Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
People exaggerate both happiness and unhappiness; we are never so fortunate nor so unfortunate as people say we are.
Rich women need not fear old age; their gold can always create about them any feelings necessary to their happiness.
Most assuredly Zen is a religion, but it is a religion without scripture, without doctrine or dogma and without sin.
He would work through the night and sleep until lunch. There wasn't really much else to do. Make something, and die.
When walking into the lair of the dragon after robbing his hoard, the least you could do is hold you head high [...]
Kate had never met a person she didn't want to protect, preferably by hacking at the hostile parties with her sword.
Love, I thought, is stronger than death or the fear of death. Only by it, by love, life holds together and advances.
Depending upon shock tactics is easy, whereas writing a good play is difficult. Pubic hair is no substitute for wit.
We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are.
It's the ability to resist failure, in many ways, or use failure that often leads to the greatest success, isn't it?
Ron," said Hermione in a dignified voice, "you are the most insensitive wart I have ever had the misfortune to meet.
Our Headmaster is taking a short break," said Professor McGonagall, pointing at the Snape-shaped hole in the window.
Call him Voldemort, Harry. Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.
Scared?" Malfoy muttered, so that Lockhart couldn't hear him. "You wish." said Harry out of the corner of his mouth.
There you go, Harry!” Ron shouted over the noise. “You weren’t being thick after all — you were showing moral fiber!
I want to fall in love with something in the way I fell in love with the idea of Harry before I write anything else.
Every time he tried to reconstruct the internal arguments that had led to his decision, they sounded feebler to him.
My plant is probably dead." Camryn looks slightly surprised. "You have a plant?" I smile. "Yeah, her name's Georgia.
Sometimes your whole life could hinge on a fraction of an inch. Or the beat of a nanosecond. Or the knock on a door.
And with joy you realize for the first time "Thinking's just like not thinking — So I don't have to think any more".
I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.
Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.
Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.
It is perfectly possible to be enamoured of Paris while remaining totally indifferent or even hostile to the French.
No person is ever good for much, that hasn't been swept off their feet by enthusiasm between ages twenty and thirty.
Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.
Your battles inspired me - not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead.
Now they are lovers. The first, wild courses are ended. They have founded their domain. A satanic happiness follows.
Written pages are something that can be returned to, reclaimed, and when they are marvelous, never lose their power.
I certainly will not persuade myself to feel more than I do. I am quite enough in love. I should be sorry to be more
Then it would not be so strong a sense. If it failed to produce equal exertion, it could not be an equal conviction.
We sort of read two or three big newspapers but we don't get the flavor of the local events, the local news as much.
The fame of heroes owes little to the extent of their conquests and all to the success of the tributes paid to them.
Goon Squad' took about three years to write and that's the short end. My second novel, 'Look at Me,' took six years.
There are a lot of writers who find a groove and spend a career mining that vein. I seem to be exactly the opposite.
Here was one place where I could find out who I was and what I was going to become. And that was the public library.
Travel gives me the opportunity to walk through the sectors of cities where one can clearly see the passage of time.
That's because you loved me. You just didn't know it yet." "You didn't know it either. You were just as blind as me.
That was the tragedy. Not that one man had the courage to be evil. But that millions had not the courage to be good.
Adolescence-is it the first time in life we discover that we have something terrible to hide from those who love us?
What a phrase that is: 'that explains everything!' I know better than to think anything 'explains everything' today.
I knew that part of friendship consisted in accepting a friend’s shortcomings, which sometimes included his parents.
Suddenly summoned to witness something great and horrendous, we keep fighting not to reduce it to our own smallness.
But nothing disturbs the feeling of specialness like the presence of other human beings feeling identically special.
It'sthe fate of most Ping-Pong tables in home basements eventually to serve the ends of other, more desperate games.
Some people have things written all over their faces; the big guy had a couple of words misspelled in crayon on his.
It was only as I wrote about fear that I began to find paths of access to feelings that were intolerable to me then.
Writing is a necessity and often a pleasure, but at the same time, it can be a great burden and a terrible struggle.
As a fiction writer, of course, you need to take some leeway with certain aspects of history to make the story work.