Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, 'What does it matter so long as they are contented?'
What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects--with their Christianity latent.
We have lost the invaluable faculty of being shocked a faculty which has hitherto almost distinguished the Man or Woman from the beast or child.
I wish we didn't live in a world where buying and selling things seems to have become almost more important than either producing or using them.
The distinction between pretending you are better than you are and beginning to be better in reality is finer than moral sleuth hounds conceive.
At least he went on saying this till Aslan had loaded him up with three dwarfs, one dryad, two rabbits, and a hedgehog, that steadied him a bit.
Every human being must find his own way to cope with severe loss, and the only job of a true friend is to facilitate whatever method he chooses.
The heart wants what the heart wants," she says, somewhat cryptically. I purse my lips in disapproval. "You'd think the heart would know better.
All those men who end up disappointing you. After a while, you don't even want to have feelings anymore. You just want to get on with your life.
Art gives life to what history killed. Art gives voice to what history denied, silenced, or persecuted. Art brings truth to the lies of history.
With 'The Angel's Game', there was a lot of pressure from the expectations - expectations from the book industry and from readers; it's natural.
It was at thirteen years old that Marya Morevna learned how to keep a secret, and that secrets are jealous things, permitting no fraternization.
Magic does that. It wastes you away. Once it grips you by the ear, the real world gets quieter and quieter, until you can hardly hear it at all.
Well, very splendid and very frightening. But splendid things are often frightening. Sometimes, it's the fright that makes them splendid at all.
In this difficult era the most valuable commodity is the unfailing turn of the hours and how they retrieve for us the known harbor of yesterday.
All of my books really do look at that to degrees of difference. Technically, I do enjoy the flashback! But not just for informational material.
How many wars have been caused by fits of indigestion, and how many more dynasties have been upset by the love of woman than by the hate of man?
One discovers a friend by chance, and cannot but feel regret that 20 or 30 years of life may have been spent without the least knowledge of him.
How many wars have been caused by fits of indigestion, and how many more dynasties have been upset by the love of woman than by the hate of man.
Dare not usurp thy maker's place by giving way to wrath - wrath that goes forth in vengeance; "vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord."
Bigotry and intolerance, silenced by argument, endeavors to silence by persecution, in old days by fire and sword, in modern days by the tongue.
If he does go, the change will be doleful. Suppose he should be absent spring, summer, and autumn: how joyless sunshine and fine days will seem!
Feeling without judgement is a washy draught indeed; but judgement untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition.
If I hold her hand she says, ‘Don’t touch!’ If I hold her foot she says ‘Don’t touch!’ But when I hold her waist-beads she pretends not to know.
An artist in my view is always afraid of extremists; he is always afraid of those who claim to have found the ultimate solution to any question.
The writer cannot expect to be excused from the task of reeducation and regeneration that must be done. In fact, he should march right in front.
I know that an important message is not a novel. To say that we should all be kind to our neighbors is an important statement; it's not a novel.
We may talk a good game and write even better ones, but we never outgrow those small wounded things we were when we were five and six and seven.
In order to get the worst possible first impression of Los Angeles one should arrive there by bus, preferably in summer and on a Saturday night.
The voice says, maybe you don't go to hell for the things you do. Maybe you go to hell for the things you don't do. The things you don't finish.
A young woman hiking alone in the mountains sounds dangerous. In the pre-cell phone era maybe it was, but I'll stop short of calling it foolish.
Anyone who works in the arts knows, if you're writing a novel or a play or anything, you have to be ready for someone to say, 'Your time is up.'
They were watching, out there past men's knowing, where stars are drowning and whales ferry their vast souls through the black and seamless sea.
In dreams we stand in this great democracy of the possible and there we are right pilgrims indeed. There we go forth to meet what we shall meet.
One man isn't any better than another, not because they are equal, but because they are intrinsically other, that there is no termof comparison.
Men and women aren't really dogs: they only look like it and behave like it. Somewhere inside there is a great chagrin and a gnawing discontent.
O pity the dead that are dead, but cannot make the journey, still they moan and beat against the silvery adamant walls of life's exclusive city.
What one does in one's art, that is the breath of one's being. What one does in one's life, that is a bagatelle for the outsiders to fuss about.
Art is only great if it's uncodifiable. If art isn't scaring you, if it's not making you upset, then I don't think it's actually doing anything.
Manhattan was the capital of the twentieth century for black writers, artists, and intellectuals as much as it was for their white counterparts.
'Go Tell It on the Mountain,' its pages heavy with sinners brought low and prayers groaning on the wind, scared me when I read it as a teenager.
With screenplays, it's all about being as concise as possible. If you have a scene that's set in a bar, you just have to write, 'Interior: Bar.'
I often think I can see it in myself and in other young writers, this desperate desire to please coupled with a kind of hostility to the reader.
I like the fans’ sound at night. Do you? It’s like somebody big far away goes like: it’sOKit’sOKit’sOKit’sOK, over and over. From very far away.
What we didn't realize then - and one of the many things Timothy Leary was wrong about - is that when you drop out, you inevitably also drop in.
Later, I would learn that coincidences are the most planned things in the world. Later, I would learn that every single moment is a coincidence.
Do you ever just want to take your car out onto the highway and gun the engine as fast as you can and then close your eyes and see what happens?
We really ought to give ourselves a collective pat on the back for doing as well as we have in a universe of constant media change and mutation.
I'm a pretty good drawer. I have trouble painting because you literally have to wait for the paint to dry. I'm disciplined, but I'm not patient.
The reason the future feels odd is because of its unpredictability. If the future didn't feel weirdly unexpected, then something would be wrong.