Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Jane Austen easily used half a page describing someone else's eyes; she would not appreciate summarizing her reading tastes in ten titles.
All I can do is stand still- I feel like if I just stand still, I can stop it from being true, I can pretend that everything is all right.
Maybe forgiveness is just the continual pushing aside of bitter memories, until time dulls the hurt and anger, and the wrong is forgotten.
I would be shocked by the lack of security if we were not at Amity headquarters. They often straddle the line between trust and stupidity.
My eyes close. I am here and not here. A waking nap? A flight to the end of the galaxy and perhaps a couple of billion light-years beyond?
In the 70s and 80s, I made a good living. Have managed my funds carefully, will never have to go out and cadge quarters from the tourists.
When Loughner himself speaks and we find out his real influences are Spiderman, 'Gnome Chomsky,' Taylor Swift, and Dr. Bronner, then what?
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest.
Condemnation by category is the lowest form of hatred, for it is cold-hearted and abstract, lacking even the courage of a personal hatred.
I'm not a very intentional writer. I try to be as unintentional as possible. What I basically try to do is invite the zeitgeist in to tea.
Why do you wear a mask and hood?" I think everybody will in the near future," was the man in black's reply. "They're terribly comfortable.
I don't want the power. When a project is given to me, and I say yes, I'm gonna oblige everybody who has the power to try to make it work.
In fiction, the reader will make jumps with you. If you can make the reader make that leap with you, it's a thrilling moment for everyone.
What woman, however old, has not the bridal-favours and raiment stowed away, and packed in lavender, in the inmost cupboards of her heart?
If dying, I yet live in a tender heart or two; nor am I lost and hopeless living, if a sainted departed soul still loves and prays for me.
I had the feeling that some horrible image was just beyond the field of vision, moving, as I turned my head, so that I never quite saw it.
I see painting as an evocative magic, and there must always be a random factor in magic, one which must be constantly changed and renewed.
When, in the autumn of 1947, I was fired from the first and only job I have ever held, I wanted one thing out of life: to become a writer.
I'm still a marginal figure living from book to book, but, as long as I'm producing labour as a good Marxist prole, I guess I'm satisfied.
People profess to have certain political positions, but their conservatism or liberalism is really the least interesting thing about them.
And this is one of the major questions of our lives: how we keep boundaries, what permission we have to cross boundaries, and how we do so.
But a child's joy is doubled for the mother, and the sound of her son's laughter began to her heart, a feat she had never believed possible
I am not mad. I am eccentric perhaps--at least certain people say so; but as regards my profession. I am very much as one says, 'all there.
What I feel is that if one has got to have a murder actually happening in one's house, one might as well enjoy it, if you know what I mean.
But things move on and by the time you've plotted your position the world around you has changed and you are running -panting- to catch up.
To his and everybody else's way of thinking, you should build a house with your own hands before you start talking about being an engineer.
I loved him even now, as he took a knife to my throat, as I drowned in blood, as I whispered "Cousin, you were wrong. We were born to live.
My grandmother was overwhelmed by what was happening to us. She ahd moved back into the past because the here and the now was too terrible.
In my own life, I'm pretty good at choosing between good and bad. It's the choices between good and good I find the most difficult to make.
The first duty of a leader is to make himself be loved without courting love. To be loved without 'playing up' to anyone - even to himself.
She left me, offended at my want of sympathy, and thinking, no doubt, that I envied her. I did not - at least, I firmly believed I did not.
I don't write about the intimate details of my cousins and aunts and uncles, and my mother and my father because it's not right to, for me.
If our lives are made up of a string of a thousand moments, at some of those moments we look a lot more spiritually evolved than at others.
I think every creative impulse that a working writer, or artist of any sort has, comes out of that dark old country where dreams come from.
I wonder how many times we dream that kind of dream-something strange and illogical-and fail to realize God is trying to tell us something.
When the little dog snarls, the big dog does not connect the snarl with himself, simply fancying that the little dog must be uncomfortable.
It's terrible to lose somebody, but it's also true that some people never have anybody to lose, and I think that's got to be so much worse.
In the places that call me out, I know I'll recover my wordless childhood trust in the largeness of life and its willingness to take me in.
A woman without a man -- a condition of 'manlessness' -- is defined as alone. But a single mother is less alone than the average housewife.
Hope E. L .James doesn't think I'm being a prankster. I really want to adapt her novels for the screen. Christian Grey is a writer's dream.
I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise, it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him.
No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.
Like a good chess player, Satan is always trying to maneuver you into a position where you can save your castle only by losing your bishop.
Now is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It won't last forever. We must take it or leave it.
They say, 'The coward dies many times'; so does the beloved. Didn't the eagle find a fresh liver to tear in Prometheus every time it dined?
Perfect goodness can never debate about the end to be attained, and perfect wisdom cannot debate about the means most suited to achieve it.
Things that are unsightly: birthmarks, infidelity, strangers in one's kitchen. Too much sunlight. Stitches. Missing teeth. Overlong guests.
I hope, in years to come, I shall hold my heart up and it will be a pane of clear glass, through which I see all, but nothing is distorted.
It is vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility; they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.
The first duty of a human being is to assume the right functional relationship to society - more briefly, to find your real job, and do it.