Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Hope, like the gleaming taper's light, Adorns and cheers our way; And still, as darker grows the night, Emits a brighter ray.
The first thing I learned at school was that some people are idiots; the second thing I learned was that some are even worse.
Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along―the same person that I am today.
People in their forties, fifties, and onward enjoy the whole world of books in a different way than the Internet-age kids do.
I'm not an enormous proponent of plot as a reader. It's about other things; my reading has become specialized over the years.
A satirist, often in danger himself, has the bravery of knowing that to withhold wit's conjecture is to endanger the species.
The declared meaning of a spoken sentence is only its overcoat, and the real meaning lies underneath its scarves and buttons.
I play this game with my son called Never Seen. We try to see new things every day, and we do. I don't take that for granted.
Alec Wilkinson is a spare, clear, and lucid writer who works in stylistic simplicity with material that is not simple at all.
That is the artist's job: take mineral rock from dark silent earth, transform it into shining light-reflecting form from sky.
And as he spoke, I was thinking, 'the kind of stories that people turn life into, the kind of lives people turn stories into.
Doorbells are like a magic game, Or the grab-bag at a fair -- You never know when you hear one ring Who may be waiting there.
I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed.
Having tried to give pattern to the chaos which lives within the pattern of your certainties, I must come out, I must emerge.
The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the single most valuable investment a writer can make with his time.
We're a migrant nation made up of people who've been torn out of other worlds, and you'd think we would have some compassion.
Under Howard, federal government support for black Australia slowly dried up. Services were slashed, native title restricted.
You can't take a character anywhere they don't expect the character to go. But within those confines is where creativity lies
Tangled in one another's arms and nine times out of ten the things you think about a person make it impossible to touch them.
How oft do they rescue or ruin us, through whimsy or design or a combination of both, the adults to whom we entrust our care!
The poetry of Walt Whitman. I can return again and again to these magnificent poems and still get pleasure from reading them.
The friendly cow, all red and white, I love with all my heart; She gives me cream with all her might, To eat with apple-tart.
A birdie with a yellow bill Hoped upon the window sill, Cocked his shining eye and said: 'Ain't you 'shamed, you sleepy-'ead?
So long as we are loved by others I should say that we are almost indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.
You would not serve junk food at a banquet, and your book must be a banquet. Get your language from Swift, not from Shopsy's.
In this world without quiet corners, there can be no easy escapes from history, from hullabaloo, from terrible, unquiet fuss.
Knowing one was comprised of recycled matter only and that selfhood was a delusion did not take away the aching of the heart.
Forget the threat of Hell's infernal flames. The true torture would condemn a man to wait and wait and wait - for an eternity
You must not become a mere peddler of words. The thing to learn is to know what people are thinking about, not what they say.
I went to collect the few personal belongings which...I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.
By an image we hold on to our lost treasures, but it is the wrenching loss that forms the image, composes, binds the bouquet.
It's one of our favorite American myths that broad plains necessarily make broad minds, and high mountains make high purpose.
Damn the great executives, the men of measured merriment, damn the men with careful smiles oh, damn their measured merriment.
Part of him wanted to weep... but his purpose was rigid within him. He felt he could not bend to gentleness without breaking.
As a fiction writer, my favorite tools are my imagination and the peculiar opportunities offered by different points of view.
I'd love a day devoid of responsibilities. I've often thought about going to a hotel just to have a day away from everything.
In general, my own experience of writing an adaptation of 'Evening' gave me a chance to get into different parts of the book.
I have always been caught by the pull of the unremarkable, by the easily missed, infinitely nourishing beauty of the mundane.
It all comes down, as it must, to the desires of individual men. Oh, and women too of course, bless their empty little heads.
Peace fell upon her spirit. Strong comfort and assurance bathed her whole being. Life was so solid and splendid, and so good.
What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It's not good at much else.
If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic.
I am filled suddenly with hope. I don't think I will ever die. We are looking for ghosts, but, I think, a good story will do.
You won," Four mutters. "Stop." I wipe the sweat from my forehead. He stares at me. His eyes are too wide; they look alarmed.
So how can I hold Tobias’s desperation against him, like I’m better than him, like I’ve never let my own brokenness blind me?
She taught me all about real sacrifice. That it should be done from love, not misplace disgust for another person's genetics.
The best anti-depressant pill for me would be one the size of a house so you could drop it on me and put me out of my misery.
All great popular literature today one day will be seen as great literature and will no longer be seen as popular literature.
It is wrong to condemn people for doing a thing and then offer no alternative but failure. A person could get mad about that.
The only sustainable city - and this, to me, is the indispensable ideal and goal - is a city in balance with its countryside.