Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Those who have never suffered the iniquities of exile cannot possibly understand the significance, the gravitas, of a mattress.
Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain.
My poor life This shawl Frayed on strongboxes full of gold I roll along with Dream And smoke And the only flame in the universe
So much harm comes into this world when the wrong thing is said. But that's nothing compared to the pain from what goes unsaid.
My worst moments as a parent have been much like my greatest moments as a parent: the product of complete and perfect accident.
I am a woman and a woman of Africa. I am a daughter of Nigeria and if she is in shame, I shall stayand mourn with her in shame.
Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.
Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.
When we want to be something other than the thing God wants us to be, we must be wanting what, in fact, will not make us happy.
If the Church is not Making Disciples, then all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible, are a waste of time.
Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you.
and a charge of lying against someone whom you have always found truthful is a very serious thing; a very serious thing indeed.
If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work.
If the universe is so bad...how on earth did human beings ever come to attribute it to the activity of a wise and good Creator?
You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house.
Oh Trees, Trees, Trees...wake. Don't you remember it? Don't you remember me? Dryads and hamadryads, come out, come [out] to me.
Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn't mean anything else.
Still, it's an interesting technique-leaving one person behind in order to find her or him somewhere else. And in someone else.
The world is full of people who all want the same thing, and you have to do a little something extra to make them remember you.
Have I ever been in love? Really in love? And why is it that with each new guy I think I'm more in love with him than the last?
I stepped into the bookshop and breathed in that perfume of paper and magic that strangely no one had ever thought of bottling.
I wanted to write about the Korean War, but I had no entry into it that made the kind of sense it needs to make for a novelist.
For I too liked reading, thought of a frivolous and childish kind; I could not digest or comprehend the serious or substantial.
People should always mind their own business. More trouble is caused in this world by interference than any other single thing.
I walked all those miles, I learned all those lessons. It's as if my new life was the gift I got at the end of a long struggle.
You must develop the habit of skepticism, not swallow every piece of superstition you are told by witch-doctors and professors.
The most awful thing about power is not that it corrupts absolutely but that it makes people so utterly boring, so predictable.
The Nazis were not right to hate the Jews. But their hating of Jews was not without a cause. No one ever hates without a cause.
Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on.
People had been working for so many years to make the world a safe organized place. Nobody realized how boring it would become.
You're safe because you're so trapped inside your culture. Anything you can conceive of is fine because you can conceive of it.
If your body is a temple, you can pile up too much deferred maintenance. If your body is a temple, mine was a real fixer-upper.
Some little part of themselves for someone in the future to discover. Maybe a thought. We were here. We built this. A reminder.
I've never been very practical or realistic - I've always felt that if a project seems easy, or even attainable, why pursue it?
I love my books, and with all their dog-ears and under-linings they are irreplaceable, but I sometimes wish they'd just vanish.
In making up stories, as in reading stories, I could create a contained world in which an experience is shared in its entirety.
The truth is ships and aircraft have been vanishing with tragic regularity in every part of the world since they were invented.
They screwed up 'Raise the Titanic!' so badly, I stay away from Hollywood. I won't cheat my readers with another piece of crap.
You go back home and everything you wished was different is still the same and everything you wished was the same is different.
Be careful, then, and be gentle about death. For it is hard to die, it is difficult to go through the door, even when it opens.
That is your trick, your bit of filthy magic: invisibility, and the anaesthetic power to deaden my attention in your direction.
The world is not in any sense in danger from itself. The world is in fact not in any danger at all. It is we who are in danger.
In fact one frequently seemed to gather all sorts of similar information about subjects one had less than profound interest in.
Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.
I love that sound,' he mumbled into her hair. 'Blackbirds at dawn.' 'I hate it. Makes me think I've done something I'll regret.
The world of scholarship is much more measured in its appreciation and also its criticism than the world of popular literature.
Though he had very little Latin beyond "Cave canem," he had, as a young dog, devoured Shakespeare (in a tasty leather binding).
My major aim was to shape a book which would make its own comment, a wordless statement: to talk through the way it was shaped.
It seems to me,’ said Philippa prosaically, ‘that on the whole we run more risks with Mr Crawford’s protection than without it.
Nature is one great big wood-chipper. Sooner or later, everything shoots out the other end in a spray of blood, bones and hair.