Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
True greatness is the most ready to recognize and most willing to obey those simple outward laws which have been sanctioned by the experience of mankind.
The Irish are people who will never have leaders, for at the great moment they always desert them. They have produced one skeleton--Parnell--never a man.
I write down portions, maybe fragments, and perhaps an imperfect view of what Im hoping to write. Out of that, I keep trying to find exactly what I want.
She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me, and I am in no humor at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men.
Another thing he told his customers was that one of the great accounting unknowns of the modern age was how to value knowledge. It was an exciting field.
In many ways, being honest about 'Huckleberry Finn' goes right to the heart of whether we can be honest about our heritage and our identity as Americans.
Ill-fitting grammar are like ill-fitting shoes. You can get used to it for a bit, but then one day your toes fall off and you can't walk to the bathroom.
We all make mistakes at some time in our lives, some more than others. It is only when the cost is counted in human lives that people really take notice.
Pretend to be mad and talk a lot. Then — and this is the important bit — do nothing at all until you absolutely have to and then make sure everyone dies.
Normality wasn't normal. It couldn't be. If normality were normal, everybody could leave it alone. They could sit back and let normality manifest itself.
History and socio-economic inequality and all those things had, like, borne down upon my family and my community and really sort of narrowed our choices.
I'd given up Catholicism in my teens but something of it stays with me. I try to create the perfect sentence - that's as close to godliness as I can get.
I think we are just insects, we live a bit and then die and that’s the lot. There’s no mercy in things. There’s not even a Great Beyond. There’s nothing.
I was too green to know that all cynicism masks a failure to cope - an impotence, in short; and that to despise all effort is the greatest effort of all.
I'm not writing non-fiction. I don't feel anything about me as a kid was unique. Except that I had more interest in being alone and using my imagination.
But I was used to finding something deadly in things that attracted me; there was always something deadly lurking in anything I wanted, anything I loved.
It's sort of good to see your vocation as a daily task and have fairly modest expectations for financial or reward in other coin - glory, love, whatever.
I was once told by someone wise that writing is perilous as you cannot always guarantee your words will be read in the spirit in which they were written.
Contemporary Britain seems an endlessly fascinating place to me - but if I knew a little bit more about other places, and other times, maybe it wouldn't.
You wouldn’t be normal if you were never afraid. Even the bravest men experience fear. One of the biggest jobs we all face in combat is to overcome fear.
I couldn't see much point in tying myself down to a middle-aged woman with four children, even though the woman was my wife and the children were my own.
When I look up, I see people cashing in. I don't see heaven or saints or angels. I see people cashing in on every decent impulse and every human tragedy.
I might not write fiction in the literary sense. But I write very well. My characters are good. My dialogue is good. And my stories are really involving.
Haven't lost your sense of humor after all but your sense of identity is what seems to have been misplaced. No. Wrong. You don't lose what you never had.
My publisher is generous with deadlines, which are never set in stone. Some writers need that pressure, but I am more productive when there's less panic.
Over time, it's occurred to me that my protagonists all originate in some aspect of myself that I find myself questioning or feeling uncomfortable about.
For writers and artists, it's always a balancing act between wanting to be the center of attention and wanting to be invisible and watch what's going on.
He let out a long sorry sigh and I love that look on his face, that disappointment. I understand now why girls resist,just for that sweet look of regret.
In 1959, Moscow gave space to an exhibition of American consumer goods, and my father, also a member of this generation, tasted Pepsi for the first time.
Death is a fact of life, no matter where you live. Taking care of the dying is a necessity everywhere. Those are not conditions exclusive to small towns.
I hoped you would consider it seriously instead of laughing at it.' 'Mr. Chamkanni said much the same thing in bed the first night home from the hospital
Asking the author of historical novels to teach you about history is like expecting the composer of a melody to provide answers about radio transmission.
I hum some secret place into being, thinking of this other me, the one that only I can see, a girl called She, who is not We, a girl who I will never be.
I love the short story for being round, suggestive, insinuating, microcosmic. The story has both the inconvenience and the fascination of new beginnings.
Never use dogs to symbolize anything. That is ridiculous. Always ensure that any dogs are just dogs; i.e., characters in the story who happen to be dogs.
A woman whom we need and who makes us suffer elicits from us a whole gamut of feelings far more profound and vital than a man of genius who interests us.
Your purpose when driving is not to arrive at your destination safely or quickly. Your purpose when driving is...to impress your personality on the road.
The government is shutting down the coal industry, they say it's cheaper to draw nuclear power off the French grid and cheaper to buy coal from Colombia.
My happiness has to come from within myself or it is too fragile a thing to be of any use to me and too much of a burden to benefit any of my loved ones.
But only a person in the depths of despair neglected to look beyond winter to the spring that inevitably followed, bringing back color and life and hope.
Up until the final decade of the nineteenth century, the United States and the United Kingdom did not recognize copyright in each other's creative works.
The book I'm working on next, which will be my fifth, returns to literary history. I really do love literary history, and I have plenty more ideas on it.
You can send people letters, and show them photos, but they can never come to visit where you live. Unless you love them. And then they can burn it down.
There is the hidden presence of others in us, even those we have known briefly. We contain them for the rest of our lives, at every border that we cross.
In general, when I'm writing, I concentrate on the story itself, and I leave it to other people, such as agents and publishers, to work out who it's for.
One man scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world will be better for this.
No art or learning is to be pursued halfheartedly...and any art worth learning will certainly reward more or less generously the effort made to study it.
Death is so genuine a fact that it excludes falsehoods, or betrays its emptiness; it is a touchstone that proves the gold, and dishonors the baser metal.
I knew 'True Detective' wasn't something I could allow anyone else to develop. But by the time HBO expressed an interest, I still had no real experience.
Allie noticed it all, every sound, every thought. Her senses had come alive, invigorating her, and she felt her mind drifting through the last few weeks.