Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It's too easy to unconsciously echo another novelist's voice while reading fiction, a habit of mimicry I probably picked up as a musician.
Cigars must be smoked one at a time, peaceably, with all the leisure in the world. Cigarettes are of the instant, Cigars are for eternity.
What makes books - and with them writers - so dangerous that church and state, politburos and the mass media feel the need to oppose them?
When the young woman leans over the sky, about to water the flowers as well as the weeds, her white front splits open until her milk runs.
I'd long wanted to write about that moment when a woman steps off the career track to have her first child. For me, that was a scary time.
There is something beautiful about all scars of whatever nature. A scar means the hurt is over, the wound is closed and healed, done with.
Catastrophe and desire are linked in our lives as the moon is linked to that reflected light from the sun which enables the eye to see it.
For God's sake, be economical with your lamps and candles! not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man's blood was spilled for it.
In time of peril, like the needle to the loadstone, obedience, irrespective of rank, generally flies to him who is best fitted to command.
Our institutions have a potent digestion, and may in time convert and assimilate to good all elements thrown in, however originally alien.
The innocence of virgins is like milk which turns when exposed to a clap of thunder, to a tart smell, to a hot day, to the merest nothing.
The happier a man, the more apt he is to tremble. In hearts exclusively tender, anxiety and jealousy are in exact proportion to happiness.
I am a man of peace [so he told Mother, but it always appeared to me that he was the most belligerent man of peace I had ever encountered]
My books were attacked constantly by the Communist Party for not hewing to the Party line. I have never hewed to a Party line of any kind.
How guilt refined the methods of self-torture, threading the beads of detail into an eternal loop, a rosary to be fingered for a lifetime.
What is it precisely, that feeling of 'returning' from a poem? Something is lighter, softer, larger - then it fades, but never completely.
Is there any chance you'd overthrow the tyrannical Beast Lord and his psychotic consort?" "Yeah, I want a vacation." -Kate & Curran to Jim
This is payback, isn't it?" Jim glared at me. "Don't be ridiculous," I told him. "As the Consort of the Pack, I'm far above petty revenge.
Go to the Black Sea, meet new people, see beautiful places, get killed by a mutant carnivorous kangaroo goat. One item off my bucket list.
I chuckled to myself and kept walking. The Universe had proven Curran wrong: a person who aggravated him more than me did, in fact, exist.
There is a sweetness in being the sole source, the autocratic and irresponsible cause of the greatest joy and profoundest pain to another.
Poverty is a lot like childbirth - you know it is going to hurt before it happens, but you'll never know how much until you experience it.
Harry, guess what?" said Tonks from her perch on top of the washing machine, and she wiggled her left hand at him; a ring glittered there.
The Forbidden Forest looked as though it had been enchanted, each tree smattered with silver, and Hagrid's cabin looked like an iced cake.
Where is Wood?" said Harry, suddenly realizing he wasn't there. "Still in the showers," said Fred. "We think he's trying to drown himself.
She was actively frightened of imparting confidences, because she feared that they might betray the world of oddness that lived inside her
I've been asked this question so many times, do you feel you need to write a book for adults? No, I don't need to write a book for adults.
Yeah, because when you’re attracted to someone, you actually enjoy kissing them and afterward, you don’t act like you kissed Adolf Hitler.
So will you meet me?” “Yeah. Sure. Where.” “Montrag’s safe house in Connecticut. If you were the one who killed him, you know the address.
V?" Butch said. "Don't leave, okay?" "Never." V brushed Butch's hair back with a gesture so tender it was out of place coming from a male.
I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.
Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.
The deepest instinct is to want to do something enduring, something worthwhile, and to be engaged by that, whether one achieves it or not.
God did not need any assistance, but man did; bitterly he wanted it, and the giving of such assistance was the proper business of a woman.
She had nothing to wish otherwise, but that the days did not pass so swiftly. It was a delightful visit;-perfect, in being much too short.
Every young lady may feel for my heroine in this critical moment, for every young lady has at some time or other known the same agitation.
What you take to be hyprocrisy is sometimes a certain caution, sometimes genuine, though ponderous, childish, sometimes a mixture of both.
I'd like to have a word for 'the sadness inspired by failing restaurants' as well as for 'the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.
Criticism is fine and conversation is fine, but the person who's criticizing should know what they're saying and whom they're criticizing.
I've tried writing on a computer thinking it would make me more efficient, but if you're writing crummy stuff, being efficient is no help.
The birth mother is placing the baby out of love. I still believe that. Well, the ones weve dealt with who were actually pregnant, anyway.
When I was a junior camp counselor and it was my job to tell the campers a bedtime story or devotional, I would tell them a rapture story.
I tried the second season of 'American Horror Story,' and it scared me horribly. I guess I prefer my own imagination to a realized visual.
One of the great fallacies of our time is that the Nazis rose to power because they imposed order on chaos. Precisely the opposite is true
Piers is always going on about how he hated Stowe. As if that solves everything, as if to hate something means it can't have affected you.
To each other, we were as normal and nice as the smell of bread. We were just a family. In a family even exaggerations make perfect sense.
I felt that I was not, never had been and never would be a living part of this overpoweringly solid and deeply meaningful world around me.
Before the Internet became so powerful, I toured extensively. With the rise of the Internet, touring apparently has become less important.
... if you're going to wear a dress like that you need to wear it with confidence. You need to fill it out mentally as well as physically.
there are only these: sparkling eyes, smudged lipstick, fading starlight, the crunching of feet on gravel, laughter, and a slow walk home.