Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There is nothing more vindictive, nothing more underhanded, than a little world that would like to be a big one.
Fate is never too generous even to its favorites. Rarely do the gods grant a mortal more than one immortal deed.
"And you require no answers", Foamfollower was laughing in his gladness, "You are sufficient to every question".
I actually went into writing first to supplement my income, which was a strange thing to do and actually failed.
Family was a fertile breeding ground for the kind of psychological bacteria that warped minds and devoured hope.
I don't know why it's so hard for me to say those three words. Most guys throw it around like breath, like bait.
That one true heart was left behind! What feeling do we ever find, to equal among human kind , a dog's fidelity!
A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.
You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments, or publicity.
I'm not dead. But when I am, it's likeI don't know, I guess it's like being inside a book that nobody's reading.
They waited. The door did not open. The rain did not stop. The darkness made a tent and covered them completely.
My wife and I left New York when she got pregnant - we just thought it would be really hard to stay in the city.
you got two feet, Sethe, not four." he said, and right then a forest sprang up between them; tactless and quiet.
The presence of evil was something to be first recognized, then dealt with, survived, outwitted, triumphed over.
Like friendship, hatred needed more than physical intimacy; it wanted creativity and hard work to sustain itself
The thing about God, she thought, is that He usually does help, but not until you've made an effort on your own.
Sometimes I feel like there is so much to be afraid of, and sometimes I feel like there is nothing left to fear.
A Dauntless Ferris wheel wouldn’t have cars. You would just hang on tight with your hands, and good luck to you.
Peter would probably throw a party if I stopped breathing.' 'Well,' he says, 'I would only go if there was cake.
As to the rest, I am no more guilty of imitating 'real life' than'real life' is responsible for plagiarizing me.
Your book grows. The early part of your book is growing still while you are writing the later part of your book.
When I vacate this sack of old bones I won't care what you do with it. Bury or burn it but don't make much fuss.
My business in life is to eat, drink, sleep, and die. Everything else is superfluity and I will have none of it.
...mementos of this world, in which the things worth being were so easily exchanged for the things worth having.
I only go to Japan when there's someone who can afford to bring me there, and consequently I may never go again!
Somehow I think that if Toronto had been forced to wait a decade [from 80th], it would be a better looking city.
Yes, I am a failed playwright. I had three shows on Broadway by the time I was 30. They all flopped, and I fled.
Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions.
Though small was your allowance, You saved a little store: And those who save a little, Shall get a plenty more.
[Death is] a gimmick. It's the time-birth-death gimmick. Can't go on much longer, too many people are wising up.
If you talk you always end up with politics, it gets nowhere. I mean man it's strictly from the soft typewriter.
When people start talking about their bowel movements, they are inexorable as the processes of which they speak.
Man is profoundly dependent on the reflection of himself in another man's soul, be it even the soul of an idiot.
If you're going to write a good book, you have to make mistakes and you have to not be so cautious all the time.
(and Catholics give out forgiveness at about the same rate as politicians give out promises and whores give out)
Fate is a quantity very much like TV: an unstoppable narrative, written, produced and directed by somebody else.
I wrote 'White Teeth' in the late nineties. I didn't really feel trepidatious about it. It was a different time.
English fiction was something I loved growing up, and it changed my life - it changed the trajectory of my life.
Vocabularies are crossing circles and loops. We are defined by the lines we choose to cross or to be confined by.
I love research so much that I do an enormous amount; it helps put off the moment of starting to write the story.
I'll buy metaphor, but simile's a cop-out used by scaredycats who won't commit to anything. Simile's for cowards.
The price of cowardice will only be evil. We shall reap courage and victory only when we dare to make sacrifices.
Faculty Meetings are held whenever the need to show off is combined with the imperative of accomplishing nothing.
I have noticed that after a time of deep sorrow the greatest comfort may come from a person you do not know well.
Still, she knows one thing for certain: never judge a relationship unless you are the one wrapped up in its arms.
I make it a rule always to believe compliments implicitly for five minutes, and to simmer gently for twenty more.
A poverty that is universal may be cheerfully borne; it is an individual poverty that is painful and humiliating.
It is impossible for any culture to be sound and healthy without a proper respect and proper regard for the soil.
I was raised Unitarian, and my mother said she took us to church so that we wouldn't get religious later in life.
The reason space missions need artificial gravity is clear: humans simply did not evolve to live in zero gravity.