Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Chiron had said once that nations were the most foolish of mortal inventions. "No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from.
He will wipe the tears from all faces.' It takes nothing from the loveliness of the verse to say that is exactly what will be required
Over my life as a teacher, women have been too quiet. I'm quiet myself. I don't think I said three words the whole of graduate school.
The problem with being a writer is that some readers tend to think that anything that comes out of a character's mouth is you talking.
Listen - man is a child of Nature. When he turns against his mother - he's done! He may not find out about it right away, but he will.
Don't I ever do anything else but take soulful walks down the Bayswater Road, I thought, as I walked soulfully down the Baywater Road.
My belief is that everything that's written about you is actually secondary showbiz nonsense, and you shouldn't take any notice of it.
Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to a mind when it has once seized on it like a lichen on a rock." - Frankenstein p115
I see myself as someone who's been saved by writing. God knows what I would have been, become or how I would have ended up without it.
There are men that will make you books, and turn them loose into the world, with as much dispatch as they would do a dish of fritters.
Some may want to shout on the street, but we should tolerate those who hide in their rooms and use literature to voice their opinions.
And I've always worked on the principle that if it interests me enough to write about it, then it must interest a lot of other people.
There's never been anything I didn't love that I didn't connect with on a personal level because, to some degree, I projected upon it.
All characters come from people I know, but after the initial inspiration, I tend to modify the characters so they fit with the story.
There's that popular misconception of man as something between a brute and an angel. Actually man is in transit between brute and God.
Because there is very little honor left in American life, there is a certain built-in tendency to destroy masculinity in American men.
I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.
I did like Robert Vavra's book not only for its so very good photographs but for the text as well. He's no ordinary fellow, obviously.
There`s a tendency for Americans, particularly the simpler you are, the more you believe in the president as the kind of person to be.
Ridicule has even been the most powerful enemy of enthusiasm, and properly the only antagonist that can be opposed to it with success.
A writer in someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is.
The wise are not wise because they make no mistakes. They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them.
Only stupid men trying to seem smart need to be with dumb women. Only weak men trying to look strong are attracted to compliant women.
My father always said that government is like watching another man piss in your boot. Someone feels better but it certainly isn't you.
A weak King must be what other Kings have been; a strong King is himself, and from then on the meaning of the name of King is changed.
A little scandal is an excellent thing; nobody is ever brighter or happier of tongue than when he is making mischief of his neighbors.
The most autobiographical thing I've ever written is my second novel, called 'An Ocean in Iowa.' That is pretty close to my childhood.
No structure, even an artificial one, enjoys the process of entropy. It is the ultimate fate of everything, and everything resists it.
Because that is when you love somebody - when you see them being game in the face of the worst. Not courageous. Not heroic. Just game.
As I see it, my focus has never been on masculine power rampant and triumphant but rather on the antithesis: masculine power impaired.
Writing is frustration - it's daily frustration, not to mention humiliation. It's just like baseball: you fail two-thirds of the time.
Truth to tell, the longer I live, the more I'm tempted to think that the only moderately worthwhile people in the world are you and I.
Divorce also entails the beginning of a supposition that that familial reality might have obstructed one's ability to perceive others.
The dilemma of the critic has always been that if he knows enough to speak with authority, he knows too much to speak with detachment.
I was born too late and missed the dream of empire. Its shadow, the Commonwealth, coincides with my life but rarely connected with it.
America beats on you so hard the whole time. You are constantly being pummeled by other people's rights and their sense of patriotism.
Even the most sensitive person can get used to even the most insensitive thing. Cruelty isn’t a personality trait. Cruelty is a habit.
Oh, Will Henry. After all we have been through, how could I send you away now, at our most critical hour? You are indispensable to me.
I really kill myself on titles, although 'The 5th Wave' seems like an obvious title, doesn't it? You don't know how long that took me.
I go down to my little hut, where it's tight and dark and warm, and within minutes I can go back to being six or seven or eight again.
When I first thought about writing the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I never originally meant to have children in it at all!
There is nothing but God's grace. We walk upon it; we breathe it; we live and die by it; it makes the nails and axles of the universe.
The very flexibility and ease which make men's friendships so agreeable while they endure, make them the easier to destroy and forget.
There are times when I think that the reading I have done in the past has had no effect except to cloud my mind and make me indecisive
The literary story is a story that deals with the complicated human heart with an honest tolerance for the ambiguity in which we live.
The Flag still floats unblotted with defeat! But ah the blood that keeps its ripples red, The starry lives that keep its field alight.
[...] the inevitable triumph of illusion over reality that was the single most obvious truth about the history of the human race [...]
The warm sun kissed the earthTo consecrate thy birth,And from his close embraceThy radiant faceSprang into sight,A blossoming delight.
I believe your stomach tells you what it wants, and I don't think mine asks for anything that unhealthy. I'm a trained health machine.
I'm fascinated by the idea of disparate, difficult people learning to trust each other when they're thrust into hellish circumstances.