Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Crime fiction has always been what I wanted to read, so when I sat down to write my first book, it was naturally the way that I was going to go.
If you want to know the real meaning of pornography, it is the utter dissociation of love and sex, the banishment of love from the sexual arena.
The literary interview won't tell you what a writer is like. Far more compellingly to some, it will tell you what a writer is like to interview.
Pat Robertson at a national convention, equipped with delegates, certainly remains a terrible sight. He is a charlatan of Chaucerian dimensions.
Instead of taking a year off, I started Dreamers of the Day exactly 36 hours after I sent the manuscript for A Thread of Grace to the publisher!
But her's was the misery of innocence, which, like a cloud that passes over the fair moon, for a while hides, but cannot tarnish its brightness.
Beware of the gap: the gap between where you are and where you want to be. Simply thinking of the gap widens it, and you end up falling through.
When Spring is old, and dewy windsBlow from the south, with odors sweet,I see my love, in shadowy groves,Speed down dark aisles on shining feet.
I definitely don't write with any kind of 'message' or 'lesson,' probably because when I was a child, I used to run a mile from books like that.
If I want to feel as if I'm being sucked down a fathomless gloomy tunnel for hours and hours then I have a complete set of Schopenhauer at home.
Nothing about this entire scenario made sense. But who cares? Once in a while, everyone was entitled to be a bit flaky, and now it was his turn.
Doesn't surprise me," Nana snorted. "I wouldn't put anything past your late husband." "He's not dead, Nana." Nana sighed. "Hope springs eternal.
Google says young people don't care about privacy, but when asked if they'd let their parents see their phone bills and other stuff they say no.
Hard is trying to rebuild yourself, piece by piece, with no instruction book, and no clue as to where all the important bits are supposed to go.
I don't want my books to exclude anyone, but if they have to, then I would rather they excluded the people who feel they are too smart for them!
The only process you've mastered is the process of elimination, and the only reason you've mastered that is because you can do it in the toilet.
A lot of people consider my books to be straightforward, but I think that I write from atmosphere to atmosphere rather than from event to event.
for what is the gift of the poet and the artist except to see the sights which others cannot see and to hear the sounds that others cannot hear?
the virtue of imagination has this in common with the virtue of courage. Without it, you are less good: with it, you are not necessarily better.
I grew up going to funerals and visiting people in nursing homes. I'm not as afraid of dealing with the dying as maybe some other people may be.
The truth is the last thing that matters,' she said. 'And you can believe one thing of the truth and me: I keep it well hidden, inside my heart.
She looked at me as if for a moment she would seek someone who would understand the dreadful predicament of a woman, in this world ruled by men.
Such is the brutalization of commercial ethics in this country that no one can feel anything more delicate than the velvet touch of a soft buck.
Less money spent on billboards that just make us feel good about ourselves and more on soup kitchens and organized visits to the sick and dying.
In the end you're not made or broken by prizes. Your relationship is with your readers, not a prize, and you just have to keep on honoring that.
The 2007 Labor campaign was the most presidential in Australian history, with a slogan - Kevin07 - exceeded in its banality only by its success.
I'm an equal opportunity reader - although I don't much read plays. And since I was raised a Presbyterian, pretty much all pleasures are guilty.
For, how else to seize such an instant? How to shout out into the empty air just the right words, and on cue? Frame a moment to last a lifetime?
I realized I loved you, and I didn't want to be married to somebody I didn't love. I wanted to be married to you. It isn't all that complicated.
And there comes a time in your life when you realize that if you don't take the opportunity to be happy, you may never get another chance again.
The Odyssey and Iliad say things about the human condition in ways we should re-acquaint ourselves with, and use as a prism to interpret though.
Even if the doctor does not give you a year, even if he hesitates about a month, make one brave push and see what can be accomplished in a week.
When a torrent sweeps a man against a boulder, you must expect him to scream, and you need not be surprised if the scream is sometimes a theory.
Football, fraternities and fun have no place in the university. They were introduced only to entertain those who shouldn't be in the university.
Naked power has its limitations, since power is a generator of corruption and corruption in its turn tends to dilute the effectiveness of power.
I write short stories when a little idea occurs to me, that I know isn't a part of a novel that will stand by itself and should be concentrated.
Nothing comes from nothing, Thieflet; no story comes from nowhere; new stories are born from old--it is the new combinations that make them new.
He had picked up languages the way most sailors pick up diseases; languages were his gonorrhoea, his syphilis, his scurvy, his ague, his plague.
To think, when one is no longer young, when one is not yet old, that one is no longer young, that one is not yet old, that is perhaps something.
The teenager's room is her cave. It is here she can meet herself, undistracted by the new hassles life is making for her. Here, she can reflect.
I was sure you 'd dropped the class, which made me selfishly ecstatic. Without even knowing i was doing it, i started looking for you on campus.
But I'll say this, if what looks like the facts of the matter are conflicting with your feelings, then you need more information before deciding
Honest men live on charity in their age; the almshouses are full of men who never stole a copper penny. Honest men are the fools and the saints.
Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.
It was terribly beautiful to Tess today, for since her eyes last fell upon it she had learnt that the serpent hisses where the sweet birds sing.
It is simply wrong to begin with a theme, symbol or other abstract unifying agent, and then try to force characters and events to conform to it.
In a war without aim, you tend not to aim. You close your eyes, close your heart. The consequences become hit or miss in the most literal sense.
The blank page doesn't bother me. It's the voice in my head (not always my own) that gives me the yips. It's worse when I'm not making stuff up.
Fighting wars is not so much about killing people as it is about finding things out. The more you know, the more likely you are to win a battle.
How do you tell somebody how to find what they're looking for when ten years ago you came from the same place, and have yet to find it yourself?