Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters, for without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves we collude with it through our apathy.
You place too much importance... on the so-called purity of blood! You fail to recognize that it matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be!
A Wrackspurt . . . They’re invisible. They float in through your ears and make your brain go fuzzy,” she said. “I thought I felt one zooming around in here.
The mistake ninety-nine percent of humanity made, as far as Fats could see, was being ashamed of what they were; lying about it, trying to be somebody else.
Yes, it has made me happier. Finishing them has made me happier. Before I wrote the Potter books, I'd never finished a novel. I came close to finishing two.
Good?” Cam said. “Right?” I took another bite and nodded. “Well, I have a whole ton of them at home.” He stretched as he rolled up his napkin. “Just saying.
A person is only complete when she has a true friend to understand her, to share all her passions and sorrows with, and to stand by her throughout her life.
And this is the way a novel gets written, in ignorance, fear, sorrow, madness, and a kind of psychotic happiness as an incubator for the wonders being born.
There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.
People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception.
Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it. Everyone desires love but also finds it impossible to believe that he deserves it.
We do not trust educated people and rarely, alas, produce them, for we do not trust the independence of mind which alone makes a genuine education possible.
I scarcely know a professional man I can like, and certainly not one who has been what the world calls successful, that I should the least wish to resemble.
In woman's womb word is made flesh but in the spirit of the maker all flesh that passes becomes the word that shall not pass away. This is the postcreation.
I have said many times I don't want to be considered one who once flew fighters. That's not who I am. I devoted the subsequent 50 years - more - to writing.
The government was to raise the duty on cheese to 83 percent, an unpopular move that would doubtless have the more militant citizens picketing cheese shops.
Creation is not a light-hearted game. The creator commits to a terrible adventure, which is to take up-on himself all of the dangers that his creatures run.
In times of death and famine, reason is on the side of the priests-who have their own kind of logic which cries for miracles and, on occasion, invents them.
One realized all sorts of things. The value of an illusion, for instance, and that the shadow can be more important than the substance. All sorts of things.
College wasn't like the real world. In the real world people dropped names based on their renown. In college, people dropped names based on their obscurity.
Her only thought was of getting away, as if she were carrying a live grenade from inside the house, so that when it exploded, it would destroy just herself.
I'm just interested in serialization in fiction. I'm fascinated by it. I love the 19th-century novels. I'm interested in ways to bring that back to fiction.
I love you. I love you. I send this message through my fingers and into his, up his arm and into his heart. Hear me. I love you. And I'm sorry to leave you.
As I go to sleep I remember what my father said-that one can never be sure if one will awake. The way my health is now, this is becoming more and more real.
I don't really base any of my characters on specific people that I know, although my characters are informed by the kind of people who live in my community.
I’m conflicted. On one hand, I want to stay in and catch up on The Vampire Diaries, but there’s this really awesome restaurant I’ve been wanting to try out.
The citizen can bring our political and governmental institutions back to life, make them responsive and accountable, and keep them honest. No one else can.
What art ought to do is tell stories which are moment-by-moment wonderful, which are true to human experience, and which in no way explain human experience.
I think my first story sold for $550. This was in 1954, and it seemed like quite a lot of money, and I said to myself, 'Hey, I'm a professional writer now.'
That's always the most productive research - research into tone, into voice. Facts are nice, too, but facts are more raw material than creative inspiration.
I got into underground comics fairly early on and kind of wandered away from the superhero stuff, but I was an art student and I was drawing a lot as a kid.
if some folks have buried their racial prejudices, the chances are that they've got the graves marked and will have no trouble disinterring their pet hates.
Writers when they're writing live in a spooky, clamorous silence, a state somewhat like the advanced stages of prayer but without prayer's calming benefits.
. . . crazy world or maybe it's just the view we have of it, looking through a crack in the door, never being able to see the whole room, the whole picture.
In lighthearted countries, people joked about this phenomenon, but such serious, practical countries as England, America, and Germany were deeply concerned.
The feeling I got from my research is that the victims of bombings end up becoming as alienated from the government as the terrorists who cause the attacks.
I'm very fortunate in that I don't have money problems. I have lunch with my wife at home. I don't have to commute, so I have much more time with my family.
You have these crops of poppies that supply something like 90% of the heroin sold in Europe and actually represents more than half of the Afghanistan's GDP.
I grew up in a society with a very ancient and strong oral storytelling tradition. I was told stories, as a child, by my grandmother, and my father as well.
I possessed what is called the best of hearts -- a dangerous possession, as it is generally accompanied by the strongest passions, and the weakest judgment.
I'm sure partial to the evening,' Augustus said. 'The evening and the morning. If we just didn't have to have the rest of the dern day I'd be a lot happier.
It seems to me that if you were to take almost any half-century in history, you'd find a grand societal tug-of-war between the community and the individual.
I admit to subscribing to all the celebrity rags. The best part of being an author is if the celebs aren't being ridiculous enough, you can just make it up.
Real people are places to me as much as persons: I want to see them, as I want to see the places I am fond of, in all weathers and at all times of the year.
The strangest thing about strange things is that they're only strange when you hear about them or think about them later, but never when you're living them.
In reality the world is as full of bad mothers as it is of bad fathers, and it is not the motherless children who become delinquent but the fatherless ones.
The poetry of heroism appeals irresistibly to those who don't go to a war, and even more to those whom the war is making enormously wealthy. It's always so.
Let my name stand among those who are willing to bear ridicule and reproach for the truth's sake, and so earn some right to rejoice when the victory is won.
Now that I am conscious of the world of chronic pain, when I see somebody walking down the street who's having trouble, I feel a sadness for them. I notice.
We asked our friends and relations to lend us their children, and, because we lived in London, children loved to come and stay for their half-term holidays.