Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
As long as people are going to call you lunatic anyway, why not get the benefit of it? It liberates you from convention.
I may not be sure if monsters exist, but I’d rather live my life in doubt than be persuaded by a real experience of one.
Well, I write in exile because I cannot return to my country, so I have no choice but to see myself as an exiled writer.
There is no gilding of setting sun or glamor of poetry to light up the ferocious and endless toil of the farmers' wives.
I think it's important for all culturally literate people to understand the technological substrate of new developments.
In the temporary illumination of the headlights, the insects were scribbling out messages from God that we couldn't get.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that as soon as one part of your life starts looking up, another falls to pieces.
Ah, happiness courts the light so we deem the world is gay. But misery hides aloof so we deem that misery there is none.
War should be carried on like a monsoon; one changeless determination of every particle towards the one unalterable aim.
The man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.
To be a born American citizen seems a guarantee against pauperism; and this, perhaps, springs from the virtue of a vote.
To kill a relative of whom you are tired is something. But to inherit his property afterwards, that is genuine pleasure.
...we both saw something we liked, a willingness to have no walls, or maybe just an unwillingness to keep them standing.
...a good friend stands in harm's way for you the second you ask--but a great friend does it without being asked at all.
I looked at him. "You really need to work on your threats. I can't tell if you're threatening me or inviting me for tea.
The decorator of Las Colimas must have been a great admirer of both early Aztec and late Taco Bell architectural styles.
Ted said, "You're working for the Order now." "Yes." "How does it feel?" "Well, Doctor, it feels rather sore and tingly.
[Ecstasy] had its flaws, but again it was shot on a low budget, and they did well. It's not in the same league as Filth.
Life was intended to be so adjusted that the body should be the servant of the soul, and always subordinate to the soul.
... you could claim that anything's real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody's proved it doesn't exist!
Writing for me is a kind of compulsion, so I don't think anyone could have made me do it, or prevented me from doing it.
What do we want to be prefects for?” said George, looking revolted at the very idea. “It’d take all the fun out of life.
You might belong in Hufflepuff, Where they are just and loyal, Those patient Hufflepuffs are true, And unafraid of toil.
Magic has universal appeal. I don't believe in magic in the way that I describe in my books, but I'd love it to be real.
My dream had been shattered, but then re-created, fashioned into something with more meaning and becoming more precious.
Phury?" "No, I'm not gay." "Don't feel like you need to hide it or anything." "I wouldn't. I'm just not." "You bi, then?
People are intrigued by fame, power and wealth and I think Hollywood is the only place where you get all three together.
I don't really do anything that isn't about writing, and I don't really know who I am if I'm not thinking about writing.
It's too easy to say this or that is "race," and that has been a vehicle for an incredible amount of wrong in the world.
I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.
All things are inconstant except the faith in the soul, which changes all things and fills their inconstancy with light.
America is so vast that almost everything said about it is likely to be true, and the opposite is probably equally true.
At my time of life opinions are tolerably fixed. It is not likely that I should now see or hear anything to change them.
If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard?
She was feeling, thinking, trembling about everything; agitated, happy, miserable, infinitely obliged, absolutely angry.
That grief is the most durable which flows inward, and buries its streams with its fountain, in the depths of the heart.
How different is the ready hand, tearful eye, and soothing voice, from the ostentatious appearance which is called pity.
The flatterer easily insinuates himself into the closet, while honest merit stands shivering in the hall or antechamber.
We have an arsenal of ideas about land use possibly as dangerous to human life on the planet as the use of nuclear arms.
How many people want to read about three disreputable pigs and a dopey wolf with a disposition towards house demolition?
We realized that the version of the world they rendered for us was not the version of the world they really believed in.
They were bound for college, husbands, child-rearing, unhappiness only dimly perceived- bound, in other words, for life.
It was the hat. He looked sweet in the hat. How could a man in a fuzzy blue hat have used human bones to pave his roads?
Like all writers, I draw from life as I know it; but it's a refracted kind of reality, and none of it is factually true.
I want the people I love to get up and speak about me, and even if you cry it'll be OK. I want you to say honest things.
Also she signed away the right to self-destruct years ago. The fine print on the birth certificate, her friends call it.
For years, I kept a Post-it note above my desk. WORK NOT LOVE! was what it said. It seemed a sturdier kind of happiness.
I'll always be with you, inside and out," she reads. "Through hard times and helpless ones, through love, through doubt.
The cemetery is my sense of comfort, my sanctuary in a world of darkness, the one piece of light that i have in my life.
Ian McEwan is a very good writer; the first half of Atonement alone would ensure him a lasting place in English letters.