Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I was a terrible painter - my portraits looked like the evil chimera love-children of Picasso's demoiselles and the BBC test card clown.
When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am.
Is it possible that nobody has ever known that there never has been a completely civilized man, and won't be for another thousand years?
It is one of the major tragedies that nothing is more discomforting than the hearty affection of the Old Friends who never were friends.
My greatest pleasure is spending time with my family: my husband and daughter, but also my mother, my three sisters, and their families.
The sun was like a word written between the sea and the sky, a word that was swallowed up by the sea before any man had time to read it.
The 1988 biopic of bebop immortal Charlie Parker, 'Bird,' was the film that opened my eyes to Clint Eastwood's potential as a filmmaker.
A modern fascination with the fantastic seems to come along every couple of generations, usually at a point when we're future saturated.
Repetition for no reason is a sign of carelessness or pretentiousness, but there are plenty of good reasons to repeat words and phrases.
...the synagogin', the tabernaclin', the psalmin', that goes on in this hoose, that's enough to break the spirits o' ony young creature.
You don't have to be sincere yourself to recognize sincerity when you see it. Any more than you have to be insane to recognize insanity.
When I'm talking to someone I think 'can I use this dialogue in a book,'" said Luis. "If the answer is no I try talking to someone else.
People, including me, can get so detached from everything, but when you can focus on a defined place, a home, it gets you back in touch.
Don’t. Don’t play that game.” His brow pressed to hers. “When I heard you cry out . . . it was like a saber to the gut. I wanted to die.
In books we never find anything but ourselves. Strangely enough, that always gives us great pleasure, and we say the author is a genius.
Because, really, what was worse than lying wide-awake in the dark, watching your life drip away, one irreplaceable minute after another?
The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.
There is nothing of any consequence in education, in the economy, in city planning, in social policy that does not concern black people.
Then I realize what it is. It's him. Something about him makes me feel like I am about to fall. Or turn to liquid. Or burst into flames.
The truth is... you are hurting me. Not on purpose, I know that. But I love you and every second that you don´t love me back...it hurts.
It reminds me why I chose Dauntless in the first place: not because they are perfect, but because they are alive. Because they are free.
My problem might be that even if I did go home, I wouldn’t belong there, among people who give without thinking and care without trying.
I have realized that part of being Dauntless is being willing to make things more difficult for yourself in order to be self-sufficient.
Syzygy, inexorable, pancreatic, phantasmagoria - anyone who can use those four words in one sentence will never have to do manual labor.
Size has nothing to do with literature. All legs are long enough to touch the ground, and all books are big enough to fill their covers.
When I went to school, there were no Black philosophers, at least none that I was aware of, who were recognized by Western universities.
Every time one of my books sells a million copies in paperback, Pan Macmillan gives me a gold statuette of Pan. I have about 20 of them.
They say I'm worth either €200 million, €100 million, €50 million or €10 million, but that's something between God, the HMRC and myself.
Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.
If ignorance were enough to make things not exist, the world would be more like a lot of people think it is. But it's not. And it's not.
Somewhere, deep within her, surfaces a tiny clockwork submarine. There are times when you can only take the next step. And then another.
The most common human act that writing a novel resembles is lying. The working novelist lies daily, very complexly, and at great length.
Come forward, some great marshal, and organize equality in society, and your rod shall swallow up all the juggling old court gold-sticks
Werther had a love for Charlotte Such as words could never utter; Would you know how first he met her? She was cutting bread and butter.
A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering.
danger is a biologic necessity, like dreams. if you face death, for that time, for the period of direct confrontation, you are immortal.
My fiction may, now and again, illuminate aspects of the human condition, but I do not consciously set out to do so: I am a storyteller.
Something in me was changed by Lincoln in the Bardo, and the great sublime/grotesque risk of [George Saunders'] ghosts was a part of it.
I don't think that when Zionism began there was a claim that we were losing - even in part - our capacity to contribute to other peoples.
I'm not very interested in myself. I do have a deep moral belief that you should always look out at other things and not be self-centred.
What if she never remembers?" "Then you better make her fall in love with you, again." "How did I do it the first time?" "You let her in.
The darkness inside your head is something your imagination fills with stories that have nothing to do with the real darkness around you.
I studied law at Warwick University, then philosophy at Oxford. I met my wife Leah there. She is American, so I followed her to New York.
I often wonder why the whole world is so prone to generalise. Generalisations are seldom if ever true and are usually utterly inaccurate.
The writer in western civilization has become not a voice of his tribe, but of his individuality. This is a very narrow-minded situation.
It's where I keep all my things. Get a lot of compliments on this. Plus it's not a purse, it's called a satchel. Indiana Jones wears one.
Only those who decline to scramble up the career ladder are interesting as human beings. Nothing is more boring than a man with a career.
Young people believe that regret is something you will never feel if you simply do as you please, but sometimes it is a matter of degree.
For things to have value in man's world, they are given the role of commodities. Among man's oldest and most constant commodity is woman.
One of the things I learned about writing a memoir is you can’t drag the reader through everything. Every human life is worth 20 memoirs.