Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There's never been a lack of men willing to die bravely. The trouble is to find a few able to live sensibly.
The camera eye is the one in the middle of our forehead, combining how we see with what there is to be seen.
When I see my friends engaging in a Twitter war for an afternoon, I think that would destroy me for a month.
She hopes for nothing except fine weather and a resolution. She wants to end properly, like a good sentence.
It's still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person, one pure faith, on the globe.
I did a lot of my writing as though I was an academic, doing some piece of research as perfectly as possible.
There is a certain aesthetic pleasure in trying to imagine the unimaginable and failing, if you are a reader.
I know being with me is not easy. But I want you to understand no one has me, or has ever had me, except you.
Football games on Friday nights followed by field parties every weekend was how I spent my high school years.
I think because my brother was an actor and I just saw how he struggled through, I guess I'm sensitive to it.
I fell in love with reading when I was allowed to choose whatever books I wanted to check out of the library.
Who is there who has not felt a sudden startled pang at reliving an old experience or feeling an old emotion?
She was a lucky woman who had established a happy knack of writing what quite a lot of people wanted to read.
I am prepared to believe that a dry martini slightly impairs the palate, but think what it does for the soul.
Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?
Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.
I wasn't good company, that was true, and people avoided me, but that was all right. I was too busy dreaming.
Genius is not perfected, it is deepened. It does not so much interpret the world as fertilize itself with it.
Really, what you should tell a novelist is, 'Keep going until you finish the draft. Don't show it to anyone.'
Anxiety is the beginning of conscience, which is the parent of the soul but is not compatible with innocence.
He was a lovely man in many ways. But he kept on insisting on forgiving me when there was nothing to forgive.
There was a house we all had in common and it was called the past, even though we'd lived in different rooms.
The only time I ever iron the sheets or make meringues is when there is an ... urgent deadline in the offing.
The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.
He had followed the trail left by a dead man. It was only now that he realized it might lead only to a grave.
He had tattooed all of the names of the men he had killed on his body...unfortunately he had run out of room.
What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee?...Was ever anything so civil?
The double pleasure of pulling down an opponent, and of raising oneself, is the charm of a politician's life.
The end of a novel, like the end of a children's dinner-party, must be made up of sweetmeats and sugar-plums.
The skyline of New York is a monument of a splendour that no pyramids or palaces will ever equal or approach.
Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.
Hope is a renewable option: If you run out of it at the end of the day, you get to start over in the morning.
I stir in bed and the memories rise out of me like a buzz of flies from a carcass. I crave to be rid of them.
Edwina always enjoyed a morning ride. Some mornings she rode the horse, and some mornings she rode the groom.
Chasing an errant swarm of bees is nothing to following a naked lunatic when the fit of escaping is upon him!
By the time you finish reading this sentence, a Boeing jetliner will take off or land somewhere in the world.
Exploitation is a harsh word, I know that, but on a certain level, to me that is the central Hollywood story.
In all my novels, I deal with the many problems and prejudices which exist for Black people in Britain today.
God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.
For pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.
You'll never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking what sort of impression you make.
I think we all sin by needlessly disobeying the apostolic injunction to "rejoice" as much as by anything else
We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us.
By the very act of arguing, you awake the patient's reason; and once it is awake, who can foresee the result?
The modern idea of a Great Man is one who stands at the lonely extremity of some single line of development--
The only moral that is of any value is that which arises inevitably from the whole cast of the author's mind.
Everything except God has some natural superior; everything except unformed matter has some natural inferior.
To interest is the first duty of art; no other excellences will ever begin to compensate for failure in this.
Love is dangerous, if you know it's dangerous, that makes you treasure it, and you'll work harder to keep it.
Happiness comes out of being willing to do your work in your twenties to find out who you are, what you love.