Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Because even if the whole world was throwing rocks at you, if you still had your mother or father at your back, you'd be okay.
I like the idea of a big caesura between the narratives, a space which readers can fill in with their own speculative history.
I don't see why I should bow my head when I could hold it high, or place it in the hands of my enemies when I can defeat them.
To doubt God is to doubt one's own conscience, and in consequence, it would be to doubt everything; and then what is life for?
Justice is the foremost virtue of the civilizing races. It subdues the barbarous nations, while injustice arouses the weakest.
There may well be writers who roll up their sleeves and say, 'I'm going to write a post-9/11 novel' but I wasn't one of those.
No one can estimate the power of authority among poor and uneducated people in a world whose problems confuse even the wisest.
The small seed of despair cracks open and sends experimental tendrils upward to the fragile skin of calm holding him together.
The unusual is only found in a very small percentage, except in literary creations, and that is exactly what makes literature.
It appears to me that our sex is only discussed publicly in a derogatory manner. The respectable woman is doomed to anonymity.
God, please now my future see, make it clear where I should be. Open windows, close the doors, not my will, my God, but Yours.
Here's to new beginnings," Stuart says and raises his bourbon. I nod, sort of wanting to tell him that all beginnings are new.
I left the world of jail with plenty of relief but, more than anything, with a sense of unease that I still can't quite shake.
Her beauty was the talk of the valley.It skipped two generations of women in our family, but it sure didn't bypass you, Laila.
Nothing wrong with cowardice as long as it comes with prudence. But when a coward stops remembering who he is... God help him.
I wanted to write about Afghanistan before the Soviet war because that is largely a forgotten period in modern Afghan history.
I did subscribe to the freedom movement and I was much closer to the Congress than to the Akali party. It is a communal party.
We should be wrong to demand that a critic must stay on the point all the time; it is enough if he remains in orbit around it.
Yes, it's funny, isn't it? You try to do what's best for the people you love, and you just end up in trouble for your efforts.
There's no such thing as intelligent vanity. It's an instinct. And you'll never find a man who is not first and foremost vain.
Marriage is like the romantic ideal, and yet the trappings around it and the culture about it are really the opposite of that.
The literary world is more time-traveling than the art world, and novelty is much more important in art than it is in writing.
I am a big, confident, happy woman who had a loving childhood, a pleasant career, and a wonderful marriage. I feel very lucky.
Habit is a second nature which prevents us from knowing the first, of which it has neither the cruelties nor the enchantments.
Novels, since the birth of the genre, have been full of rejected, seduced, and abandoned maidens, whose proper fate is to die.
Society seldom forgives those who have discovered the emptiness of its pleasures, and who can live independent of it and them.
I haven’t had Botox because my face is a bit lopsided and I depend on keeping everything animated so that people don’t notice.
I haven't had Botox because my face is a bit lopsided and I depend on keeping everything animated so that people don't notice.
Because, once alone, it is impossible to believe that one could ever have been otherwise. Loneliness is an absolute discovery.
Every spirit passing through the world fingers the tangible and mars the mutable, and finally has come to look and not to buy.
It was strange how the heart clung to hope even when there was no reasonable basis for it, Morgan found. And how life went on.
I fancy the romantic image of myself being soothed and inspired by music and the sweet aroma and flickering lights of candles.
But I have noticed this about ambitious men, or men in power, that they fear even the slightest and least likely threat to it.
The agony of my feelings allowed me no respite; no incident occurred from which my rage and misery could not extract its food.
Remember that there are two things in this life that are never worth crying about: what can be cured and what cannot be cured.
To be physically astute and psychologically tended, yet morally insulated and conceptually blind--is to be crazy, not healthy.
It's true to say that once I've got the bare bones of a story, I often get ideas from my own research trips to faraway places.
The most perceptive character in a play is the fool, because the man who wishes to seem simple cannot possibly be a simpleton.
You that in far-off countries of the sky can dwell secure, look back upon me here; for I am weary of this frail world's decay.
And Left-wing people are always sad because they mind dreadfully about their causes, and the causes are always going so badly.
English doctors have killed 3/4 of my friends & the joke is the remaining 1/4 go on recommending them, so odd is human nature.
I find nothing so singular to life as that everything appears to lose its substance the instant one actually grapples with it.
I mean, if the relationship can't survive the long term, why on earth would it be worth my time and energy for the short term?
I'm a novelist at heart. My sole intention is to write the best novel possible. I don't think about the film potential at all.
He often felt that too many people lived their lives acting and pretending,wearing masks and losing themselves in the process.
People want to believe that every marriage is perfect balance but it isn't. One person always loves more deeply than the other
Really good original ideas are very hard to come up with. Good ideas - easy. Really good, original ideas - it can take months.
In the end, for me, the sole single goal is to write the best novel that I can. Whether or not it gets made or gets purchased.
One of the most interesting female characters I've written about was Meg Riddoch, the lead character in 'The Thompson Gunner'.
Complaining about boring football is a little like complaining about the sad ending of King Lear: it misses the point somehow.