Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage but He is building a palace. He intends to come & live in it Himself
Our temptation is to look eagerly for the minimum that will be accepted. We are in fact very like honest but reluctant taxpayers.
It doesn't really matter whether you grip the arms of the dentist's chair or let your hands lie in your lap. The drill drills on.
Girls aren't very good at keeping maps in their brains", said Edmund, "That's because we've got something in them", replied Lucy.
They call him Aslan in That Place," said Eustace. "What a curious name!" "Not half so curious as himself," said Eustace solemnly.
What I have yet to see is a real woman choose a younger man because he spent six hours a day at the gym trying to sculpt his abs.
Silent is the ruined land. Man is brutal and the rain does not wash away the pain or rid the distant memory. It makes it glisten.
I often think that the prime directive for me as a teacher of writing is akin to that for a physician, which is this: do no harm.
For me, that's always been one of the great charms of the first person: we gain access to a very personal, private kind of music.
I must, then, repeat continually that we are forever sundered - and yet, while I breathe and think, I must love him.' - Jane Eyre
While we flatter ourselves that things remain the same, they are changing under our very eyes from year to year, from day to day.
As a seven-year-old, I remember when Etan Patz disappeared and was immortalized as the first missing-child face on a milk carton.
That's why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. You can't control life, at least you can control your version.
What I did was pour out about a gallon of Chanel Number Five and put a burning wedding invitation to it, and boom, I'm recycling.
So if you think this is going to save you...If you think anything is going to save you...Please consider this your final warning.
For six months I couldn't sleep. With insomnia, nothing's real. Everything is far away. Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy.
I see so many tattoos of my stuff on people - tattoos of my book covers, tattoos of quotes . . . it's kind of daunting sometimes.
My favorite books to give or get are short story collections. And always paperbacks because they are easy to carry as you travel.
I wrote every day between the ages of 12 and 20 when I stopped because I went to Barcelona, where life was too exciting to write.
Death is never an ending, death is a change; Death is beautiful, for death is strange; Death is one dream out of another flowing.
My perfect day is sitting in a room with some blank paper. That's heaven. That's gold, and anything else is just a waste of time.
But I didn't know what to say to him. What do you say to a man that by his own admission has no soul? Why would you say anything?
Still, there is something emboldening about being awake when the rest of the world is sleeping. Like I know something they don't.
Water is H2O, hydrogen two parts, oxygen one, but there is also a third thing, that makes it water and nobody knows what that is.
One must learn to love, and go through a good deal of suffering to get to it... and the journey is always towards the other soul.
I never know when I sit down, just what I am going to write. I make no plan; it just comes, and I don't know where it comes from.
You know how to split atoms, how to send explorers to the moon, how to splice genes, but you don't know how people ought to live.
People have given me classified information, but always with the disclaimer 'This can never end up in a book.' And it never does.
She was widely read enough to appreciate my literary wit but not so widely read that she knew my sources. I like that in a woman.
I'm from a time and place where bigheadedness was a really savage crime, and you'd get cut down for it by your peers and parents.
My experiences thus far had me planning to throttle the first Tudor historian I met upon my return for gross dereliction of duty.
absence ... smothers into decay a rootless fancy but often nourishes the least seed of a true affection into full-flowering love.
September 11 was terrible, but if one goes back over the history of the IRA, what happened to the Americans wasn't that terrible.
September 11 was terrible but, if one goes back over the history of the IRA, what happened to the Americans wasn't that terrible.
Canadians can easily 'pass for American' as long as we don't accidentally use metric measurements or apologize when hit by a car.
The greatest humiliation in life, is to work hard on something from which you expect great appreciation, and then fail to get it.
When a friend is in trouble, don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it.
I was just a screw or cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else.
After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.
...every literature, in its main lines, reflects the chief characteristics of the people for whom, and about whom, it is written.
When people ask for time, it's always for time to say no. Yes has one more letter in it, but it doesn't take half as long to say.
A whole roomful of Jews is like a charged battery. The vitality sparks seem to fly, and frequently the result is a short circuit.
Darkness is drawn to light, but light does not know it; light must absorb the darkness and therefore meet its own extinguishment.
The best that an individual can do is to concentrate on what he or she can do, in the course of a burning effort to do it better.
I burned through all of my extra lives in a matter of minutes, and my two least-favorite words appeared on the screen: GAME OVER.
The copyeditor I drew was a brachycephalic, web-footed cretin who should have been in an institution learning how to make brooms.
Someone said, in a simplistic way maybe, that all American poetry is either cooked or raw, and if it's cooked, it comes from Poe.
It is necessary that every man have at least somewhere to go. For there are times when one absolutely must go at least somewhere!
Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning; but give me the man who has the pluck to fight when he's sure of losing.
It is good to be helpful and kindly, but don't give yourself to be melted into candle grease for the benefit of the tallow trade.