Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The spirit of Jane Eyre looms over Once Upon a Day. Lisa Tucker keeps the plot of this gothic novel bubbling with tons of juicy family secrets.
8.45 a.m. My mother is in the hospital grounds smoking a cigarette. She is looking old and haggard. All the debauchery is catching up with her.
It is best as one grows older to strip oneself of possessions, to shed oneself downward like a tree, to be almost wholly earth before one dies.
The romantic appeal of solar sailing has ensured that its advocates consistently come from the worlds of both science fiction and science fact.
A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries.
Fantasy has a dark side to it. It also has a light hemisphere - the power of the human imagination to keep going, to imagine a better tomorrow.
Sorry, am I being rude?" she asks. "I'm used to saying whatever is on my mind. Mom used to say that politeness is deception in pretty packaging
Little girl, he called me. A little girl who is stressed out to the point of paranoia. That is not me, but now, it's who the Candor think I am.
The first thing you have to understand is that I was not desperate to be a writer. I was never a closet writer filing away notes in a cupboard.
I loved you. I was a pentapod monster, but I loved you. I was despicable and brutal, and turpid, and everything, mais je t’aimais, je t’aimais!
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.
The future of time, of how it's won or lost, endured or enjoyed, expanded or compressed, will depend on how it's valued, not how it's measured.
The promoters of the global economy...see nothing odd or difficult about unlimited economic growth or unlimited consumption in a limited world.
It would take me years of reading, thought, and experience to learn again that in this world limits are not only inescapable but indispensable.
I have heard, as everybody else has, of a spirit's haunting a house ; but I have had my own personal experience of a house's haunting a spirit.
Ralph... would treat the day's decisions as though he were playing chess. The only trouble was that he would never be a very good chess player.
Do not be in a hurry to succeed. What would you have to live for afterwards? Better make the horizon your goal; it will always be ahead of you.
A crow, who had flown away with a cheese from a dairy window, sate perched on a tree looking down at a great big frog in a pool underneath him.
He [Samuel Beckett] is great, a very great writer. Any modern writer is bound to be influenced by [James] Joyce. Of course, by Beckett as well.
Cut word lines — Cut music lines — Smash the control images — Smash the control machine — Burn the books — Kill the priests — Kill! Kill! Kill!
I've always felt I want to be of service to the world somehow. I haven't yet figured out how to do it, and I may never figure out how to do it.
At least for me, it takes more knowledge to write fiction than nonfiction. At least about someplace that I begin with a lot of ignorance about.
The last great struggle for our rights; the battle for our own civilization, is entirely with ourselves, and the problem is to be solved by us.
Now you wouldn't believe me if I told you, but I could run like the wind blows. From that day on, if I was ever going somewhere, I was running!
…maybe the whole Internet will simply become like Facebook: falsely jolly, fake-friendly, self-promoting, slickly disingenuous….” - Zadie Smith
I know that part of the reason I read Tolkien when I'm ill is that there is an almost total absence of sexuality in his world, which is restful.
Well, let's see, I found out Pagan has low blood sugar and becomes a complete b--witch if she doesn't eat a candy bar during a stressful moment.
My work is always more emotional than I am. My characters say things to each other that I get accused of not being able to say to my girlfriend.
I've never been a believer in the word-count thing. I write slowly and tinker with the words and the word order, and I throw a lot of stuff out.
You gave too much rein to your imagination. Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master. The simplest explanation is always the most likely.
I do all this alone, everything I achieve, I achieve alone, because it's my head I'm locked into, and I share this space with nobody but myself.
Physical pain however great ends in itself and falls away like dry husks from the mind, whilst moral discords and nervous horrors sear the soul.
In a world where women are commodities, a woman who refuses to sell herself will have the thing she refuses to sell taken away from her by force
I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish.
You know how I always say that laughter is carbonated holiness? Well, Robin was the ultimate proof of that, and bubbles are spirit made visible.
Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.
What people somehow forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here.
You can kiss me if you like," she said. Alex let go of her and turned away. "Thanks, Fiona," he said. "But frankly I'd prefer to kiss the horse.
The platform underneath the balloon fell on her as she was trying to escape," she explained. "She was crushed." "I'd have been disappointed too.
The whole idea of interviews is in itself absurd - one cannot answer deep questions about what one's life was like - one writes novels about it.
A novelist's characters must be with him as he lies down to sleep, and as he wakes from his dreams. He must learn to hate them and to love them.
Credit is a matter so subtle in its essence, that, as it may be obtained almost without reason, so, without reason, may it be made to melt away.
Perhaps there is no position more perilous to a man's honesty thanthat?of knowing himselftobe quiteloved by a girl whom he almost loves himself.
I'm one of the millions of immigrant children, children of loneliness, wandering between worlds that are at once too old and too new to live in.
Root out all the "to be" verbs in your prose and bludgeon them until dead. No "It was" or "they are" or "I am." Don't let it be, make it happen.
Quit smoking in the hope of growing old. It takes a long time to write. People go to books for wisdom and older authors tend to have more of it.
I lost my second marriage because of drinking, and I loved the woman very much. But I thought I needed booze to write. I'm glad I was disabused.
Writing fiction is an act of imagination and fantasizing, and it's not relating in prose what you've been doing for the last two or three years.
Once people stop believing in God, the problem is not that they will believe in nothing; rather, the problem is that they will believe anything.
I am often, I believe, praying for others when I should be doing things for them. It's so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see him.