Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
shocked to realize how much vitality is required simply to support our primitive requirements, we wonder, bewildered, where Art fits in.
When illness enters a home, not only does it take hold of a body. It also weaves a dark web between hearts, a web where hope is trapped.
... the fishermen of Port Sonas care only for the two things, fishing and women. And there's some that are no' that keen on the fishing.
Statistically, you don't have much chance of becoming president if you're not tall and fairly handsome or at least conventional-looking.
The thing most worth doing in this modern world [is to] create jobs that men can work at, and be proud of, and make money by their work.
You have no idea how much the last few days have meant to me," I began. "Meeting you has been the best thing that's ever happened to me.
The problem isn't finding out where you are gonna go-its figuring out what you are gonna do once you get there that is! (Jamie Sullivan)
Even though he was here, she couldn't quite process it. She squeered her eyes shut before opening them again. Yep, still there. Amazing.
I do labor - it's part of the process. Writing is no easier today than it was in the beginning: writing well is very hard to do. Always.
As a writer, I will tell you that darkness is so easy to make interesting. It is so easy because you're allowed to do anything you want.
But I suspect that all writers come up with premises of some kind, fragments of narrative or scenarios, in the course of a working week.
One good reason for writing novels based on your life is that you have something to read in old age when you've forgotten what happened.
I have found by experience that they who have spent all their lives in cities contract not only an effeminacy of habit, but of thinking.
It is hard work to be good when you are very little and very hungry, and have many sticks to beat you, and no mother's lips to kiss you.
Charity in various guises is an intruder the poor see often; but courtesy and delicacy are visitants with which they are seldom honored.
You know the Ark of Israel and the calf of Belial were both made of gold. Religion has never yet changed the metal of her one adoration.
What we love once, we love forever. Shall there be joy in heaven over those who repent, yet no forgiveness for them upon earth? --"Wanda
I have always wanted to write in such a way that will make people think, Why, I've always thought that but never found the words for it.
It rarely adds anything to say, "In my opinion" - not even modesty. Naturally a sentence is only your opinion; and you are not the Pope.
It rarely adds anything to say, 'In my opinion' - not even modesty. Naturally a sentence is only your opinion; and you are not the Pope.
Ah, well, the truth is always one thing, but in a way it's the other thing, the gossip, that counts. It shows where people's hearts lie.
Family is paramount to me in my life, and my own comes first above everything, and that's something universal that people can relate to.
There will come a time when it isn't 'They're spying on me through my phone' anymore. Eventually, it will be 'My phone is spying on me'.
Life ... is only heavy and none else; there is only the one trip, all heavy. Heavy that leads to the grave. For everyone and everything.
A child of today can detect a lie quicker than the wisest adult of two decades ago. When I want to know what is true, I ask my children.
The danger with hatred is, once you start in on it, you get a hundred times more than you bargained for. Once you start, you can't stop.
Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off.
The French have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right. To say goodbye is to die a little.
Youth is not an essential, but rather an accidental property. Nobody is in essence young. One either ceases to be or ceases to be young.
If we look at our attitudes consistently and work out the logical implications we're on the road to moral progress, moral understanding.
I was struck by the way Europeans see history as something neatly linear. For me, it's not that; it's not some kind of straight railway.
'The Narrow Road to the Deep North' is one of the most famous books of all Japanese literature, written by the great poet Basho in 1689.
You can't possibly judge your ability to control something until you've experienced the extremes of its capabilities. Do you understand?
There is no right or wrong reading of Naked Lunch, though some readings are more common, and thus Burroughs commercial is not the issue.
Titchy little snapperwhippers like you should not be higgling around with an old sage and onions who is hundreds of years more than you.
In a way I'm almost more rueful about the notion of having a non-ideological Labour party than I am about the personality of Tony Blair.
Do not forget that even as "to work is to worship" so to be cheery is to worship also, and to be happy is the first step to being pious.
You're either my ship's cook-and then you were treated handsome-or Cap'n Silver, a common mutineer and pirate, and then you can go hang!
A man finds he has been wrong at every stage of his career, only to deduce the astonishing conclusion that he is at last entirely right.
And why should it not be terrifying? A little terror, in my view, is good for the soul, when it is terror in the face of a noble object.
The drama may be called that part of theatrical art which lends itself most readily to intellectual discussion: what is left is theater.
I'm not recognised that much. I'm just a bald man in glasses and there's a rash of them in Dublin. It'd be different if I had a mohican.
One must have the humility and the imagination to honor all deep human experiences - not least those one has never come near to sharing.
I think one of my favorite things about Paris is the ever-present, nonstop beauty of the city. So I would just walk as much as possible.
When the playful me shows up, I am ready to be a serious learner … a culture of playfulness is closely related to the capacity to learn.
The moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.
It seems that the right of freedom of speech that was enshrined in numerous constitutions is now under attack by religious institutions.
A little bit of one story joins onto an idea from another, and hey presto, . . . not old tales but new ones. Nothing comes from nothing.
A poet's work is to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.
The neck on which diamonds might have worthily sparkled, will look less tempting when the biting winter has hung icicles there for gems.