Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I don't know if it's better to be close with your daughter or make sure that she has a better life than you do.
You always fashioned yourself as the Empire's harshest Fist, didn't you, Korbolo Dom? As if cruelty's a virtue.
I saw that I was in danger of becoming ordinary, and I understood that from now on I would have to be vigilant.
I'm a hopeful romantic who adores novels with happy endings, because there are enough sad endings in real life.
Not stupid. Overly trusting, maybe, but that reflects on his lack of trustworthiness, not on your intelligence.
Measurement of life should be proportioned rather to the intensity of the experience than to its actual length.
Marriage - as its veterans know well - is the continuous process of getting used to things you hadn't expected.
What are the stars but points in the body of God where we insert the healing needles of our terror and longing?
New York City has fantastic restaurants and, unlike London, a lot of the best restaurants are relatively cheap.
We tend to regard history as true and 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' as untrue. That's always puzzled me.
I'm a spy. It's not really... I worked for the CIA 15 years. The cover was I worked for the insurance business.
Freedom is choosing your responsibility. It's not having no responsibilitie s; it's choosing the ones you want.
It was a fine cry - loud and long - but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.
I couldn't bear to have people mispronounce my name. But the person I was was this person who was called Chloe.
Sometimes it's better to look at things than own them... owning means anxiety and lots of bags to carry around.
Sometimes all I want is to be a few inches taller so the world does not look like a dense collection of torsos.
Sometimes,” he says, sliding his arm across my shoulders, “people just want to be happy, even if it’s not real.
There is an old American saying 'He who lives in a glass house should not try to kill two birds with one stone.
A novelist is, like all mortals, more fully at home on the surface of the present than in the ooze of the past.
Some might think that the creativity, imagination, and flights of fancy that give my life meaning are insanity.
The incarnate Word is with us, is still speaking, is present always, yet leaves no sign but everything that is.
It's impossible to contemplate the life of soil very long without seeing its analogy to the life of the spirit.
The acquisition of knowledge always involves the revelation of ignorance-almost is the revelation of ignorance.
[As they say in the old legends]Before a man goes to the devil himself, he sends plenty of other souls thither.
I am not a person and I am not an animal. There is something I am here for something I must do before I can go.
How long does it take man to realize that he cannot want what he wants? You have to live in hell to see heaven.
The American uppermiddle-class citizen is a composite of negatives. He is largely delineated by what he is not.
I like books that don't give you an easy ride. I like the feeling of discomfort. The sense of being implicated.
The trouble with emergencies is," she said, "that I always put on my finest underwear and then nothing happens.
The Common Law of England has been laboriously built about a mythical figure-the figure of 'The Reasonable Man'.
I don't only write about English literature; I also write about chaos theory and... ants. I can understand ants.
I couldn't forget. I couldn't break. She had the power to break me. No one had ever been given that power, ever.
[I]n communism, you'd threaten a dog into compliance, while in capitalism, obedience is obtained through bribes.
When a locked-room mystery doesn't work, the solution makes you groan, and the book gets hurled across the room.
I understand how a first impression is often just that: a quick snapshot that, on its own merit, is meaningless.
Until one looks back on one's own past one fails to realise what an extraordinary view of the world a child has.
Mr. Jesmond made a peculiar noise rather like a hen who has decided to lay an egg and then thought better of it.
The great wisdom for writers, perhaps for everybody, is to come to understand to be at one with their own tempo.
When we feel that we are not sufficiently respected, we should ask ourselves whether we are living as we should.
I wasn't quite as certain that I knew her soul. When it came right down to it, I wasn't sure she knew me either.
How could I have been so stupid to ignore everything I’d had in my life? The color red alone was worth kingdoms.
And then I understood that she had no idea what she'd done to my family. She thought love and hatred were equal.
I never plot out my novels in terms of the tone of the book. Hopefully, once a story is begun it reveals itself.
My imagination doesn't require anything more of the book than to provide a framework within which it can wander.
I definitely do see language serving its users, and when it no longer serves them we need to look for new words.
The mind supplies the idea of a nation, but what gives this idea its sentimental force is a community of dreams.
Out of the frying pan into the fire! What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many? No different!
Problems of human behavior still continue to baffle us, but at least in the Library we have them properly filed.
I see that a man cannot give himself up to drinking without being miserable one half his days and mad the other.
I do not have deep theological understanding or opinion, but I do not read the Bible as the literal word of God.