Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I am a terrible and lazy Christian. I do not believe that the Bible is the literal word of God. I just skip about a third of it.
The best thing to do if you start thinking such things (falling in love) is to lie down and wait for it to pass. It always does.
He was wondering if there was some cryptic, cultish mark on his door that told all the crazy people he'd have trouble saying no.
All that sadness. All that anger. It is the smoke that gets into your eyes. If you do not blow it away, how can you hope to see?
My writing has always been what you call 'narrative fiction' in the sense that it's got very strong plots and twists at the end.
There are worse things than a lie... I have found... that it may be well to choose one sin in order that another may be shunned.
The trouble with us is that the ghetto of the Middle Ages and the children of the twentieth century have to live under one roof.
I have been extraordinarily lucky. Anyone who pretends that some kind of luck isn't involved in his success is deluding himself.
Writing in a foreign language - has brought me to the cries of the women silently rebelling in my youth, to my own true origins.
I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
I have a couple of dozen books on my reader: ideal for a long trip or an afternoon waiting at the medical clinic. It's flexible.
Psychologically, it's always more pleasurable to blame others for our problems than it is to acknowledge our own responsibility.
Most of the time I was in the Northeast, I lived in the country, and I think that helped me to discover my material for writing.
A mathematical proof is beautiful, but when you're finished, it's really only about one thing. A story can be about many things.
Lust: Which senator once reached for a handkerchief in his pocket and proceeded to wipe his brow with a pair of women's panties?
A little threat of evil is always the far better way to fill the seats. But sometimes the monsters aren't who we think they are.
For life be, after all, only a waitin' for somethin' else than what we're doin'; and death be all that we can rightly depend on.
I find that when I think I am asking God to forgive me I am often in reality. . . asking Him not to forgive me but to excuse me.
Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning.
No mind is so good that it does not need another mind to counter and equal it, and to save it from conceit and bigotry and folly
Men became scientific because they expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Law Giver.
When the opposite of your prayer occurs, your prayer hasn't been ignored; it's been considered & refused for your ultimate good.
If there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most, or else just silly.
To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves... The modern world in comparison, ignores it.
What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.
Let's don't wait forever for our lives to start. Let's begin them ourselves. Let's be fearless for once and say, we can do this.
Time goes faster the more hollow it is. Lives with no meaning go straight past you, like trains that don’t stop at your station.
I've always said that idleness dulls the spirit. We have to keep the brain busy, or at least the hands if we don't have a brain.
The closer you get to heaven, the less air there is, because when you get to heaven for real, you don't need to breathe anymore.
Temperament, you'll find, is highly dependent on time of day, weather, frequency of naps, and whether one has had enough to eat.
Monsters almost always are culture's way of working out their fears and are thus inherently incredibly interesting and powerful.
Yes it's difficult. Yes it's horrible. Yes it's the worst thing that has ever happen in my whole life. But I just can't give up.
I don't know why men like to barbecue so much. Maybe its the only thing they can cook. Or maybe they're just closet pyromaniacs.
It is fortunate that each generation does not comprehend its own ignorance. We are thus enabled to call our ancestors barbarous.
Hoeing in the garden on a bright, soft May day, when you are not obligated to, is nearly equal to the delight of going trouting.
Memory has the singular characteristic of recalling in a friend absent, as in a journey long past, only that which is agreeable.
Friendship however is a plant which cannot be forced -- true friendship is no gourd spring up in a night and withering in a day.
When one is innocent of pain, of the havoc it can wreak, one is never cruel. Cruelty is born of pain, of a need to hurt in turn.
But I MUST say what I feel and think in some way — it is such a relief! But the effort is getting to be greater than the relief.
I'd finally come to understand what it had been: a yearning for a way out, when actually what I had wanted to find was a way in.
There is no story that is not true, [...] The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.
The relationship with my people, the Nigerian people, is very good. My relationship with the rulers has always been problematic.
Safety, reputation, their lives, their friends, and their world. Writers typically try to avoid that because it's not expedient.
Some people who look at abstract art say 'I could do that.' A good response is, 'Go ahead but then you'll be accused of copying.
Everybody looks a little crazy if you're looking close enough and if you can't look that close, then you don't really love them.
Me with nothing left to lose, plotting my big revenge in the spotlight. Give me violent revenge fantasies as a coping mechanism.
We’d turn our lives into a terrible adventure. A true-life horror story with a happy ending. A trial we’d survive to talk about.
And if you can find any way out of our culture, then that's a trap too. Just wanting to get out of the trap reinforces the trap.
I love the Internet, and I love wasting time on the Internet - even though it sometimes ends up being not being a waste of time.
I'd heard about a shipwreck that was never found - John Paul Jones' Bonhomme Richard. So I thought, 'Well, I'll go look for it.'