Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Life is such a very troublesome matter, when all is said and done, that it's as well even to take its blessings quietly.
Once you've been committed to a mental institution you're considered a second-rate citizen from then on and retroactive.
the sentiment of immediate loss in some sort decayed, while that of utter, irremediable loneliness grew on me with time.
What's most explosive about historical fiction is to use the fictional elements to pressure the history to new insights.
Usually when people say they have mixed feelings about something, it's a sort of euphemistic way of saying they hate it.
The one of the great sadnesses of any life is knowing what you know now and then remembering what you did not know then.
If God be God and man a creature made in image of the divine intelligence, his noblest function is the search for truth.
History is the study of lies, anyway, because no witness ever recalls events with total accuracy, not even eyewitnesses.
I am very interested in theology. In fact, my first degree was in theology, so it's something that interests me greatly.
I'd say it's never a challenge to present white and heteronormative privilege. The hard thing is to write any other way.
I was always a bit concerned about purity of essence. I never wanted a job that might affect the way I wrote or thought.
My mother was very, very critical of my early efforts. She was, like, 'At your age, the Brontes were doing X, Y, and Z.'
Like some infernal monster, still venomous in death, a war can go on killing people for a long time after it’s all over.
You can't live your life for other people. You've got to do what's right for you, even if it hurts some people you love.
Nowhere have I ever heard of Satan taking the form of an avuncular hippie. No doubt he could. It just seems inefficient.
Performance is hard. I know this. I really enjoy it, but I have bombed, I have fluffed, and I have said the wrong thing.
But then, that was the trouble with relationships generally. They had their own temperature and there was no thermostat.
There are two kinds of brave men: those who are brave by the grace of nature, and those who are brave by an act of will.
The fact that we've been a great democracy doesn't mean we will automatically keep being one if we keep waving the flag.
Good people all, with one accord, Lament for Madam Blaize, Who never wanted a good word From those who spoke her praise.
Writing my own diary is the best form of remembrance, but only for my own use. I need these notes; it's like an impulse.
Being young is an 18 year prison sentence for a crime your parents committed. But you do get time off for good behavior.
In a way she actually preferred Peter to other people because of this. He always acted out of intelligent self-interest.
A rustic setting always suggests fantasy; to suggest science fiction, you need sheet metal and plastic. You need rivets.
It is the north wind that lashes men into Vikings; it is the soft, luscious south wind which lulls them to lotus dreams.
one blow in anger [would] kill, probably, a child from aged two to eight. Those over eight would take two blows to kill.
'The Sisters Brothers' started out as a little bit of dialogue between these two men who became Eli and Charlie Sisters.
If I just concentrate I can walk into memory's store and find the right shelf with the right film and disappear into it.
I wrote about the Serbs, because no one was writing about them, even if I also think about the Croat and Muslim victims.
He started keeping a journal - had been, in fact, secretly doing so for some time: the furtive act of a deranged person.
There’s no remaking reality... Just take it as it comes. Hold your ground and take it as it comes. There’s no other way.
May be we are not such fools as we look. But though we be, we are well content, so long as we may be two fools together.
At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.
Having your husband at a party is like adding anchovies to a salad. I love anchovies, but you can't taste anything else.
I've got access to your mysterious body but not your mysterious soul. Souls seem to me the loneliest possibility of all.
We need science. We need empirical evidence. We can't just use mathematical reasoning to deduce the nature of the world.
My father was the first to read in his family, and he said to me that words were the first beautiful thing he ever knew.
I would kill for a cheeseburger. Honestly. If I stumbled across someone eating a cheeseburger, I would kill them for it.
Are you okay?" I (Cassie) call up to him. "Um. Define okay." (Ben) "Okay means you're not bleeding to death." "I'm okay.
I raised another shot. "That sound you hear is the heads of moral conservatives spontaneously exploding in the distance.
Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his life.
How do you like to go up in a swing, Up in the air so blue? Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing Ever a child can do!
Boredom and stupidity and patriotism, especially when combined, are three of the greatest evils of the world we live in.
The Alexander Technique keeps the body alive, at ages when many people have resigned themselves to irreversible decline.
No one among us suffers the radical appreciation for coffee that I do. It calls to me, but I have learned not to listen.
John Wesley said that if you give up the witchcraft, you must give up the Bible. He is right. The choice is easy for me.
Maybe all teenagers feel like they don't fit in. I never felt like a cool kid. I remember being bullied for being Asian.
Rock and roll music - the music of freedom frightens people and unleashes all manner of conservative defense mechanisms.
The frustrating part of being tagged 'controversial' is people go looking for trouble where there isn't any to look for.
I'll seek a four leaved shamrock in all thy fairy dells, And if I find the charmed leaves, oh, how I'll weave my spells!