Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The one thing that makes writing a better pastime than reading is that you can make things turn out the way you want in the end!
There is no refuge from memory and remorse in this world. The spirits of our foolish deeds haunt us, with or without repentance.
Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they're not attracting attention with it.
However exquisitely human nature may have been described by writers, the true practical system can be learned only in the world.
What plays the mischief with the truth is that men will insist upon the universal application of a temporary feeling or opinion.
It is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realise the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life.
Delight,--top-gallant delight is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a patriot to heaven.
The smallest flower is a thought, a life answering to some feature of the Great Whole, of whom they have a persistent intuition.
Glory and fame mean twelve thousand francs' worth of paid articles in the newspapers and five thousand crowns' worth of dinners.
A year at the breast is quite enough; children who are suckled longer are said to grow stupid, and I am all for popular sayings.
All she had needed was the certainty of his love, and his reassurance that there was no hurry when a lifetime lay ahead of them.
How was I supposed to know that you let two little bears hurt you, Goldilocks?" "Ah, yes, that mouth. I missed it. All mine now.
She can tell you the height of the attacker from the trigonometry of the blood spatter, while I'm fuzzy on what trigonometry is.
I'm investigating people who sacrifice trained killers to dark gods. Perfect, it will keep him occupied. In what capacity? Bait.
Judging by the hard lines of his face and the flat look in his eyes, he'd left the Marines, but the Corps hadn't quite left him.
The cultural war of words has actually been won by the most dispossessed people in the Western world, the urban American blacks.
Animals have one thing that puts them way ahead of people: they don't dissemble, and you don't have to pretend in front of them.
A kind of banalization of celebrity has occurred: we are now offered an instant, ready-to-mix fame as nutritious as packet soup.
The Magistrate suffered from the disability of a free-thinking turn of mind and from a life that was barren and dreary to match.
Nothing so obstinately stands in the way of all sorts of progress as pride of opinion. While nothing is so foolish and baseless.
Fiction is most powerful when it contains most truth; and there is little truth we get so true as that which we find in fiction.
She had a way of seeing the beauty in others, even, and perhaps most especially, when that person couldn't see it in themselves.
What do I care how 'e looks? I am good-looking enough for both of us, I theenk! All these scars show is zat my husband is brave!
Severus Snape wasn't yours," said Harry. "Snape was Dumbledores, Dumbledores from the moment you started hunting down my mother.
Shut your mouth! You dare speak his name with your unworthy lips, you dare besmirch it with your half-blood's tongue, you dare —
I think the Harry books are actually very moral, but some people just object to witchcraft being mentioned in a children's book.
Because in the end, you won't remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain
...most of the time we were alone and mixing up our souls ever more and ever more till it would be terribly hard to say good-by.
Somewhere along the line I knew there'd be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me.
I didn't really understand racism because I grew up in an all-black society, so I didn't see how it was possible not to like me!
I like to be in my pajamas all day. Sometimes I don't wash for days because I like to read and sit around. I like to eat in bed.
We are responsible for the world in which we find ourselves, if only because we are the only sentient force which can change it.
American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.
The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one's key to the experience of others.
Phall if you but will, rise you must: and none so soon either shall the pharce for the nunce come to a setdown secular phoenish.
I come here with no expectations, only to profess, now that I am at liberty to do so, that my heart is and always will be yours.
Yes, I found myself, by insensible degrees, sincerely fond of her; and the happiest hours of my life were what I spent with her.
I have no more to say. If this be the case, he deserves you. I could not have parted with you, my Lizzy, to any one less worthy.
Everybody's heart is open, you know, when they have recently escaped from severe pain, or are recovering the blessing of health.
What's the truth? The truth is what people WANT. Liars are basically idealists, liars are saints and prophets. Jesus was a liar.
There is a contract between the reader and the writer. The readers give me their hard-earned cash, and I have to entertain them.
Next week, or next month, or next year I will kill myself. But I might as well last out my month's rent, which has been paid up.
A few years ago in Chicago, I rented an office, and I went there every day. For the most part I do work at home in an ugly room.
I can't tell if she's actually real, or if she's stopped caring if she's real or not. Or is not caring what makes a person real?
I write the word solitude on my wall and then below it: Do you know me at all? Are my words just air? Is my heart easy to spare?
The trouble with you, Vic," he said, "is that you think of the world as a sort of huge museum with too many visitors allowed in.
The novel remains for me one of the few forms where we can record man's complexity and the strength and decency of his longings.
War is utter damn nonsense, a vast cancer fed by lies and self seeking malignity on the part of those who don't do the fighting.
Wealth is a monster. It takes a month to learn to control it financially. And many years to learn to control it psychologically.
Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.