Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Optimism isn't funny unless you are laughing at the person, whereas extreme pessimism is extremely funny. It's exaggeration.
I had thought that words were instruments of precision. Now I know that they devour the world, leaving nothing in its place.
If you rewrite a paragraph fifty times and forty-nine of them are terrible, that's fine; you only need to get it right once.
You never know what's going to happen in your life, and you never know what's going to happen in someone else's life either.
Thought that can merge wholly into feeling, feeling that can merge wholly into thought - these are the artist's highest joy.
Tod Goldberg has long been one of the most interesting writers around, and Gangsterland is his biggest and best book so far.
You've got to try everything once, except those things you don't like, or that involve a lot of effort and getting up early.
Criticism is part of being in the marketplace. If you can't take a bit of criticism, you shouldn't bother publishing a book.
Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories.
There’s nothing bad about reincarnation per se, it’s basically a very good system, cost-effective and ecologically friendly.
I want to discourage you from choosing anything or making any decision simply because it is safe. Things of value seldom are
There is no civilization that did not begin with art, Whether it was drawing a line in the sand, painting a cave or dancing.
More than fear of loving bears or birds bigger than cows, I fear pathless nights. How, I wonder, can I find you in the dark?
I have lived with you and loved you, and now you are gone. Gone where I cannot follow, until I have finished all of my days.
It is hard to compare the eras, but Joe Jackson and Ty Cobb from the past, Sandy Koufax and Roger Clements from the present.
The strange anthropological lesson of social media is that human beings, if given a choice, often prefer to socialise alone.
The strange anthropological lesson of social media is that human beings, if given a choice, often prefer to socialize alone.
She looked so irresistibly beautiful as she said those brave words that no man alive could have steel his heart against her.
Oh, Vanity of vanities! How wayward the decrees of Fate are; How very weak the very wise, How very small the very great are!
Let us be very gentle with our neighbors' failings, and forgive our friends their debts as we hope ourselves to be forgiven.
Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.
I project myself out through the glasses and across the street, a ghost in the morning sunlight, torn with disembodied lust.
The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You don't buy love for nothing.
Most all methods of capitol punishment are designed to inflict the maximum of humiliation - not attempts to prevent suicide.
Strip your psyche to the bare bones of spontaneous process, and you give yourself one chance in a thousand to make the Pass.
A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted. You should live several lives while reading it.
It is in the prime of youth that man sinks into empty phrases and grimaces. It's in this smithy that our maturity is forged.
First rule of writing: When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.
Oh yes, my generation liked to be in some pain when they read. The harder it was, the more good we believed it was doing us.
I play the radio and moon about...and dream of Utopias where its always July the 24th 1935, in the middle of summer forever.
I know it really sounds cheesy, but I did feel a duty to try to tell the stories of people who couldn't speak for themselves.
That's when you know for sure somebody loves you. They figure out what you need and they give it to you - without you asking.
In conversation, points arise! If a human being converses much, it is impossible for him to avoid the truth! (Hercule Poirot)
I love all the arts - so museums, theatre, music, walks near trees or by the ocean, time with people, psychological readings.
Now that I had actually made love, more astonishingly now that I had been made love to, the fantasies were subtly undermined.
Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.
The demands of internal growth are incomparably more important to us...than the need for any external expansion of our power.
The foundation stones of a great building are destined to groan and be pressed upon; it is not for them to crown the edifice.
The adults don't know what's happening on the kids' universe and the kids don't know what's happening on the adults' universe
There is absolutely no solidarity in the West towards its own victims, and the recent 'refugee crises' is direct proof of it.
His wedding gift, clasped round my throat. A choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinarily precious slit throat.
It will be a pity if women in the more conventional mould are to be phased out, for there will never be anyone to go home to.
[Preface to second edition:] ... I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be.
So Rita and I decided that the most subversive, revolutionary thing I could do was to show up for my life and not be ashamed.
I never had a particularly strong craving to procreate, except for earlier fantasies of wanting to be Marmee in Little Women.
They were like people who run to meet, holding out their arms, but their aim is wrong; they pass each other and keep running.
I am not greedy of money myself, but the monotony of always screwing and paring is more tiresome than the monotony of riches.
Book love... is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures.
Never think that you're not good enough. A man should never think that. People will take you very much at your own reckoning.
The most dangerous silence is noise; noise keeps us from hearing what we need to hear or from speaking what we need to speak.