Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
And what about you? You must be some kind of beardless dwarf?...You mean to say, that you're a daughter of Eve?...Y-yes, but, you are in fact... human?
I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they'll 'say something about it' or not. I hate if they do, and if they don't.
A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking, Hmán, as if pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing.
As authors, we all have to learn not to be reactive to public statements about our books. It's really not our business what each reader thinks of them.
When little ones say they want to go home, they almost never mean it. They mean they are tired of this particular game and would like to start another.
It is true that novelists are shameless and obey no decent law, and they are not to be trusted on any account, but some Mysteries even they must honor.
Holly's theory about the army," Sharon explained. And what is it?" Denise asked, intrigued. Oh, that fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.
Happy is said to be the family which can eat onions together. They are, for the time being, separate, from the world, and have a harmony of aspiration.
We have built into the constitution of the human race the habit and desire of taking, as divorced from its natural precursor and concomitant of making.
I'd lived in Portland on and off for a decade before I'd even heard of Vanport. It was this town of 20,000 people that washed away from north Portland.
Whatever happens to you belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you, because it will.
There are so many things to be tortured about, sweet pea. So many torturous things in this life. Don't let the man who doesn't love you be one of them.
Why I love chess and tennis - the volleying aspect, and the fact that your competitors' reactions and motivations and bluffs come into the game itself.
The best way to waste your life, is by taking notes. The easiest way to avoid living is to just watch. Look for the details. Report. Don't participate.
And if I do fall asleep, Marla has to keep track of Tyler. Where he goes. What he does. So maybe during the day, I can rush around and undo the damage.
When I visit my brother in South Africa, I order things I've only seen in zoos. Little deers and kudu, all the mammals you would never think of eating.
An abiding preoccupation for me is how much of our lives are invisible and unknown by other people like the Chekhov story The Lady With the Little Dog.
People have said I belong in a rubber room because I look for wrecks, and when I find them, I just do a survey. I don't look for treasure or artifacts.
It's just some instinct as old as fear: you seek the dark when you hide, you seek the light when the need to hide is gone. All the animals have it too.
[During the Renaissance] the Italians said, "We are one in the Father: we will go back." The Northern races said, "We are one in Christ, we will go on.
The world must live. We are only one species among billions. The gods don't love us any more than they love spiders or bears or whales or water lilies.
Lust is temporary, romance can be nice, but love is the most important thing of all. Because without love, lust and romance will always be short-lived.
There's a disease that young writers are susceptible to, which is, I will do this because I can - hubris, I suppose - without stopping to work out why.
His name was Rambo, and he was just some nothing kid for all anybody knew, standing by the pump of a gas station at the outskirts of Madison, Kentucky.
Once they become AKC registered, the newspapers will become flooded with ads for them. And you'll see Border collies in pet stores and animal shelters.
Some people think fashion is frivolous but it's not... it's just that some ideas come and go quickly, and that's the nature of the language of fashion.
I've had maybe 20 jobs, big and small, and I've never hated any of them. At the same time, the moment the learning curve flattened, I was out of there.
We don't like admitting this, but it is a key component of human existence: the fact that life has the potential for things both wondrous and horrific.
'A friend,' he repeated, sentimental suddenly. 'Someone to last your whole life and you his. I suppose such a thing can't really happen outside sleep.'
There's many things in this world that will depress you, and make you good for nothing, if you take them seriously, and that cheer you up if you don't.
I'm a novelist from the Haisla and Heiltsuk First Nations of British Columbia, both small coastal reserves hugging the rugged shores of the west coast.
Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive.
If I take a less defensive tone, I'd admit that I couldn't write today a very jazzy, contemporary look at America as I did in 1979 in States of Desire.
The proper direction of man's thought is not toward the creation of new laws for government, but toward the acceptance of every person's moral dignity.
What ever our wandering our happiness will always be found within a narrow compass, and in the middle of the objects more immediately within our reach.
The heart of a man's like that delicate weed, / Which requires to be trampled on, boldly indeed / Ere it gives forth the fragrance you wish to extract.
Debt is to man what the serpent is to the bird; its eye fascinates, its breath poisons, its coil crushes sinew and bone, its jaw is the pitiless grave.
Five hundred words a day is what I aim for. And I don't go on to the next chapter until I've polished and polished and polished the one I'm working on.
Adversity is a great teacher, but this teacher makes us pay dearly for its instruction; and often the profit we derive, is not worth the price we paid.
I've been to Oculus a few times to do book signings and things there, and they tell me 'Ready Player One' is, like, required reading for new employees.
And so they played some of the world's loveliest piano music - the exiled homesick girl, the humiliated, tired old man. Not properly. Better than that.
I'm for prayer in the schools because ritual and ceremony are calming and civilizing, and the little fartlings should be tamped down whenever possible.
Eh, brother, but nature has to be corrected and guided, otherwise we'd all drown in prejudices. Without that there wouldn't be even a single great man.
I have seen the truth. It is not as though I had invented it in my mind. I have seen it, SEEN IT and the living image of it has filled my soul forever.
How will you find good? It is not a thing of choice; it is a river that flows from the foot of the Invisible Throne and flows by the path of obedience.
Strong souls Live like fire-hearted suns to spend their strength In farthest striving action; breathe more free In mighty anguish than in trivial ease.
... learning to love any one is like an increase of property, -- it increases care, and brings many new fears lest precious things should come to harm.
Is it not rather what we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other?
The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.
Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your nervous system. At any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom.