Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.
Nakedness has no color: this can come as news only to those who have never covered, or been covered by, another naked human being.
Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.
The trials of life will not wait for us. They come at their own time, not caring much to inquire how ready we may be to meet them.
[A writer is] a priest of eternal imagination, transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everliving life.
Do not consider me now as an elegant female intending to plague you, but as a rational creature speaking the truth from her heart.
Good-humoured, unaffected girls, will not do for a man who has been used to sensible women. They are two distinct orders of being.
Art is a kind of mining," he said. "The artist a variety of prospector searching for the sparkling silver of meaning in the earth.
There is many a monster who wears the form of a man; it is better of the two to have the heart of a man and the form of a monster.
Americans are less selfish than some of our politicians believe and will respond with reason and resilience to passionate clarity.
One futuristic novel that had a huge impact on me was Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein,' which is kind of science fiction plus Gothic.
I'm a morning person: if I don't get up, put the coffee on and get to my desk by 8, the day has already lost a lot of its promise.
Was this love? Because it hurt. It was like a bit of glass stuck somewhere important--his heart or his head, and it was throbbing.
It's amazing what storms your face can hide, what terrible wrecks can writhe and heave beneath, without one ripple on the surface.
I can create countries just as I can create the actions of my characters. That is why a lot of travel seems to me a waste of time.
You've always had a good grasp on what's right and wrong. You just have a hard time admitting that sometimes you choose the wrong.
To me, the pinnacle of my career is writing for youth. I can die happy: I have succeeded in doing what I have always wanted to do.
Because a star explodes and a thousand worlds like ours die, we know this world is. That is the smile: that what might not be, is.
Jail was preferable. There they only limited you physically. In a mental ward they tampered with your soul and worldview and mind.
Had that poor Reilly kook really been proud of Levy Pants? He had always said that he was. That was one good sign of his insanity.
Children are not a zoo of entertainingly exotic creatures, but an array of mirrors in which the human predicament leaps out at us.
I never really made a choice to live in America, so I should be aware of the social strata outside of the ones that I may live in.
But the God I don't believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He's not the mean and stupid God you make him out to be.
The earth was overwhelmed with beauty and indifferent to it, and I went with a heart ready to crack for its unbearable loveliness.
Until I discover the meaning of this sentence, I will neither eat nor sleep. "My dear uncle-" I began. "Nor you either," he added.
Ah, monsieur, to live in the bosom of the sea! Only there can independence be found! There I recognize no master! There I am free!
When I had worked on my first book, I had readily shown bits and pieces to everyone - for encouragement, to force myself to write.
I thought there was a good chance the fridge was possessed. It was subtle about it, but I had its number. I knew its ways. Oh yes.
Pain collected into deep pockets and I was aware of this painbut somehow I could not seem to feel it. It was like a body-deafness.
Peace be with you," I said, and as I turned to resume my journey with Coyote, I added under my breath, "and asskicking be with me.
Whether you do something or decide to do nothing, either way, you are making a moral choice. And I hope people make the right one.
A man's heart is a wretched, wretched thing. It isn't like a mother's womb. It won't bleed. It won't stretch to make room for you.
The short of it is, as an aspiring writer, there is nothing as damaging to your credibility as saying that you don't like to read.
Naturally, I mine my girlfriends lives for good anecdotes and stories - so many of their experiences find their way into my books.
Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there's nothing else.
We're seeing a decline in religion in North America but, I hope, a rise in individual spirituality. Whatever that means to people.
The most horrible thing is not a government that stages public executions, but a government that secretly disposes of its victims.
L.A., for me, is a perfect microcosm of America - because it's so profligate, and so glamorous, and so anti-intellectual, finally.
I'm interested in reality but I'm not interested in realism at all. I'm interested in the ways that I think people want to relate.
In For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway cozies up to revolution by romanticizing it (and not only with those execrable love scenes).
One must never miss an opportunity of quoting things by others which are always more interesting than those one thinks up oneself.
The time at our disposal each day is elastic; the passions we feel dilate it, those that inspire us shrink it, and habit fills it.
All the great things we know have come to us from neurotics. It is they who have founded religions and created great works of art.
Our true birthplace is that in which we cast for the first time an intelligent eye on ourselves. My first homelands were my books.
Hen nights should be banned. You're honour-bound to behave atrociously, then feel terribly ashamed afterwards. (This Charming Man)
My heroes are, above all, the great 19th-century Americans: Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson and the others. I love the way they think.
If you want to learn about a culture, you look at what buildings the people lived in but you also want to know about their cosmos.
Hunger eats civilization. The West is not hungry; that's why they can say they're so civilized. Civilization is the biggest bluff!
She knew words no one had ever heard of, and she used words every day that had been mainly dead or sleeping for hundreds of years.
You can kill time in a number of ways but it always depends on the kind of time you're fighting: some time is unkillable, immortal