Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It often seems to me that the biggest single issue for a writer is how to stay buoyant enough to go on writing. How not to drown.
Education makes us more stupid than the brutes. A thousand voices call to us on every hand, but our ears are stopped with wisdom.
It was painful, but sometimes you must have these painful moments where you tear yourself away from something that isn't working.
The most comforting feeling ever is knowing that someone truly likes your entire existence. I feel that way right now. Thank you.
I need - and occasionally love - to write for the same reasons I always did: hard as writing is, it's generally easier than life.
I look back into past history, the stored experiences or products of the imagination. I look no further forward than the evening.
If I could chat with anyone, it would be Claire Messud, because I think she could tell me how to get better as a writer as I age.
With the crime novels, its delightful to have protagonists I can revisit in book after book. Its like having a fictitious family.
(J)ust because your version of normal isn't the same as someone else's version doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you.
What makes a classic is difficult to define. It's entirely subjective, of course. And the term is employed far too promiscuously.
I am talking about the general psychological health of the species, man. He needs the existence of mysteries. Not their solution.
You live your life at the time you live it -- you don't have much of an overview when what's happening to you is still happening.
you can always tell employees of the government by the total vacancy which occupies the space where most other people have faces.
Leaving New Orleans also frightened me considerably. Outside of the city limits the heart of darkness, the true wasteland begins.
There is no doubt that I have lots of words inside me; but at moments, like rush-hour traffic at the mouth of a tunnel, they jam.
I'm always looking for insights into the real Doris Day because I'm stuck with this infatuation and need to explain it to myself.
I thought, briefly, that I would never feel as intensely connected to the world, to another human being, as I did at that moment.
Real friends were the kind where you pick up where you'd left off, whether it be a week since you'd seen each other or two years.
I wrote three books before I got one published. Most writers do. Have faith, and know that with each work you are getting better.
Fiction that isn't an author's personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn't worth writing for anything but money.
Necessity is the most powerful divinity the world knows – it is the result of physical forces set in operation by ethical forces.
One of the most ephemeral and important things is atmosphere and tone and it's very hard to put your finger on what creates that.
My oldest sister was an actress living in NYC by the time I was ten, and desperately wanted to be the one in charge of the words.
There is no mystery-- that's the beauty of it. We are entirely explicable to each other, and yet we stay. What a miracle that is.
I write about the trials and triumphs of contemporary life - and often the readers see themselves between the lines of the story.
I have a B.A. in Spanish, so briefly I thought that somebody might pay me to speak Spanish badly in another country, like Norway.
As for opinions, if they're not pleasant they'd better be kept to yourself. I learned that early in life and forget it every day.
I don't like to see anyone suffer, and there's a very, very fine line between being healthy and working and totally down and out.
I think if you're president, color goes away completely: you're president and it doesn't matter if you're white, green or purple.
The longer an event is anticipated-a milestone birthday, an eclipse, a new millennium-the more likely it is to be an anti-climax.
I found a sad little fairy Beneath the shade of a paper tree. I know a sad little fairy Who was blown away by the wind one night.
Write the story you need to tell and want to read. It's impossible to know what others want, so don't waste time trying to guess.
True maturity is only reached when a man realizes he has become a father figure to his girlfriends' boyfriend - and he accepts it
What goes on when people overfetishize safety is that they're relapsing into that old frame of mind that what we're doing is bad.
I hate the word juicy in describing anything: lips, plots, oranges. But especially novels. It feels - icky. Reminds me of saliva.
I'm a private person, a shy person. Sometimes, reading for eleven hours straight feels to me like the perfect way to spend a day.
Every thing in this world, said my father, is big with jest,--and has wit in it, and instruction too,--if we can but find it out.
Maybe this was one of those times when being a hero didn’t involve looking particularly brave. It was just doing what you should.
Was it possible in any relationship to not disappoint, to do anything more than only briefly rekindle the initial fatal illusion?
When I was a child, on Sunday mornings the family would assemble around the blue-leather-covered gramophone to listen to records.
The garden where you sit Has never a need of flowers, For you are the blossoms And only a fool or the blind Would fail to know it
Mothers can forgive anything! Tell me all, and be sure that I will never let you go, though the whole world should turn from you.
African elephants have long been thought of as a single species, but a critical mass of genetic studies now proves there are two.
I think I'm brave because I've made decisions based - I hope not entirely selfishly - on what I think is right for me to do next.
Hard though it may be to accept, remember that guilt is sometimes a friendly internal voice reminding you that you're messing up.
The difference between weakness and wickedness is much less than people suppose; and the consequences are nearly always the same.
I believe that friendship, like love, of which it is a particular kind, requires nearly as much art as a successful choreography.
I got a huge knot in my stomach because if Antarctica could talk, it would be saying only one thing: you don't belong here. (277)
I knew it, I just knew it! The person who had the job of writing my life's dialogue used to work on a very low budget soap opera.
I am grateful for all those dark years, even though in retrospect they seem like a long, bitter prayer that was answered finally.