Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
What is possible and what is not possible is not objectively known but is, rather, a subjective belief on the part of the author and of the reader.
Too late, but I understand. That we don't perish of understanding everything too late, that is a miracle. But we do perish of that -- of just that.
There are two kinds of truth; The truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The fist of these is science and the second is art.
I have made three rules of writing for myself that are absolutes: Never take advice. Never show or discuss work in progress. Never answer a critic.
If from poetry we expect a succession of signals for the release of miscellaneous private emotion we are likely to find Tears, Idle Tears valuable.
Love Poem ـــــــــ It's so nice to wake up in the morning all alone and not have to tell somebody you love them when you don't love them any more.
I haven't scoured Dixie out of my voice. But I don't think that the books that I have written... have really in any way been Southern in character.
The deepest failures any fiction writer is likely to have are failures of not quite comprehending the truth of the story that he or she is telling.
All the stuff that I used to treat with contempt - you know, I'm an artist, man, I don't do that family stuff - has begun to seem really important.
I thought I knew what loneliness was before he found me, but I had no clue. You don't know what real loneliness is until you've known the opposite.
I don't move. I wait behind my log, terrified. Over the past ten minutes, it's become such a dear friend, I consider naming it: Howard, my pet log.
I am painfully situated, Utterson; my position is a very strange - a very strange one. It is one of those affairs that cannot be mended by talking.
If you're going to do something that looks evil, don't smear it with icing and pretend it's good; just bloody well do it and keep your eyes peeled.
I think that a lot of us, whether we are religious or not - there are no words to express some things except religious words. For instance, 'soul.'
One of the things I've thought about 'Midnight's Children' is that it is a novel which puts a Muslim family at the centre of the Indian experience.
I became a writer because I am the youngest of six children. I listen; I observe. I'm camouflaged as a moth. Mothers are unseen. It helps me write.
Vladimir: I don't understand. Estragon: Use your intelligence, can't you? Vladimir uses his intelligence. Vladimir: (finally) I remain in the dark.
Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards, I take the air there willingly, perhaps more willingly than elsewhere, when take the air I must.
Life was resumed, and anxious living blew away as if it had not been. I could not breathe deep enough or long enough. It was a return to happiness.
Youth has the resilience to absorb disaster and weave it into the pattern of its life, no mater how anguishing the thorn that penetrates its flesh.
You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.
The songs in 'Wonderland' don't have a melodic life for me - I'm not a musical person - but they have an emotional life, an emotional echo perhaps.
I said no to having a beer. I once had a beer with my brother when I was twelve, and I just didn't like it. It's really that simple for me. [pp.37]
I groaned. Man and his codes! Even in a lawless inferno, man has to give himself some honor, he's so desperate to separate himself from the beasts.
"You're full of contradictions, Ms. Wallace." I looked up at him and arched a brow. "I'm a girl. That's part of the job description, Mr. Maxfield."
Once let a maiden admit the possibility of her being stricken with love for some one at a certain hour and place, and the thing is as good as done.
He thought what a fine thing it was that people made music all over the world, even in the strangest settings – probably even on polar expeditions.
Someday she might replace whatever of her had gone away by some prosthetic device, a dress of a certain color, a phrase in a letter, another lover.
There’s nothing worse than falling in love with a person over and over every time you lay eyes on them, especially when you hate their goddamn guts
It wasn't a question of deceit. Just the opposite; he wanted to heat up the truth, to make it burn so hot that you would feel exactly what he felt.
I know what it is to feel unloved, to want revenge, to make mistakes, to suffer disappointment, yet also to find the courage to go forward in life.
I write about kids growing up, I write a lot about schools and parents, and all of my experiences with those things have been suburban experiences.
From my point of view, which is that of a storyteller, I see your life as something artful, waiting, just waiting and ready for you to make it art.
American means white, and Africanist people struggle to make the term applicable to themselves with ethnicity and hyphen after hyphen after hyphen.
It's been mentioned or suggested that Paradise will not be well studied, because it's about this unimportant intellectual topic, which is religion.
So many (too many) books are published every year, and it seems everyone is writing a book. Perhaps we should all be reading more and writing less!
He kisses me again, more insistent this time, his hands squeezing my waist. His breaths, his body, my body, we are so close there is no difference.
The reason the factions were evil is because there was no way out of them. They gave us the illusion of choice without actually giving us a choice.
I am afraid of her, afraid of what she says-and thrilled by it too, because it means I don't have to accept that I am smaller than I once believed.
He leans his face close to mine and wraps his fingers around my chin. His hand smells like metal. When was the last time he held a gun, or a knife?
No. Because it's so stupid no Dauntless with any sense would speak it, let alone think it. Pansycake. What are you, twelve?" "And a half," he says.
We go forth all to seek America. And in the seeking we create her. In the quality of our search shall be the nature of the America that we created.
Remember daydreams? No, of course you don't. How could you? Three new text messages have just arrived, and another three, in a moment, will go out.
I think the issues of identity mostly are poppycock. We are what we have done, which includes our promises, includes our hopes, but promises first.
The damages of our present agriculture all come from the determination to use the life of the soil as if it were an extractable resource like coal.
The evening advanced. The shadows lengthened. The waters of the lake grew pitchy black. The gliding of the ghostly swans became rare and more rare.
For years I have been mourning and not for my dead, it is for this boy for whatever corner in my heart died when his childhood slid out of my arms.
That's something that tends to happen with new technologies generally: The most interesting applications turn up on a battlefield, or in a gallery.
For the speedy reader paragraphs become a country the eye flies over looking for landmarks, reference points, airports, restrooms, passages of sex.
When a mother, as fond mothers will; vows that she knows every thought in her daughter's heart, I think she pretends to know a great deal too much.