Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
No, you’re not going with him.” I crossed my arms. “Who decided that?” He put on his “I’m alpha and I’m putting my foot down” expression. “I decided.
I think [Ecstasy] was a really good stab. It wasn't my strongest book or my strongest material, but they wanted to make a kinda "rave culture" movie.
I've become convinced that every person should treat himself strictly and even rudely and distrustfully; it's difficult to tame the beast in oneself.
By the eighteenth book, one has a sense of having bricked oneself into a niche, a roosting place for other people's pigeons. I wouldn't recommend it.
Is 'fat' really the worst thing a human being can be? Is 'fat' worse than 'vindictive', 'jealous', 'shallow', 'vain', 'boring' or 'cruel'? Not to me.
Wonder what it’s like to have a peaceful life,” Ron sighed, as evening after evening they struggled through all the extra homework they were getting.
Harry, suffering like this proves you are still a man! This pain is part of being human —” “THEN — I — DON’T — WANT — TO — BE — HUMAN!” Harry roared.
My word, Severus, that I shall never reveal the best of you?' Dumbledore sighed, looking down into Snape's ferocious, anguished face. 'If you insist.
It’s okay. I’m used to people not wanting me at their parties.” I pushed to my feet. The stars seemed to twirl a bit with the movement. “No big deal.
It’s like irresistible poison: I’m mesmerized by the way it’s making me feel though it has the potential to crush my soul and I drink it down anyway.
There was no logic or any sense of purpose except that I knew I had to do something other than what I was doing, or I might not make it through this.
Anger is something you should only vent in front of intimates, and friends and relations. Never be angry in front of strangers because you lose face.
In a certain sense, a writer is an exile, an outsider, always reporting on things, and it is part of his life to keep on the move. Travel is natural.
Maybe it’s that I find it hard to forgive the follies and vices of others, or their offenses against me. My good opinion, once lost, is lost forever.
She told the story, however, with great spirit among her friends; for she had a lively, playful disposition, which delighted in any thing ridiculous.
My characters never die screaming in rage. They attempt to pull themselves back together and go on. And that's basically a conservative view of life.
If to live is to progress, if you are lucky, from foolishness to wisdom, then to write novels is to broadcast the various stages of your foolishness.
It's my theory that many writers were the confidantes of one or the other parent. I was my mother's confidante; she had been her mother's confidante.
If two people who love each other let a single instant wedge itself between them, it grows-it becomes a month, a year, a century; it becomes to late.
-Who are you, anyway? -Just someone who knows, from personal experience, how attractive it can be to think you can save somebody else by loving them.
That's the way I will write characters, put a fair amount of myself in them, and then everyone else who was like that person, I will pick and choose.
So I feel that lack of qualification. And I'm scared. And I have a tendency to think things may not/probably won't work out. That's my basic mindset.
I love how close New York is to Europe; I love the seasons, and I don't think I could live without them. They're the way I track the passage of time.
Like nature, our economic system remains, in the long run, stable and rational...We welcome the inevitable seasons of our economy! How foolish of us.
In his heart, he knew that there was no reason to be impolite to someone, even if they did work for you. There was such a thing as manners after all.
Look at the people who review. Look at their commitment to being "right" and "safe". If I had listened to my critics I would have given up years ago.
When Man evolved Pity, he did a queer thing - deprived himself of the power of living life as it is without wishing it to become something different.
As a journalist, I interviewed people, and you begin to feel different rhythms in speech, and you can use those things to help carve out a character.
The stripped and shapely Maple grieves The ghosts of her Departed leaves. The ground is hard, As hard as stone. The year is old, The birds are flown.
One of the great pluses of being an immigrant is you get to start again in terms of your identity. You get to shed the narratives which cling to you.
As long as the heart beats, as long as body and soul keep together, I cannot admit that any creature endowed with a will has need to despair of life.
Omission is a sin only if, in the process of deceiving, you forget the truth. Lying is a sin only if, in the process, the lie becomes the only truth.
I think my blog is fairly circumspect and elliptical. I've written personal essays, but they are short and to the point: in and out, and that's that.
If you've got cockles, those nickel-size, heart-shaped mollusks, and you want to get fancy, steam them, then toss the meat in finely ground cornmeal.
It's not unfair, I think, to describe boxers as a demographic little given to literary entanglement. In general, with exceptions, they prefer movies.
But after Mr. Evers got shot a week ago, lot a colored folk is frustrated in this town. Especially the younger ones, who ain't built up a callus yet.
The canon is dominated by books written by men, about men, and for men - the male voice is therefore not a particularly difficult one to impersonate.
I have the feeling of this completely alternative person I should have become. There was another life that I might have had, but I’m having this one.
I don't think it's any fun, even if you are one of the most respected authors in the world like Margaret Atwood, to keep being nominated and not win.
She was an extraordinary woman, and I went to bed that night feeling like I was perhaps more than ordinary myself. This was the effect she had on me.
It's often a matter of sitting in front of the computer and worrying. It's what writing comes down to--worrying that things aren't going to work out.
I thought about you all the time. I used to pray that you’d live to be a hundred years old. I didn’t know. I didn’t know that you were ashamed of me.
Freedom is for the educated people who fought for it. We were slaves of the English, now we will be slaves of the educated Indians—or the Pakistanis.
There are still some natural forces that everybody understands. Technology and industry have distanced people from nature and magic and human values.
Have your fun, my dear; but if you must earn your bread, try to make it sweet with cheerfulness, not bitter with the daily regret that it isn't cake.
...and clung more closely to the dear human love, from which our Father never means us to be weaned, but through which He draws us closer to Himself.
Love built on pain-the kind that lasts: whatever you love can be taken away from us at any moment but the loss of what we love belongs to us forever.
But when one believes in the reality of things, making them visible by artificial means is not quite the same as feeling that they are close at hand.
I actually remember feeling delight, at two o'clock in the morning, when the baby woke for his feed, because I so longed to have another look at him.
I'd say I never considered myself a great architect. I'm more of a creative problem solver with good taste and a soft spot for logistical nightmares.