Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My mother and father met while playing chess, so I've always had a fondness for the game. If it weren't for chess, I might not be here.
Give parents the tiniest of confidences and they'll use them as crowbars to jimmy you open and rearrange your life with no perspective.
I say ‘Uhmm...’ a lot. I mentioned this to Karla and she says it’s a CPU word. It means you’re assembling data in your head - spooling.
Why are we even here [on earth], what's our human nature? It's precipitating a real philosophical crisis that I find quite fascinating.
The final test for a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of anything else which we cannot define.
People have their own deaths as well as their own lives, and even if there is nothing beyond death, we shall differ in our nothingness.
Men yearn for poetry though they may not confess it; they desire that joy shall be graceful and sorrow august and infinity have a form.
America is rather like life. You can usually find in it what you look for. It will probably be interesting, and it is sure to be large.
When I am idle and shiftless, my affairs become confused; when I work, I get results ... not great results, but enough to encourage me.
It is almost as stupid to let your clothes betray that you know you are ugly as to have them proclaim that you think you are beautiful.
Little as she was addicted to solitude, there had come to be moments when it seemed a welcome escape from the empty noises of her life.
The natural enmity between leaver and left is like the absolute, immediate and always shifting hostility between driver and pedestrian.
Women and gay men have something in common after all: in that they are trying to deal with this goofy egotistical monster called a man.
In life, as in whist, hope nothing from the way cards may be dealt to you. Play the cards, whatever they be, to the best of your skill.
That's my answer to the question what is your strongest emotion, if you ever want to ask me: Curiosity, old bean. Curiosity every time.
I had to discover very quickly that class origins cannot be erased, regardless of whether we climb up or down the sociocultural ladder.
Insolent youth rides, now, in the whirlwind. For those modern iconoclasts who are without culture possess, apparently, all the courage.
My characters have to talk, or they're out. They audition in early scenes. If they can't talk, they're given less to do, or thrown out.
I am now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.
The grand canyon which yawns between the writer's concept of what he wants to capture in words and what comes through is a cruel abyss.
But what are years, what are months!" he would exclaim. "Why count the days, when even one day is enough for man to know all happiness.
If it were considered desirable to destroy a human being, the only thing necessary would be to give his work a character of uselessness
The prince says that the world will be saved by beauty! And I maintain that the reason he has such playful ideas is that he is in love.
Fiction was invented the day Jonas arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale.
A tall young man sped swiftly up the wide stone steps leading to the doorway of a mansion in one of Chicago's most fashionable avenues.
Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant unkindness.
"Heaven help us," said the old religion; the new one, from its very lack of that faith, will teach us all the more to help one another.
I'd sooner have one real grief on my mind than twenty false. It's better to know one's robbed than to think one's going to be murdered.
We have no right to come forward and urge wider changes for good, until we have tried to alter the evils which lie under our own hands.
Literature nowadays is a trade... the successful man of letters is your skilful tradesman. He thinks first and foremost of the markets.
Political chaos is connected with the decay of language... one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.
The wide world is full of people wanting help, Jon. Would that some could find the courage to help themselves. - Lord Commander Mormont
'Rome' was one of my favourite shows, and I wish HBO had given it three more seasons 'cause I would have loved to continue watching it.
A loud voice is not always angry; a soft voice not always to be dismissed; and a well-placed silence can be the indisputable last word.
I don't believe that life is supposed to make you feel good, or make you feel miserable either. Life is just supposed to make you feel.
It was quite a blow to have my perfect image of my father shattered, but that's something we all face before we come to full adulthood.
That was such a wonderful time, even in its strangeness and sadness-and life isn't the same now. It's wonderful, but it isn't the same.
I was an outsider, never quite part of what was going on, always looking in. It turned out to be great preparation for writing fiction.
My book had a universal theme. It's not a "racial" novel. It portrays an aspect of civilization, not necessarily Southern civilization.
There is an insolence which none but those who themselves deserve contempt can bestow, and those only who deserve no contempt can bear.
Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises... the best excellence in the children of any other land.
Writing fiction is a solitary occupation but not really a lonely one. The writer's head is mobbed with characters, images and language.
Many men are deeply moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look of pain for a sign of constancy or of love.
The man whom fate employs to awaken love in the heart of a young girl is often unaware of his work and therefore leaves it uncompleted.
A twenty-one-year-old writer is likely to be inhibited by a lack of usable experience. Childhood and adolescence were something I knew.
What idiocy, to racing into this story and its labyrinths, sprinting away from our happiness among the fresh spring grasses by the oak.
There's no one way of telling a story or looking at reality, so I think any device is up for grabs as long as it fits in with the tone.
I've eaten ice cream from all over the world, but until you've tasted Graham's from Geneva, Illinois, you haven't had ice cream at all.
Sometimes you might think the machines we worship make all the chief appointments, promoting the human beings who seem closest to them.
I look into your great brown eyes, where love and loyal homage shine, and wonder where the difference lies between your soul and mine!.