Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I identified with Pip from 'Great Expectations,' especially when I was younger; I had the same kind of gaucheness and uncertainty.
As fast as I can tell there are only two emotions that keep the world spinning year after year...One is fear. The other is desire.
O, the sweet, sweet twilight just before the time of rest, When the black clouds are driven away, and the stormy winds suppressed.
SAFETY NET-ISM: The belief that there will always be a financial and emotional safety net to buffer life's hurts. Usually parents.
I think money is due for some sort of collapse. People are going to realize that money has a half-life, like radioactive elements.
For it is a serious thing to have been watched. We all radiate something curiously intimate when we believe ourselves to be alone.
There is much good luck in the world, but it is luck. We are none of us safe. We are children, playing or quarrelling on the line.
If you have sense enough to realize why flies gather around a restaurant, you should be able to appreciate why men run for office.
She wondered if, when human souls try to get too near each other, they do not inevitably become mere blurs to each other's vision.
...I have always lived on contrasts! To me the only death is monotony. Beware of monotony; it's the mother of all the deadly sins.
About mistakes it's funny. You got to make your own; and not only that, if you try to keep people from making theirs they get mad.
Common sense is only a modification of talent. Genius is an exaltation of it. The difference is, therefore, in degree, not nature.
I wear a pedometer, aiming for five miles a day - don't be too impressed; that includes walking around my house and food shopping.
A wise parent humors the desire for independent action, so as to become the friend and advisor when his absolute rule shall cease.
I wanted to be able to write in the voice that I talk to my friends and assume that everybody would know what I was talking about.
. . . finally, I couldn't imagine how I could live without books, and I stopped dreaming about marrying that Chinese prince. . . .
The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key.
I wanted to discuss the suffering of humanity in general, but perhaps we'd better confine ourselves to the sufferings of children.
Since I wasn't consulted at the time of the creation of the world, I reserve for myself the right to have my own opinion about it.
Under every guilty secret there is hidden a brood of guilty wishes, whose unwholesome infecting life is cherished by the darkness.
Obligation may be stretched till it is no better than a brand of slavery stamped on us when we were too young to know its meaning.
There is so much to read and the days are so short! I get more hungry for knowledge every day, and less able to satisfy my hunger.
The law and medicine should be very serious professions to undertake, should they not? People's lives and fortunes depend on them.
You may try but you can never imagine what it is to have a man's form of genius in you, and to suffer the slavery of being a girl.
Life is a huge farce, and the advantage of possessing a sense of humour is that it enables one to defy fate with mocking laughter.
It is one of the tragedies of the half-educated that they develop late, when they are already committed to some wrong way of life.
Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.
Bran thought about it. 'Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?' 'That is the only time a man can be brave,' his father told him.
I want you to be afraid to turn the page (and to do that) you need to show right from the beginning that you're playing for keeps.
And I refused to make any sacrifices; for nothing on earth seemed more valuable than my peace of mind, my pleasure and my acclaim.
Watching a movie from beginning to end is like reading, because even though what you see are images, they are telling you a story.
I came to the conclusion that people were just peculiar, I withdrew from them, and never thought about them until I was forced to.
As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.
Magic doesn't happen often - not once in a blue moon ... I expect there isn't another magic ship like this one in the whole world.
A husband who submits to his wife's yoke is justly held an object of ridicule. A woman's influence ought to be entirely concealed.
It's been said that I am the most widely read writer of the 20th century. The number of books I've sold runs into untold millions.
Ah suppose man, ah'm too much ay a perfectionist, ken? It's likesay, if things go a bit dodgy, ah jist cannae be bothered, y'know.
It's all been quite a revitalizing process for me, being out there in the States. It wouldn't have happened without Trainspotting.
To tell about a drunken muzhik's beating his wife is incomparably harder than to compose a whole tract about the 'woman question.'
There was no respect for youth when I was young, and now that I am old, there is no respect for age, I missed it coming and going.
Most writers flinch at the thought of being completely honest about themselves. So absolute honesty is what marks the true modern.
That old berk," muttered Aberforth, taking another swig of mead. "Thought the sun shone out of my brother's every orifice, he did.
You said to us once before," said Hermione quietly, "that there was time to turn back if we wanted to. We've had time, haven't we?
All I'm saying is once you've been out in the woods and heard the things I've heard, you'd believe in Big Foot and the chupacabra.
Come here. I need to hold on to you." She felt the same way. And when there was no distance between them, it was like coming home.
The Brother's eyes narrowed. "But here's something to keep in mind. You ever hurt him on purpose and I will consider you my enemy.
I'd rather hop freights around the country and cook my food out of tin cans over wood fires, than be rich and have a home or work.
For the first time in my life the weather was not something that touched me, that caressed me, froze or sweated me, but became me.
I was then at the height of my two-facedness: that is, outside I seemed one way, inside I was another; outside false, inside true.
There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.