Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I always felt and still feel that fairy tales have an emotional truth that is so deep that there are few things that really rival them.
The success or failure of a life, as far as posterity goes, seems to lie in the more or less luck of seizing the right moment of escape
There is much said about the wickedness of doing evil that good may come. Alas! there is such a thing as doing good that evil may come.
I'm concerned about a lot of serious border issues. This book is about the border reality and the struggles of the undocumented worker.
I see a lot of marriages crash and burn around me and my wife. I've always been curious about how hard it is to love well and be loved.
The Western planners are definitely trying to fragment the entire Middle East. They already have done, on several historical occasions.
After night comes day. After death comes life. Even at your darkest time look around because you are never really alone. You are loved.
Sometimes I think that Jesus watches my neurotic struggles, and shakes his head and grips his forehead and starts tossing back mojitos.
Prayer means that, in some unique way, we believe we're invited into a relationship with someone who hears us when we speak in silence.
I remember staring at my son endlessly when he was an infant, stunned by his very existence, wondering where on earth he had come from.
But I don't think people take bad advice. They've got intuition too, you know. In fact I'd be surprised if they take any advice at all.
Misunderstanding is my cornerstone. It's everyone's, come to think of it. Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet.
History doesn't choose individual people. History chooses everyone. Every day. The only question is: How long will you ignore the call?
Writing a novel that works is an extremely difficult thing to do. It requires a level of skill and dedication that always surprises me.
But... what about us? What about the past?" she asks blankly. "The past isn't real. it's just a dream," I say. "Don't mention the past.
Proust, more perspicaciously than any other writer, reminds us that the 'walks' of childhood form the raw material of our intelligence.
A sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on.
Every uncorrected error and unrepented sin is, in its own right, a fountain of fresh error and fresh sin flowing on to the end of time.
We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.
A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery.
The rule of the universe is that others can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, and one can paddle every canoe except one's own.
There is only one way fit for a man - Heroism, or Master-Morality, or Violence. All the other people in between are ploughing the sand.
The human mind has no more power of inventing a new value than of planting a new sun in the sky or a new primary color in the spectrum.
Her face was working and twitching with passion, but his looked up at the sky, still quiet, neither angry nor afraid, but a little sad.
Here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron. Here is a book [The Lord of the Rings] which will break your heart."
Perhaps for that very reason, I adored her all the more, because of the eternal human stupidity of pursuing those who hurt us the most.
I was raised among books, making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day.
My belief in ghosts swings with the wind. But my belief that the cemetery felt happy and not sad-I've never changed my mind about that.
I think it's crucial to live, play and work passionately. I'm inspired by my husband, my son and the sense of possibility in the world.
She felt as she often did in class when she was nearly sure she had the right answer, but could not always make herself raise her hand.
Her best friend was gone and nobody understood that no amount of makeup, fresh air or shopping was going to fill the hole in her heart.
Nobody can pretend to know what people want to read or hear or see. People rarely know it themselves; they only know it after the fact.
I don't care about age very much. I think back to the old people I knew when I was growing up, and they always seemed larger than life.
I was never afraid on stage. That's where I was the least afraid. I could just do what I do and I had the amplification and the lights.
If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character, would you slow down? Or speed up?
For sure, even the worst blow job is better than, say, sniffing the best rose ... watching the greatest sunset. Hearing children laugh.
I do write about race a lot, but I don't think writers - of any shade or background or whatever - have to write about certain subjects.
The rain falls upon the just And also on the unjust fellas But mostly it falls upon the just Cause the unjust have the just's umbrellas
I believe that the highest virtue is to be happy, living in the greatest truth, not submitting to the falsehood of these personaltimes.
The world is a raving idiot, and no man can kill it: though I’ll do my best. But you’re right. We must rescue ourselves as best we can.
I will wait and watch till the day of David at last shall be finished, and wisdom no more fox-faced, and the blood gets back its flame.
[A]ny species that exempts itself from the rules of competition ends up destroying the community in order to support its own expansion.
Love meant something to her, she dreamt of it, thought of it, wrote of it. It was the one thing in life that had eluded her completely.
Despite his dodgy politics, Yeats remains an inspiration for his genius and the simple fact that the older he got, the better he wrote.
I don't think writers are any smarter than other people. I think they may be more compelling in their stupidity, or in their confusion.
Te Occidere Possunt Sed Te Edere Non Possunt Nefas Est" ("They can kill you, but the legalities of eating you are quite a bit dicier").
Often I think boys don’t become men. Boys just get papier-mâchéd inside a man’s mask. Sometimes you can tell the boy is still in there.
A life can get knocked into a new orbit by a car crash, a lottery win or just a bleary-eyed consultant giving bad news in a calm voice.
I marveled at how they were all closed up, asleep with their secrets unseen until you reached up and took the book down from the shelf.
When I became political and Communist, it was because they were the only people I had ever met who fought the color bar in their lives.