Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Money is the root of all evil, and yet it is such a useful root that we cannot get on without it any more than we can without potatoes.
Our actions are in our own hands, but the consequences of them are not. Remember that, my dear, and think twice before you do anything.
It is never too early to try and plant [good principles] in a child, and never too late to cultivate them in the most neglected person.
... for it is the small temptations which undermine integrity unless we watch and pray and never think them too trivial to be resisted.
No exile at the South Pole or on the summit of Mont Blanc separates us more effectively from others than the practice of a hidden vice.
Man is the creature that cannot emerge from himself, that knows his fellows only in himself; when he asserts the contrary, he is lying.
Words do not change their meanings so drastically in the course of centuries as, in our minds, names do in the course of a year or two.
as I get older there is nothing more constantly astonishing to me than the goodness of the Bad; - unless it is the badness of the Good.
... it is curious how fatal it is, either to a situation or to an individual, or even to a name, if in an evil moment it becomes funny.
... in a wicked way, it is an incentive to good living to observe the spice of enjoyment there is to a godly soul in a very little sin.
I think the attempt to defend belief can unsettle it, in fact, because there is always an inadequacy in argument about ultimate things.
The female form provides the solution in which the essence itself is held; she is passio, and acted upon, the male is actio, the mover.
You could ask for hugs if you were feeling sad or you'd hurt yourself, but when it happened spontaneously it made you feel warm inside.
My best days do seem like a distillation of all that was best about school. Write a story! Paint a picture! Write a poem! Make a print!
They're not just dreams. Not anymore, I dream more than I wake now, and, at times, I have crossed over. Can't you see? I've been there.
All great discoveries...are products as much of doubt as of certainty, and the two in opposition clear the air for marvelous accidents.
I do what I do without hope of reward or fear of punishment. I do not require Heaven or Hell to bribe or scare me into acting decently.
...if I see but one smile on your lips when we meet, occasioned by this or any other exertion of mine, I shall need no other happiness.
The labours of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind.
You have to be good. And keep getting better. For every writer taken on, another is dropped. A paradox: you have to rise to stay level.
There was a moment when the Berlin Wall came down and some people felt, "Oh capitalism won. That's the ideology we can believe in now."
If it is nothingness that awaits us, let us make an injustice of it; let us fight against destiny, even though without hope of victory.
The marble keeps merely a cold and sad memory of a man who would else be forgotten. No man who needs a monument ever ought to have one.
What would a man do, if he were compelled to live always in the sultry heat of society, and could never bathe himself in cool solitude?
My wife is - in the strictest sense - my sole companion, and I need no other. There is no vacancy in my mind any more than in my heart.
Just as the best way to judge an adult is by his or her record collection, the best way to judge a pub is by the albums on its jukebox.
When you know that someone close to you is going to die, there's a natural tendency to want to spend as much time with them as you can.
Poets knew that isolation in nature, far from people and things man-made, was good for the soul, and he'd always identified with poets.
At night, when I am alone, I call for you, and whenever my ache seems to be the greatest, you still seem to find a way to return to me.
Inspiration can come from anywhere - an image, a comment, something that's happened to me or someone I know. It's hard to know exactly.
The Internet has the capacity to extend to us genuine choice, and that is not without risk. Real power does entail real responsibility.
You can't really ask for anything more than to be working for your entire life - and to be doing something that some people respond to.
Lots of times when I'm offered things, I can't see how a story gets filmed. Either it's too internal or it doesn't have a strong spine.
Absence, like death, sets a seal on the image of those we love: we cannot realize the intervening changes which time may have effected.
Those who place their affections at first on trifles for amusement, will find these trifles become at last their most serious concerns.
I have been attacked in Turkey more for my interviews than for my books. Political polemicists and columnists do not read novels there.
When I was publishing my first books, the previous generation of authors was fading away, so I was welcomed because I was a new author.
I realized that everything important in sci-fi showed up in the magazines first. It's the proving ground for new writers and new ideas.
Thank you for this, Peter. For dry eyes and silent weeping. You taught me how to hide anything i felt. More than ever, i need that now.
It is a kind of blindness--poverty. We can only grope through life when we are poor, hitting and maiming ourselves against every angle.
The impetus for 'The Sisters Brothers' was it occurred to me that there was no neurosis in westerns, or there's a minimal amount of it.
When I was young and easily outraged, I would be upset when every fictional character I created was somehow reduced to 'autobiography.'
You can't be silent and create silence in being silent. So you have to create silence or, rather, the effect of silence, through words.
I don't know anything about directing, but if you love actors, know your story and hire a great company, then anyone can direct a film.
I work all day, morning and afternoon, just about every day. If I sit there like that for two or three years, at the end I have a book.
Fortune's wheel takes you very high and then throws you very low, and there is nothing you can do but face the turn of it with courage.
I wonder how often not the intention but the desire springs up in a doctor's mind: 'Can I let this human being out of the trap of Life?
Btw Pink Floyd album out in October is called 'The Endless River.' Based on 1994 sessions is Rick Wright's swansong and very beautiful.
Plato worried that philosophical writing would take the place of living conversations for which, in philosophy, there is no substitute.
The fact is, for all the critics' talk about me as a realist, I'm making everything up - everything. It is all about imagining with me.