Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The great disadvantage of getting older is to be obliged to relive the salient economic events of one's youth, with nothing learned and nothing forgotten.
Pity is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatesoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with the human sufferer.
I write down portions, maybe fragments, and perhaps an imperfect view of what I'm hoping to write. Out of that, I keep trying to find exactly what I want.
To her own heart it was a delightful affair, to her imagination it was even a ridiculous one, but to her reason, her judgment, it was completely a puzzle.
Heaven forbid! -- That would be the greatest misfortune of all! -- To find a man agreeable whom one is determined to hate! -- Do not wish me such an evil.
She knew that what Marianne and her mother conjectured one moment, they believed the next: that with them, to wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect.
The power of doing anything with quickness is always prized much by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance.
If the real world were a book, it would never find a publisher. Overlong, detailed to the point of distraction-and ultimately, without a major resolution.
First of all, don't mix your hairpins up with mine! You .... Oh! All right, mix your muck with mine. Mix it! Mix your rags with my tatters! Mix it all up.
That was when Leonard realized something crucial about depression. The smarter you were, the worse it was. The sharper your brain, the more it cut you up.
What if you had faith and performed good works, what if you died and went to heaven, and what if all the people you met there were people you didn't like?
The girls took into their own hands decisions better left to God. They became too powerful to live among us, too self-concerned, too visionary, too blind.
As a young writer, I learned a lot about grammatical structure from reading plays, from performing the plays. I think that was a wonderful apprenticeship.
Statement: A girl and a boy jump into a river. The boy swims over to the girl and says, "God, it's cold." Question: What's the probability they will kiss?
I fear it's because religion is man's attempt to reach God, and when he feels he has succeeded, he cannot abide anyone else's claim to have done the same.
People ask me all the time, 'Why did I move home?' As well as I can articulate it, that's why. I moved home because I love the community that I come from.
I dabbled in writing, wrote really bad poetry in high school. I also took a few writing classes when I was an undergrad at Stanford. I was so intimidated.
I don't see how anybody starts a novel without knowing how it's going to end. I usually make detailed outlines: how many chapters it will be and so forth.
Life is much more available in New York - there are a dozen movie theaters within walking distance. Living in California is easier, but you get sedentary.
Whereas she wished more of the population were better educated, she also believed that education was largely wasted on the majority of the people she met.
One of the humbling things about having written more than one novel is the sense that every time you begin, that new empty page does not know who you are.
The New England spirit does not seek solutions in a crowd; raw light and solitariness are less dreaded than welcomed as enhancers of our essential selves.
I picked up 'On Moral Fiction' in the bookstore and looked up myself in the index, but I didn't read it through. I try not to read things that depress me.
I would, however, start writing fiction about 10 years before I actually did, because it's such great fun to do, many times more creative than nonfiction.
It is always a vulgar and often an unhealthy pastime, and it is a vice which does not go alone; the man who gambles will find himself capable of any evil.
The fact is there are many women who nod politely, even agree openly within their male-dominated often highly educated cultures, but vote their own minds.
In some ways, the best novel about terrorism, though it's not a novel, is 'The Looming Tower' by Lawrence Wright or 'Perfect Soldiers' by Terry McDermott.
I do think that I have a more flexible view of the interactions between people, and between human and non-human protagonists, humans and their landscapes.
I have observed, through many years of living in north Brooklyn, that people, for example an ostensible group of friends, can be dangerous to one another.
Were also far enough from the publishing power that we have no access to the politics of publishing, although there are interpersonal politics, of course.
It weren’t too loo long before I seen something in me, had changed. A bitter seed was planted inside of me. And I just didn’t feel so, accepting, anymore.
I'm really incredibly stubborn - you can ask my ex-husband. I think when you tell me 'no', if it's something I really want, I'm just going to push harder.
There's a perception that good writing is writing which runs smoothly. But smooth-running prose can work against what you're trying to express in a novel.
Though The Kite Runner was my first completed novel, I had been writing on and off for most of my life, primarily short stories, and primarily for myself.
You have think tanks like the widely respected Atlantic Council that have published reports in the past year that have called Afghanistan a failing state.
We're in a period of revolutionary change. I'm optimistic. One's self changes, and then the world changes. It's going to begin internally, not externally.
Sometimes immense things, like war and death and aging, are best seen from the corner of the eye and written of only obliquely, with tremendous lightness.
We think of stories a lot of the time as being horizontal texts, beginning to end. But I love the idea of having little vertical spikes in the story, too.
Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world, - though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst, - the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!
When I grew up, all of our news, weather, and sports came from America. The people where I grew up rooted for American teams as opposed to Canadian teams.
We all have our own life to pursue, our own kind of dream to be weaving, and we all have the power to make wishes come true, as long as we keep believing.
Because they are mean is no reason why I should be. I hate such things, and though I think I've a right to be hurt, I don't intend to show it. (Amy March)
Simple, sincere people seldom speak much of their piety; it shows itself in acts rather than words, and has more influence than homilies or protestations.
After my hip operation, I had to cut out butter, which I loved, and salt. I no longer eat desserts with lots of cream, and I've cut right back on alcohol.
...a writer's works, like the water in an artesian well, mount to a height which is in proportion to the depth to which suffering has penetrated his soul.
Laws change more slowly than custom, and though dangerous when they fall behind the times are more dangerous still when they presume to anticipate custom.
The one constant in my life has been my love of books: reading them, thinking about them, talking about them, holding them, turning people on to new ones.
You hear people saying, 'Oh I'm so tired, I've had enough of Cannes.' How can you have enough of Cannes? It's just the best place to be, like a fairytale.
I went to boarding school and then I went to Oxford, and I know how easy it is for certain groups of people to become wholly insulated from ordinary life.
I grew up with reggae. Reggae is like family. I know it, and there's a type of love and familiarity, but sometimes you want to hang out with other people.