Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think it's restrictive to typecast myself as a novelist because I enjoy other forms of expression. I love literature and I love cinema.
Basically if you burst into my office the walls themselves will flutter as if alive - maybe that's the reason for all the wings in 'Pure.
If there's a rift in the marriage - if someone feels neglected, frustrated, tempted by others, or unsure - then trouble can easily arise.
In a family of all girls, I was always the 'boy' in my mind - the protector, the masculine one. No one would ever have to worry about me.
My father and I did work for a while at the flea market and there really are rows of Afghans working there, some of whom I am related to.
Now and then I become conscious of having the reputation of being one of the great drinkers, if not one of the great drunks, of our time.
Anything remotely resembling news media is going to continue to migrate online until very little or none of it is produced on dead trees.
When I cook certain dishes, I smell my grandmother's kitchen, my grandmother's smells. I thought, 'What a wonderful way to tell a story.'
They flower spontaneously out of the demands of our natures - and the best of them lead us not only outward in space, but inward as well.
The first thing you have to do is get immersed in the project, organizing yourself, knowing what you are going after and not going after.
The real problem with being around James was that he was always the hero. And what did that make you? Either the sidekick or the villain.
One can't relive one's life. Forgiveness is not what's difficult; one's always too ready to forgive. And it does no good, that's obvious.
She had a womanly instinct that clothes possess an influence more powerful over many than the worth of character or the magic of manners.
Go out more, keep cheerful as well as busy, for you are the sunshine-maker of the family, and if you get dismal there is no fair weather.
The highest praise of God consists in the denial of him by the atheist who finds creation so perfect that it can dispense with a creator.
I believe that all true art is classic, but the dictates of the mind rarely permit of its being recognized as such when it first appears.
To talk over a quarrel, with its inevitable accompaniment of self-justification, is too much like handling cobwebs to be very successful.
Both 'Where'd You Go, Bernadette' and my first novel, 'This One is Mine,' are pretty complex on a story level, and fun reads as a result.
I know of people who don't believe it, but depression is an illness, but unlike, say, a broken leg, you don't know when it'll get better.
Writing nonfiction has been my most serious education, and for all those years it kept me from even glancing in the direction of despair.
One of the things that is wonderful about hymns is that they are a sort of universally shared poetry, at least among certain populations.
Cinder twisted up her lips. "Do you think it could have a virus?" "Maybe her programming was overwhelmed by Prince Kai's uncanny hotness.
For me, disability is a way of getting some extremity, some kind of very difficult situation, that throws an interesting light on people.
Use your imagination, and you'll see that even the most narrow, humdrum lives are infinite in scope if you examine them with enough care.
One is attracted to beauty. Beauty is the coordination of things, in such a way, that it is what attracts you. It's almost self-defining.
I want incremental improvements. There's the record of all the revolutionary and violent change and extremism in general - it's dreadful.
Death eats up all things, both the young lamb and old sheep; and I have heard our parson say, death values a prince no more than a clown.
The English lord marries for love, and is rather inclined to love where money is; he rarely marries in order to improve his coat of arms.
Irish gardens beat all for horror. With 19 gardeners, Lord Talbot of Malahide has produced an affair exactly like a suburban golf course.
A decade passed between King's assassination and my birth, but the older I get, the more acutely aware I become that 10 years is nothing.
As the moral gloom of the world overpowers all systematic gaiety, even so was their home of wild mirth made desolate amid the sad forest.
Writing the last page of the first draft is the most enjoyable moment in writing. It's one of the most enjoyable moments in life, period.
Our souls were one, if you must know and never shall they be apart; with splendid dawn, your face aglow i reach for you and find my heart
As hard as it was, as terrible and unfair as the way things turned out, i wouldn't have traded the few days i spent with him for anything
In the end, you really want to make the best film that you can, and in the reality of the filmmaking world, you have things like budgets.
It's not that any sufficiently advanced technology is magic, it's that any technology taking place beyond the threshold of our senses is.
Executive power in any nation arguably has more in common with executive power in another country than with the citizens it should serve.
I suddenly had a little epiphany: all the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal.
I have seen her and sister cry over a book for an hour together, and they said, they liked the book the better the more it made them cry.
One writer, for instance, excels at a plan or a title page, another works away at the body of the book, and a third is a dab at an index.
I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.
This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe in, and those we never think to question.
I've learned much, Father, and this above all: that no station in life is above any other, if it's occupied by someone with a good heart.
When I write fiction, I create characters whose views are not my own, and I allow them to be eloquent in defense of their, not my, views.
I will never be a leader of men, and neither do I want to be one, and neither do I want to be led. I thought: I want to lead only myself.
If you like cats and have some, you get kittens; and if you like kittens and enjoy having them about, they grow up and you get more cats.
You don't have to be a good person to be a good writer--history shows it's better if you're not--but you have to understand your badness.
The concept of conservation is a far truer sign of civilization than that spoilation of a continent which we once confused with progress.
To fight the Empire is to be infected by its derangement.... Whoever defeats the Empire becomes the Empire; it proliferates like a virus.
I think great art should play a part in the ordinary man's life, don't you? It can make his existence so much richer and more meaningful.