Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I simply seem to drift. But I sort of allow the drift, because it has a kind of check - it forces me to work harder at what I'm interested in.
Curiously enough, one cannot read a book; one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, and active and creative reader is a rereader.
Imagination, the supreme delight of the immortal and the immature, should be limited. In order to enjoy life, we should not enjoy it too much.
Age indomitably, in the European manner. Do not finish your labours young. Be a planet, not a meteor. Honor the working day. Sit at your desk.
Annual plants are nature's emergency medical service, seeded in sounds and scars to hold the land until the perennial cover is re-established.
I'm a feminist. The women in my books in recent years have been powerful characters and I love to see a woman with a cute bottom walking past.
What lurking temptations to forbidden tenderness find their finding-places in a woman's dressing-gown, when she is alone in her room at night!
Mama read it an began pulling her hair an weepin an praisin the Lord, 'cause it say I am 'Temporarily Deferred' on account of I am a numbnuts.
In our world of sleek flesh and collagen, botox and liposuction, what we most fear is the dissolution of the body-mind, the death of the brain.
Plots come to me at such odd moments, when I am walking along the street, or examining a hat shop… suddenly a splendid idea comes into my head.
I cannot suggest political ways out, that is the task of politicians, so it is simply that those who accuse me of this do not know how to read.
... good and evil are so interwoven in life that every good, traced up far enough, is found to involve evil. This is the great mystery of life.
My mother was born in Latvia. She and most of her family fled from the capital city of Riga in 1944 with the final approach of the Soviet army.
Heaven is an idea constructed by man to help him cope with the fact that life on earth is both brutally short and, paradoxically, far too long.
I love going to writers' colonies in pastoral settings where there's nothing to do, but either walk around or read a book or work on your book.
Before he can become a wolf, the lycanthrope strips naked. If you spy a naked man among the pines, you must run as if the Devil were after you.
Christmas, so long looming over everyone's head, finally surged up, buried everyone alive and ebbed away, leaving its victims distinctly cross.
I liked those ladies! They were helpers, and they danced.' These are the words I want on my gravestone: that I was a helper, and that I danced.
When you pray, you are not starting the conversation from scratch, just remembering to plug back into a conversation that's always in progress.
What if we gave fifty percent of our discretionary budget to the world’s poor and then counted on the moral power of that action to protect us?
I'm too shy for personal appearances, and I've found out that anytime I talk about my writing, I can't do any writing for many weeks afterward.
Oh-do be careful with that! That's my Buddha hand grenade. Twist the head twice and throw it and anyone within ten yards can say their prayers.
He fell in love with himself at first sight, and it is a passion to which he has always remained faithful. Self-love seems so often unrequited.
The secrets of the world are very marvellous, but they are not themselves half so wonderful as the way in which they become known to the world.
Lord Chiltern recognizes the great happiness of having a grievance. It would be a pity that so great a blessing should be thrown away upon him.
Then Lady Chiltern argued the matter on views directly opposite to those which she had put forward when discussing the matter with her husband.
There are some who'd hardly lift a finger for kindness, but they would haul up a load of rock to dump on some soul they think's been too lucky.
Because I could not stop for death he kindly stopped for me, or paused at least to strike a glancing blow with his sky-blue mouth as he passed.
What you lose in blindness is the space around you, the place where you are, and without that you might not exist. You could be nowhere at all.
A woman knows she can walk away from a pot to tend something else and the pot will go on boiling; if she couldn't this world would end at once.
The National Surveillance State doesn't want anyone to be able to communicate without the authorities being able to monitor that communication.
I love Jet Li, but he looks very Chinese, and his English is Chinese-accented. He wouldn't have been the right guy to play a Japanese-American.
One of the eternal truths is that happiness is created and developed in peace, and one of the eternal rights is the individual's right to live.
I think back when I was kind of a crappy writer, I really did know my time was better spent working and having adventures and seeing the world.
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.
Lust is a poor, weak, whimpering, whispering thing compared with that richness and energy of desire which will arise when lust has been killed.
If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.
Sometimes it is hard not to say, 'God forgive God.' Sometimes it is hard to say so much. But if our faith is true, He didn't. He crucified Him.
I have seen landscapes . . . which, under a particular light, make me feel that at any moment a giant might raise his head over the next ridge.
The most important thing to strive for in life is some kind of personal and professional achievement. Not as a man or a woman, but as a person.
Nothing is fair. The most one can hope is for things to be logical. Justice is a rare illness in a world that is otherwise a picture of health.
Julian spoke with the clear, unequivocal lucidity of madmen who have escaped the hypocrisy of having to abide by a reality that makes no sense.
When 'The Shadow of the Wind' became a success I had already been a working writer, I'd been through the ups and downs, I'd seen how it worked.
If a kid disappears, now there's Amber Alerts: they know this-this-this. In the '50s, we kids wandered around. Nobody knew what you were doing.
Love always looks nice. I don't really know anyone who doesn't enjoy it when they see it. Anyone who doesn't, I don't really want to know them.
Often when we realize how precious those seconds are, it's too late for them to be captured because the moment has passed. We realize too late.
That was all part of giving someone a piece of your heart; they ended up taking a whole chunk of your mind and reserving it all for themselves.
I think my parents recognised that I'd always wanted to be a writer, and so they didn't think that this was some idle, faddish wish on my part.
There is but one pleasure in life equal to that of being called on to make an after-dinner speech, and that is not being called on to make one.