Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Not surprisingly, he began to sing, and because no one in the world could hear him, and he sang without inhibition, he sang well.
I have jumped out of airplanes but I was not technically a paratrooper. I was an infantryman and a night fighter, anti-terrorist.
There was never a single murder in my neighbourhood; there was barely a robbery. It was so suburban, it was almost disappointing.
Time, designing slowly, swiftly; Time, destroying slowly, swiftly; Time holding, possessing the earth in its tender indifference.
Every writer hopes or boldly assumes that his life is in some sense exemplary, that the particular will turn out to be universal.
It is very difficult, it is perhaps impossible, for someone who loves his mother to love the woman whom your father left her for.
There had to be a reason why they were not going to marry. They had both been so adamant about it. What the devil was the reason?
It was so much more comfortable to be able to divide people into heroes and villains and expect them to play their allotted part.
Every man carries the seed of his own death, and you will not be more than a man. You will have everything; you cannot have more.
Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
I saw and heard of none like me. Was I then a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned?
Porter Square Books was the only place I could find that was dog-friendly, work-friendly, and had food. I was there all the time.
Over the years, confusing fragments, lost corners of stories, have a clearer meaning when seen in a new light, a different place.
You don't want to write your own opinion, you don't want to just represent yourself, but represent yourself through someone else.
A story, after all, does not only belong to the one who is telling it. It belongs, in equal measure, to the one who is listening.
Every peasant has a lawyer inside of him, just as every lawyer, no matter how urbane he may be, carries a peasant within himself.
If a philosopher is not a man, he is anything but a philosopher; he is above all a pedant, and a pedant is a caricature of a man.
There was no cure for the human condition because every man read the present and plotted the future in the light of his own past.
It is to the credit of human nature that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates.
Just as there comes a warm sunbeam into every cottage window, so comes a lovebeam of God's care and pity for every separate need.
Most people are so constituted that they can only be virtuous in a certain routine; an irregular course of life demoralizes them.
God is the most important thing in our lives. I suppose that's true of everybody's lives, whether or not they want to believe it.
You have to find actors who have the ability to display a wide range of emotion effectively. That's so much harder than it seems.
Sequels are very rarely a good idea, and in any case, the success of the book changed my relationship with the club in some ways.
The highest prize in a world of men is the most beautiful woman available on your arm and living there in her heart loyal to you.
Our chief comforts often produce our greatest anxieties, and the increase in our possessions is but an inlet to new disquietudes.
When you really know somebody you can’t hate them. Or maybe it’s just that you can’t really know them until you stop hating them.
yesterday someone sent a message that was signed GOD! bernard said. really? dap said. i didn't know he was signed onto the system
If you're going to write a book that might, in its very best accidental career, sell 30,000 copies, you've got to have a day job.
Ultimately what I try to do is work on stories I love with people I admire, and sometimes they get made and sometimes they don't.
artists are exposed to great temptations: their eyes see paradise before their souls have reached it, and that is a great danger.
Like the child, the creative writing student is posited as a centre of vulnerable creativity, needful of attention and authority.
It is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be in the grasp of superficially educated people.
Show me a man or woman who cannot stand mysteries and I will show you a fool, a clever fool - perhaps - but a fool just the same.
I've always said that Watership Down is not a book for children. I say: it's a book, and anyone who wants to read it can read it.
Rabbits live close to death and when death comes closer than usual, thinking about survival leaves little room for anything else.
We'd stared into the face of Death, and Death blinked first. You'd think that would make us feel brave and invincible. It didn't.
And no answer when we sent our message. Something like, "Hello, welcome to Earth. Hope you enjoy your stay. Please don't kill us.
Well, first of all," said the BFG, "human beans is not really believing in giants, is they? Human beans is not thinking we exist.
All Norwegian children learn to swim when they are very young because if you can't swim it is difficult to find a place to bathe.
I smoke a pipe abroad, because To all cigars I much prefer it, And as I scorn you social laws, My choice has nothing to deter it.
Cruel children, crying babies, All grow up as geese and gabies, Hated, as their age increases, By their nephews and their nieces.
A liberal education... frees a man from the prison-house of his class, race, time, place, background, family and even his nation.
At the heart of the mystery of corruption lies the desire of one man to impose his will on others to the largest possible extent.
In a novel, if you're any good, you don't just have good people or bad people. You have complicated people. You have real people.
YouTube is full of pieces of trash. If you want to look on YouTube and find something that insults you, you can probably find it.
I don’t like animals. It’s a strange thing, I don’t like men and I don’t like animals. As for God, he is beginning to disgust me.
Daggers ever at the ready, I went about the day: children fed, linens mended, bedclothes aired. In little ways one conquers fear.
Conversation's got to have some root in the past, or else you've got to explain every remark you make, an' it wears a person out.
A truth comes out when it must; A dream comes true when it will. Though the world turn to ash and dust A secret’s a secret still.