Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm still down with Jesus. I like to think of him mostly as a social revolutionary who mixed with bad crowds and hated the rich.
And every true artist is the salvation of every other. But only artists produce for each other the world that is fit to live in.
Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is criticising.
The real tragedy of England, as I see it, is the tragedy of ugliness. The country is so lovely: the man-made England is so vile.
And in this passion for understanding her soul lay close to his; she had him all to herself. But he must be made abstract first.
If we lose our sanity ... We can but howl the lugubrious howl of idiots, the howl of the utterly lost howling their nowhereness.
I love you, rotten, Delicious rottenness. ...wonderful are the hellish experiences, Orphic, delicate Dionysos of the Underworld.
Sibling relationships figure in a lot of my books. You don't often see relationships between adult siblings explored in fiction.
When a poor man gives something, that is a sacrifice indeed. When a rich man gives something, it hardly rises to the same level.
To make someone an icon is to make him an abstraction, and abstractions are incapable of vital communication with living people.
I wonder if you encountered this dictum first spoken by a twentieth-century statesman: "An abyss cannot be crossed in two steps.
It is the Christmas time: And up and down 'twixt heaven and earth, In glorious grief and solemn mirth, The shining angels climb.
It's a beautiful sight to see good dancers doing simple steps. It's a painful sight to see beginners doing complicated patterns.
My mother was a woman who was very frustrated. She had a great deal of ability, and all this energy went into me and my brother.
for real pleasure a pleasure resort should have no one in it but its legitimate inhabitants, oneself, and perhaps one's friends.
It's difficult to speak with beautiful people. No matter how hard you try to pretend otherwise, you still want them to like you.
We live in an era with no historical precedents. History is no longer useful as a tool in helping us understand current changes.
I tried to think of a witty play on Every picture tells a thousand words, but then the whole word/picture thing collapsed on me.
The real killers in the business world aren't the ones who aim for the top, it's the ones who aim for two notches below the top.
My house. It's kind of eccentric. It's two decades worth of accumulated personal projects. Yeah, it is pretty dense in my house.
Vancouver is the square root of negative one. Technically it shouldn't exist, but it does. I can't imagine living anywhere else.
Data transmission is no longer something scary you don't want in your backyard. Now you want it directly in front of your house.
I miss the silliness of the Nineties. What would society be like if 9/11 never happened? If that silliness was extended forever?
He had her in his arms, her face like a wet flower at his lips, and all their vain terrors shriveling up like ghosts at sunrise.
New York has been the subject of thousands of books. Every immigrant group has had its saga as has every epoch and social class.
I write poetry anyway and have for years and years. For me, putting fiction and poetry together is like the best of both worlds.
As a rule, I try to steer clear of opinions pertaining to your parenting. I assume you're doing the best you can, and God bless.
"Lights," I said softly. This had become my favorite word over the past week. In my mind, it had become synonymous with freedom.
Americans are so emotionally fragile that soon we will have to be carried around in plastic bubbles and fed with an eye-dropper.
Power is given only to those who dare to lower themselves and pick it up. Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare!
Killing myself was a matter of such indifference to me that I felt like waiting for a moment when it would make some difference.
I am a fool with a heart but no brains, and you are a fool with brains but no heart; and we’re both unhappy, and we both suffer.
Man, so long as he remains free, has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than find as quickly as possible someone to worship.
Whatever distinguishes one lump of flesh from another when we're alive, we're all the same once we're dead. Just used-up shells.
Then he made one last effort to search in his heart for the place where his affection had rotted away, and he could not find it.
Heroics are not easily had for the young in our times. Perhaps that is why they go to such extremes to create their own dangers.
But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy.
Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.
It's them as take advantage that get advantage I' this world, I think: folks have to wait long enough afore it's brought to 'em.
I trust you as holy men trust God; you could do nought that was not pure and loving, though the deed might pierce me unto death.
It is pleasant to have a kind word now and then when one is not near enough to have a kind glance or a hearty shake by the hand.
It is a sad weakness in us, after all, that the thought of a man's death hallows him anew to us; as if life were not sacred too.
Man may content himself with the applause of the world and the homage paid to his intellect, but woman's heart has holier idols.
When I was quite a boy I had a spasm of religion which lasted six weeks... But I never since have swallowed the Christian fable.
The tendency of advanced capitalism has been to enlarge the middle class and not to wipe it out, as it once seemed likely to do.
Under the spreading chestnut tree I sold you and you sold me: There lie they, and here lie we Under the spreading chestnut tree.
She's beautiful,' he murmured. 'She's a metre across the hips, easily,' said Julia. 'That is her style of beauty,' said Winston.
When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say.
I worked out of Hollywood for 10 years and I had my heart broken half a dozen times, so I know all the things that can go wrong.
The charm of your society, My Sparrow, lies in not knowing what will you say next - though one rapidly learns to fear the worst!