Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I was supposed to be waiting up here when you got back, only your Phoenix lot got in the way...” “Yes, they do that,” said Dumbledore.
Many parts of my life are perfectly ordinary, if that's what you mean. One could even call it boring, but that's what I like about it.
Do not tell me you don’t know you’re pretty. If so, I’m about to lose all faith in mankind. You don’t want to be responsible for that.
The best book of the year, Grobel's writing is quite marvelous. The Hustons reads vividly, just like one of John Huston's great films.
I don't know. Sometimes I try to say what's on my mind and it comes out sounding like I ate a dictionary and I'm shitting pages. Sorry
I want a blaze of light to flame in me forever in a timeless, dear love of everything. And why should I pretend to want anything else?
When you've understood this scripture, throw it away. If you can't understand this scripture, throw it away. I insist on your freedom.
Brookfield High School. How may I direct your call? No, sir, this is not a waste- disposal unit, I'm afraid you have the wrong number.
You write in order to change the world ... if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.
A society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven.
If one cannot risk oneself, then one is simply incapable of giving. And, after all, one can give freedom only by setting someone free.
The past is what makes the present coherent, and the past will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly.
Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.
Wars are fought by teenagers, you realize that. They really ought to be fought by the politicians and old people who start these wars.
There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.
She read books quickly and compulsively, paperback after paperback, as if she might drift away without the anchor of the printed page.
It would be better if only the old men fought the wars. Every country is the country of youth. When its youth dies, it dies with them.
Pride, anger, gluttony, and idleness are sometimes conquered, but the conversion of a malicious and envious mind is a kind of miracle.
When you come to Christ as a real young person, I think when you become a teen-ager either you rebel or you search, doubt, and wonder.
I lived in San Francisco and did the Stegner fellowship for two years, and it was amazing. From fall 2008 to spring 2010, I was there.
The guy behind the counter scratches his neck. “Are you being serious?” Her face is stoic. “Absolutely. I never kid about teddy bears.
For me, writing plays is far more an act of the mind than of the emotions. It's a very different kind of impulse than fiction writing.
And it's exactly what's wrong with the radio. It's like...anything that tries to appeal to everybody always ends up sounding so cheap.
Most of the pathetic scenes in almost everybody's life are scenes unnoted by anyone and totally disregarded by the person in question.
What is astonishing about the social history of the Vietnam war is not how many people avoided it, but how many could not and did not.
It happens to many teenagers-that moment when you feel full of resentment or distrust for those adults you once loved unquestioningly.
With most of my books, I'll actually go out and look at the setting. If you describe things carefully, it kind of makes the scene pop.
Don't you see, if when we die there's nothing, all your sun and fields and what not are all, ah, horror? It's just an ocean of horror.
If men do not keep on speaking terms with children, they cease to be men, and become merely machines for eating and for earning money.
The difficulty with humorists is that they will mix what they believe with what they don't; whichever seems likelier to win an effect.
The study of literature threatens to become a kind of paleontology of failure, and criticism a supercilious psychoanalysis of authors.
I find in my own writing that only fiction - and rarely, a poem - fully tests me to the kind of limits of what I know and what I feel.
You have to write the story that's at the front of your head. There is no point in trying to write for the market; it won't ring true.
This evening I begin a notebook. If anyone reads this, I trust they will forgive my overuse of "I". I can't stop it. I'm writing this.
The story knows itself better than the writer does at some point, knows what's being said before the writer figures out how to say it.
It takes far less courage to kill yourself than it takes to wake up one more time. It is harder to stay where you are than to get out.
Giving Papa time to think, as Arty put it, was like pumping random rounds into a fireworks factory. The odds favored dramatic results.
I don't have a deep link with England like, say, Jonathan Coe or Hanif Kureishi might demonstrate. For me it is like a mythical place.
Monty Python is like catnip for nerds. Once you get them started quoting it, they are constitutionally incapable of feeling depressed.
On a high mountain I stood, And cried the name of Ali, Lion of God.O Ali, Lion of God, King of Men, Bring joy to our sorrowful hearts.
They say a good man is worth fighting for. But a man who's good for YOU shouldn't make you fight just for the right to be in his life.
I see ghosts everywhere, and that is partially a function of my being incredibly near-sighted and reading way too late into the night.
When a man is discontented with himself, it has one advantage - that it puts him into an excellent frame of mind for making a bargain.
Positiveness is a most absurd foible. If you are in the right, it lessens your triumph; if in the wrong, it adds shame to your defeat.
I'm happy not knowing. Most of the time (except when I'm a neurotic mess about uncertainty) I feel glad that the horizon is a mystery.
The danger would be going back, or staying still. The only way out was through. The past was ruins, but the present was still in play.
It's an engrossing look at the way the flow of information shapes history-as well as a rare glimpse into the soul of the hardcore geek
I'm happy to report that 'The New Press' is still in business to this day. But not thanks to me. I was a really bad publishing intern.
The city, no matter how small, is corrupt and unrepentant, while the sun shines brighter in the country, making people more wholesome.
The emerging woman ... will be strong-minded, strong-hearted, strong-souled, and strong-bodied...strength and beauty must go together.