Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There are times in life when the most comfortable thing is to do nothing at all. Things happen to you and you just let them happen.
Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants willing to be dethroned.
Frequent and violent temptations were a proof that the citadel of the soul had not fallen and that the devil raged to make it fall.
Ineluctable modality of the visible; at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read.
I'd say the biggest relationship is the repetition of certain themes. I don't want to say "topics," but certain points of interest.
I never wish to offend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness.
We certainly do not forget you, so soon as you forget us. It is, perhaps, our fate rather than our merit. We cannot help ourselves.
Lesson one in time travel, Thursday. First of all, we are all time travellers. The vast majority of us manage only one day per day.
Cash is always the deciding factor in such matters of moral politics; nothing ever gets done unless motivated by commerce or greed.
The main object of a revolution is the liberation of man... not the interpretation and application of some transcendental ideology.
He had discovered that people who allow themselves to be blown about by the winds of emotion and impulse are always unhappy people.
That adage about 'Write what you know' is basically the opposite of the way I function. I write about what I'm curious to find out.
Now that Scotty has entered the realm of myth, everyone wants to own him. And maybe they should. Doesn't a myth belong to everyone?
My dream remains to inform and entertain through fiction in the form of novels and movies that compete in the marketplace of ideas.
I fall down and my palms split open against the gravel. Injuries on the outside are easy to endure and I get up without hesitation.
All a work of art can do is present the surface. I can't know the insides of people. I know very little about the inside of myself.
With the crime novels, it's delightful to have protagonists I can revisit in book after book. It's like having a fictitious family.
The former stewardess glared at her ex-pilot husband as if he had been speaking, and thinking, in the absence of sufficient oxygen.
The next major advance in the health of the American people will be determined by what the individual is willing to do for himself.
It is a sad day when one looks back and sees that his largest regrets have become some of the most integral elements of his dreams.
That's my sense of how crime works: that it's not any kind of calculated evil driven by the devil, but just control disintegrating.
Life, too much of it, and not enough. The fear that it will end some day, and the fear that tomorrow will be the same as yesterday.
We are each of us like our little blue planet, hung in black space, upheld by nothing but our mutual reassurances, our loving lies.
But it is just two lovers, holding hands and in a hurry to reach their car, their locked hands a starfish leaping through the dark.
To guarantee the individual maximum freedom within a social frame of minimal laws ensures - if not happiness - its hopeful pursuit.
...She felt that nothing could kill her hope now, nothing. She was seventy-five and she was going to make some changes in her life.
For myself I think that one wrong does not right the other, and forgiveness cannot be won with useless tears or alms to the Church.
People don't use their eyes. They never see a bird, they see a sparrow. They never see a tree, they see a birch. They see concepts.
I am deeply Catholic and always will be, but I'm no longer a member of the church. I left in 2003 because of the sex abuse scandal.
The things we do to our children - most of the evil in the world is not done with bad intentions but with the best intentions ever.
If there was a God, he'd guide the winds, let them blow for me so that, with a tug of my string, I'd cut loose my pain, my longing.
At the time we are focusing our efforts primarily on building shelters for refugees. Homelessness in Afghanistan is a huge problem.
He had the blue kite in his hands; that was the first thing I saw. And I can't lie now and say my eyes didn't scan it for any rips.
[Sex] is of real interest to every human being and so why gloss over it, and it's fun, it's interesting, it has so many dimensions.
True maturity is only reached when a man realizes he has become a father figure to his girlfriends' boyfriends - and he accepts it.
Naturally, I mine my girlfriends' lives for good anecdotes and stories - so many of their experiences find their way into my books.
When you stay too long in the same place, things and people go to pot on you, they rot and start stinking for your special benefit.
I want to do something splendid… Something heroic or wonderful that won’t be forgotten after I’m dead… I think I shall write books.
I don't like favors; they oppress and make me fell like a slave. I'd rather do everything for myself, and be perfectly independent.
...and best of all, the wilderness of books, in which she could wander, where she liked, made the library a region of bliss to her.
Hope is like a path in the countryside. Originally, there is nothing - but as people walk this way again and again, a path appears.
All who have read a few old books have picked up the old tactics of considering every new idea a 'heresy' which must be rooted out.
We allow ourselves to unclench when we're home with our families, which is one of the truly wonderful advantages of human intimacy.
The thing about relationships is, the stronger they get, the more rapidly the realm of romance starts to overlap with the domestic.
We are all somebody's children, and when we're in pain, we regress, instinctively looking to our parents to make everything better.
I started out in the journalism program, but I got kicked out. I wasn't very good at it. It wasn't where I wanted to be ultimately.
My friends and I sometimes laugh at each other that there is so much maintenance of a body. I paid no attention when I was younger.
Dreams disdain fine lines and finishing touches on landscapes – they content themselves with thick but representative brushstrokes.
Lies are essential to humanity. They are perhaps as important as the pursuit of pleasure and moreover are dictated by that pursuit.
There is no embarrassment quite like the embarrassment of listening to a person for whom one has a regard making a fool of himself.