises and fears the body, and the body hates and resists the mind.
Maybe some people just aren't meant to be in our lives forever. Maybe some people are just passing through.
Every adaptation requires that the screenwriter make difficult choices - and in particular, difficult cuts.
I was a big reader of Zane Grey as a young boy, and so horses and the West figured large in my imagination.
[I]f the writer does his job right, what he basically does is remind the reader of how smart the reader is.
You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
The individual's right to pursue his own vision of the best ration of pleasure to pain: utterly sacrosanct.
What some people interpret as brooding melancholy is serenity. I don't feel required to grasp all the time.
If you’re in your life, chance. Viewed from the outside, like a book you’re reading, it’s fate all the way.
The world never stops unmaking what the world never stops making. But who says the world has to make sense?
I would never complain about 'One Day' taking off, but it made me painfully self-conscious for a long time.
To accept the inevitable; neither to struggle against it nor murmur at it-this is the great lesson of life.
There is no more off-leash reliable, calm, sophisticated, go-with-you-anywhere dog than a trained sheepdog.
You simply don't get to be wise, mature, etc., unless you've been a raving cannibal for thirty years or so.
Mother's room, and mother's need for privacy become a valuable lesson in respect for other people's rights.
What surprises me about humanity is that in the end such a narrow range of plights defines our moral lives.
Make your goals big and broad enough so that they never become answered prayers and boomerang to curse you.
I think most people either forget or don't know that Microsoft only hires people with I.Q.'s well over 130.
Of course he despised the world as a whole; every thoughtful man should; it is almost a test of refinement.
There must be some good in the cocktail party to account for its immense vogue among otherwise sane people.
There are two ways to spread happiness; either be the light who shines it or be the mirror who reflects it.
The first version of The Beautiful Room Is Empty was the first mss. I'd ever submitted to New York editors.
Ideally I'd like to spend two evenings a week talking to Proust and another conversing with the Holy Ghost.
There is no man so friendless but that he can find a friend sincere enough to tell him disagreeable truths.
Talk not of genius baffled. Genius is master of man. Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can.
We must remember how apt man is to extremes--rushing from credulity and weakness to suspicion and distrust.
Ah, what without a heaven would be even love!--a perpetual terror of the separation that must one day come.
Those of us with this ancient compulsion to tell stories sometimes start with a single kernel of something.
The fictional treatment of biographical material - a treatment that for me is essential - is full of traps.
Whenever you observe an animal closely, you feel as if a human being sitting inside were making fun of you.
A person often falls very ill in order to become someone else and then returns to health much disappointed.
I still read Hemingway. I still read his short stories because they're so good. He doesn't waste any words.
A story needs rhythm. Read it aloud to yourself. If it doesn't spin a bit of magic, it's missing something.