Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Growth, in some curious way, I suspect, depends on being always in motion just a little bit, one way or another.
I have known a German Prince with more titles than subjects, and a Spanish nobleman with more names than shirts.
Turn, gentle Hermit of the Dale, And guide my lonely way To where yon taper cheers the vale With hospitable ray.
Our pleasures are short, and can only charm at intervals; love is a method of protraction our greatest pleasure.
At the age of 60, I am less experimental and more mature. I want most of all to convey my understanding of life.
There's a sort of rage a man feels when he's been deceived where he most trusted. It compares to no other anger.
What you are is a man who means to be good, and undo the bad he's done, and that's as good as any man ever gets.
If only we were wiser or better people, perhaps the gods would explain to us the mad, unbearable things they do.
There's always hope... even when there isn't faith. And sometimes, without hope or faith, there must be charity.
I know you have it in you, Guy," Anne said suddenly at the end of a silence, "the capacity to be terribly happy.
I was halfway through a rough draft of 'The Sisters Brothers' when it came time to start the 'Terri' adaptation.
Often the starting point for characters, for me, is finding a little, most minor detail, and I'll go from there.
I wrote about my journey through the country of Serbia exactly as I have always written my books, my literature.
Let others determine your worth and you're already lost, because no one wants people worth more than themselves.
Just because something bears the aspect of the inevitable one should not, therefore, go along willingly with it.
The two basic topics which fascinate me are 'What is reality?' and 'What constitutes the authentic human being?'
Lots of men hate women now-a-days. ... It was a man-made world, and now we're asking to go shares in the making.
An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence.
Woe, woe, woe... in a little while we shall all be dead. Therefore let us behave as though we were dead already.
All art at some time and in some manner becomes mass entertainment, and if it does not it dies and is forgotten.
My job is to have empathy and curiosity for things that I've never done. Also, I'm a person whom people talk to.
Writing is communication, not self-expression. Nobody in this world wants to read your diary except your mother.
Novel-writing is the only place where someone who would have liked to do anything can still do that vicariously.
Have you ever noticed that when people use the expression 'I have to say', what follows usually needn't be said?
I think the darker aspect of my fiction-or anybody's fiction-is by its very nature somehow easier to talk about.
Good God, man, what is that smell?" He eyed with disgust the doctor's filthy cloak. "Life," answered the doctor.
Meanings is not important, said the BFG. I cannot be right all the time. Quite often I is left instead of right.
Fairy tales have always got to have something a bit scary for children - as long as you make them laugh as well.
You're so very good at that. The temper, the scowl. You must drink shots of testosterone in your morning coffee.
I had learned to dwell with pleasure, as a beloved daydream, on the thought of the separation of these elements.
I am not afraid of the truth, if any one could tell it me, but I am afraid of parts of it impertinently uttered.
A man should stop his ears against paralyzing terror and run the race that is set before him with a single mind.
To avoid an occasion for our virtues is a worse degree of failure than to push forward pluckily and make a fall.
The quality of what is said inevitably influences the way in which it is said, however inexperienced the writer.
Imagination is a good horse to carry you over the ground - not a flying carpet to set you free from probability.
The fight isn't over until you win it, Fitz. That's all you have to remember. No matter what the other man says.
When you spring to an idea, and decide it is truth, without evidence, you blind yourself to other possibilities.
About guns, about hunting, it's safe to say I know nothing. The last gun I fired was a musket at Boy Scout camp.
People are always telling me that they've seen people reading my books on the subway, or the beach, or whenever.
'The Satanic Verses' was denied the ordinary life of a novel. It became something smaller and uglier: an insult.
It is commonly and, I believe, accurately said of Pakistan that her women are much more impressive than her men.
If I was dead, I wouldn't know I was dead. That's the only thing I have against death. I want to enjoy my death.
That's the mistake I made, one of the mistakes, to have wanted a story for myself, whereas life alone is enough.
It is suicide to be abroad. But what it is to be at home, ... what it is to be at home? A lingering dissolution.
In the life of each of us there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness.
Who was it said that you never get to a place until a day after you come, nor leave it until a day after you go?
My story is the story of many postwar British families. Upward mobility. A council house and then new affluence.
My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved.
I believe there are more urgent and honorable occupations than the incomparable waste of time we call suffering.
On the whole, with scandalous exceptions, Democracy has given the ordinary worker more dignity than he ever had.