Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The male muse is an unaccountably rare thing in art. Where does that leave female artists looking for inspiration?
I'm like every waitress in every diner; I'm like every mom driving her kids to school. I'm nothing special at all.
Lord, I never seen blue hair on a black woman before or since. Leroy say you look like a cracker from outer space.
Babies like fat. Like to bury they face up in you armpit and go to sleep. They like big fat legs too. That I know.
I read about writers' lives with the fascination of one slowing down to get a good look at an automobile accident.
One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.
the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion
If America taught me anything, it's that quitting is right up there with pissing in the Girl Scouts' lemonade jar.
The difficulty of writing a second novel is directly proportional to how successful the first novel was, it seems.
I turned to the Partition experiences, which were churning in my mind. Then came my first novel Train to Pakistan.
A blonde girl wearing a man's shirt but in all other visible respects unmanly to the point of outright effeminacy.
There is a insularity within American fiction even for adults. It's very tough for books in translation in the US.
Sometimes you don't know it. What you have been waiting your whole life for. You don't know until it is happening.
As soon as you publish a book and the reader reads it, they're making an extension of your brain with their brain.
Shame doesn't exist as an emotion without the projected or perceived sense of judgment coming from somewhere else.
I should add that it is open to debate whether what we call the writing of history these days is truly scientific.
Did you know that childhood is the only time in our lives when insanity is not only permitted to us, but expected?
You are the gull, Jo, strong and wild, fond of the storm and the wind, flying far out to sea, and happy all alone.
Human minds are more full of mysteries than any written book and more changeable than the cloud shapes in the air.
A little kingdom I possess, where thoughts and feelings dwell; And very hard the task I find of governing it well.
Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.
It is my opinion that this day will never come to an end," said Prince, with a yawn that nearly rent him assunder.
I didn't have a sweet tooth, but I liked butter, and I liked sauces, and I liked wine... and curry... and cheeses.
If you give way to fear, you'll be a coward; and ... a coward is apt to be a liar. The devil's first name is Fear.
Of all the bitter and heavy things in this sorry old world, the not being necessary is the bitterest and heaviest.
Terror of being found out is not always a preservative, it sometimes hurries on the act which it ought to prevent.
Love matches are made by people who are content, for a month of honey, to condemn themselves to a life of vinegar.
A hilarious, honest, heartfelt look at what it means to take on a family that isn't your own...Izzy Rose rocks it.
I've been so showered in life, beyond my wildest dreams, such as having a loving partner I never thought I'd have.
If we choose to be no more than clods of clay, then we shall be used as clods of clay for braver feet to tread on.
One of the things about writing fiction is that you create people that you feel, more or less, as though you know.
Romance, in its earliest surviving form, was called ‘erotika pathemata’ by the Greeks - tales of erotic suffering.
Racism is a virus. And since nobody's really looking too hard for a cure it reproduces itself over and over again.
I was a westerner in Iran, an Iranian in the West. I had no identity. I didn't even know anymore why I was living.
it was a sly trick of God's to give a man work to do - it kept him from asking questions that God couldn't answer.
But one had to go back to the beginning of things, always. Trace the thread of life - find the knot - untangle it.
The snow again. White, white net of beauty, net of dream, trapping the earth, trapping the helpless heart of life.
The past ... is a dim avenue down which we may walk and find the diverging paths of terror and beauty and passion.
How often one talks not to hear what the other person has got to say, but to hear what one has got to say oneself!
All things die not: while the soul lives, love lives: the song may be now gay, now plaintive, but it is deathless.
Devil, do you dare approach me? and do you not fear the fierce vengeance of my arm wreaked on your miserable head?
Everyone is a comedy. If people are laughing at you, they just don't quite understand the joke that is themselves.
Her hand touched me at the wrist. "If I gave you my life, you would drop it. Wouldn't you?" I didn't say anything.
There are natural and imprescriptible rights which an entire nation has no right to violate. —MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE
The gratification of wealth is not found in mere possession or in lavish expenditure, but in its wise application.
But do not give it to a lawyer's clerk to write, for they use a legal hand that Satan himself will not understand.
Urgent necessity prompts many to do things, at the very thoughts of which they perhaps would start at other times.
The cleverest character in comedy is the clown, for he who would make people take him for a fool, must not be one.
Ever since the Greeks, we have been drunk with language! We have made a cage with words and shoved our God inside!
Hope was based on the unknown, and I liked knowing things. Like that I was going to fail. Failure had better odds.