Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There is a method in his madness, and the rudimentary idea in my mind is growing. It will be a whole idea soon, and then, oh, unconscious cerebration.
I've never written an autobiographical novel in my life. I've never touched upon my life. I've never written a single scene that I can say took place.
This is my password," said the King as he drew his sword. "The light is dawning, the lie broken. Now guard thee, miscreant, for I am Tirian of Narnia.
The sight of the huge world put mad ideas into me, as if I could wander away, wander forever, see strange and beautiful things, one after the other...
Dyson and Tolkien were the immediate human causes of my conversion. Is any pleasure on earth as great as a circle of Christian friends by a good fire?
You and I who still enjoy fairy tales have less reason to wish actual childhood back. We have kept its pleasures and added some grown-up ones as well.
If we discover a desire within us that nothing in this world can satisfy, also we should begin to wonder if perhaps we were created for another world.
And the sooner you do the right thing, the better. You get it over with, and you don’t have to worry about it anymore. But who does that in real life?
I don't like to think of myself as a 'virgin'. I prefer to think of myself as 'sexually incomplete'. You know. Like I haven't finished the course yet.
I think today will be the day. Today our luck will change,' I proclaimed on the wings of the first coffee of the day, pure optimism in a liquid state.
I call Algonquin Books 'the gods and goddesses of publishing.' Not only did they give me a career, they care deeply about every writer in their flock.
No, not like this, when I have not seen you without your skin on, when I know nothing, when I am not safe. Not you, whose name all my nightmares know.
In the old days it was called voodoo and they stuck needles in dolls, now it's called acupuncture and they stick the needles straight into the person.
I'm trying to make some sense out of the phrase "Everything happens for a reason," and I think I've figured out what the reason is - to pissed me off.
Our minds do unusual things sometimes, Tamara. When we’re looking for things it takes it upon itself to go down its own route. All we can do is follow
What I'm certain I don't want is to find myself someday in a new century, an old bitter woman looking back, wishing that right now I'd had more nerve.
Cheerfulness, it would appear, is a matter which depends fully as much on the state of things within, as on the state of things without and around us.
Gentle, soft dream, nestling in my arms now, you will fly, too, as your sisters have all fled before you: but kiss me before you go--embrace me, Jane.
Death? Why this fuss about death? Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! Death is the essential condition of life, not an evil.
Fine blunderers in ethics we are, so generally conveying to children the basic impression that pleasantness must be wrong, and right doing unpleasant!
Grammar is not a set of rules; it is something inherent in the language, and language cannot exist without it. It can be discovered, but not invented.
A knife, it felt like a knife, and I'd discovered that despite everything that's happened, I still had an endless untapped potential for getting hurt.
You know that old phrase ‘Those who don’t remember the past are condemned to repeat it’? Well, I think those who remember the past are even worse off.
I believe that, in an ideal world, writers would feel free to write what matters to them without having to consider success, failure, the market, etc.
Describe character using dialogue. Describe character using what the characters see or do or think, but not what they had done or where they had been.
People's interest in glamour and clothes and nylon stockings and all those things were, when I was a little boy, the sort of world that I listened to.
I hate the actor and audience business. An author should be in among the crowd, kicking their shins or cheering them on to some mischief or merriment.
Sometimes life takes hold of one, carries the body along, accomplishes one's history, and yet is not real, but leaves oneself as it were slurred over.
Don't be sucked in by the su-superior, don't swallow the culture bait, don't drink, don't drink and get beerier and beerier, do learn to discriminate.
- This isn't an interrogation or a trail. Your version of the truth is the only thing that matters. -Truth is singular. It's 'versions' are mistruths.
Once you decide not to worry about that stuff anymore, dating and relationships and love and all that, it's like you're free to get on with real life.
What is terrible is that after every one of the phases of my life is finished, I am left with no more than some banal commonplace that everyone knows.
It is not always possible to know, when you make a note of an event, or a state of mind, how this may strike someone perhaps ten thousand years later.
You've seen what you've seen; you've felt what you've felt. Ideology is for people who don't trust their own experiences and perceptions of the world.
The best part of my life is gone, and what remains is whizzing past so quickly I feel like I'm Krazy-Glue'ed onto a mechanical bull of a time machine.
I like doing radio because it's so intimate. The moment people hear your voice, you're inside there heads, not only that, you're in there laying eggs.
Most people have no idea how to politely answer a phone. The English do, and it's been their only major business advantage for the past two centuries.
It's just amazing how hard it is for people to change, even when amazing things happen. It almost reinforces who you are instead of making you change.
It's a cliche, but true, that writing is intensely solitary and at times really lonely. I sit in one room and talk to squirrels and blue jays all day.
Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them.
In the novel we can know people perfectly, and, apart from the general pleasure of reading, we can find here a compensation for their dimness in life.
One trouble with growing old is that it gets progressively tougher to find a famous historical figure, who didn't amount to much when he was your age.
One can summon courage and fortitude to face tragedy; irritations and frustrations are a cloud of mosquitoes that nip and sting and drive one frantic.
The machine has had a pernicious effect upon virtue, pity, and love, and young men used to machines which induce inertia, and fear, are near impotent.
how much better to make no vow; then at least when the cord of attraction snaps, we can go free, still defying the lightning in our untarnished pride.
There wouldn't be half as much fun in the world if it weren't for children and men, and there ain't a mite of difference between them under the skins.
Find your best time of the day for writing and write. Don't let anything else interfere. Afterwards it won't matter to you that the kitchen is a mess.
O, we all acknowledge our faults, now; 'tis the mode of the day: but the acknowledgment passes for current payment; and therefore we never amend them.
But I always liked side-paths, little dark back-alleys behind the main road- there one finds adventures and surprises, and precious metal in the dirt.
Man has not the right to turn aside and heed not what is happening in the world around him, and this I maintain on moral grounds of the highest order.