Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
What a fool cannot learn he laughs at, thinking that by his laughter he shows superiority instead of latent idiocy.
It is one of the best traits of good people that they love where they pity. And this is truer of women than of men.
Many readers know my work first through 'Housekeeping,' simply because it was my only novel for a pretty long time.
The main impetus for being a writer is thinking, 'I could invent another world. I'm not terribly keen on this one.'
Envy never comes to the ball dressed as envy; it comes dressed as high moral standards or distaste for materialism.
The guilty are allowed, by human laws, bloody as they are, to speak in their own defence before they are condemned.
Love is not an option. It's the choice of an idiot who wants to end with nothing, robbed and abused and humiliated.
we could hurt each other even when we weren't trying to, and that none of us was as perfect as we liked to pretend.
We're getting used to reality and fantasy passing into each other. Much of the border between them has been erased.
For let us women be never so ill-favored, I imagine that we are always delighted to hear ourselves called handsome.
By such innovations are languages enriched, when the words are adopted by the multitude, and naturalized by custom.
Only in solitude do we find ourselves; and in finding ourselves, we find in ourselves all our brothers in solitude.
Music plays a huge role in my life. It is music that helps me to endure ... well ... everything there is to endure.
it never really occurred to her that literary men, if they like women at all, do not want literary women but girls.
Pakistan produces people of extraordinary bravery. But no nation should ever require its citizens to be that brave.
In order to induce the process of decay, water is necessary. I think that, in the case of women, men are the water.
If somebody says your story is only published because you look nice in the photo, that maybe spurs you on to write.
I know you loved her, but it's okay to let it go now. You know that, don't you? You've got to be able to let it go.
I found that as I flipped the days on the calendar, the worries I had about our relationship had began to diminish.
In all love stories the theme is love and tragedy, so by writing these types of stories, I have to include tragedy.
That speaking the words, even if true, had little power to change the inevitable or even make him feel much better.
I want my fiction to feel real most of the time, so it makes sense to pay attention to life and to how people work.
I think the reason I wrote screenplays for nearly a decade was because it was my territory. I could stake that out.
She thought I was...soulful, by which I think she means that I don't say much and I always look vaguely pissed off.
Writing can wreck your body. You sit there on the chair hour after hour and sweat your guts out to get a few words.
In a polite age almost every person becomes a reader, and receives more instruction from the Press than the Pulpit.
Nothing can be as astounding as life. Except for writing. Yes, of course, except for writing, the sole consolation.
There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right words can change the world.
And yet.. even if you had been right, it would only have been by accident. A broken clock is right two times a day.
A man with a career can have no time to waste upon his wife and friends; he has to devote it wholly to his enemies.
To get from people you had to give a piece of yourself, a real piece that mattered. Just being nice was not enough.
I can't define myself. And I'm really happy about this, that I'm not able to make a definition of, even of my work.
This is a mournful discovery. 1)Those who agree with you are insane 2)Those who do not agree with you are in power.
It is not love that matters, Mistress Boy, it is what you choose to do with it. What’d you choose to do with yours?
Before anything else I was a woman who was capable of passion and who had a great need and a great desire for love.
It was curious how life seemed to weave a pattern that was not in the least haphazard, as it so often seemed to be.
Take to the study of the law. Possession is nine points of it, which thou hast of me. Self-possession is the tenth.
The Bradshaws suggests an extraordinary civilisation that existed long before modern man reached the British Isles.
What we can do should never by itself determine what we choose to do, yet this is the way technology tends to work.
Writers spend three years rearranging 26 letters of the alphabet. It's enough to make you lose your mind day by day
Worse, I have to admit to feeling the jealousy of one crab for another that has managed to climb out of the barrel.
Still, you tend to believe what you always believed, think what you always thought, expect what you always expected
I've loved sci-fi and speculative fiction since I was a kid. It was inevitable I'd try my hand at it at some point.
A BOOK?! WHAT D'YOU WANNA FLAMING BOOK FOR?...WE'VE GOT A LOVELY TELLY WITH A 12-INCH SCREEN AND NOW YA WANNA BOOK!
Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons.
If you attack Stupidity you attack an entrenched interest with friends in government and every walk of public life.
Besides, if there were no dragons of flesh and blood and fire, whence would come the idea for these stone carvings?
As a child, I was bonkers for Christmas. The entire month of December, I couldn't sleep at night from anticipation.
You never know who it's going to be, or what they'll bring, but whatever it is, it's always exactly what is needed.
It costs so much to make films. With a novel, you can write the whole thing on a ream of paper from Staples for $4.