Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I always think that if you know somebody's name then there's something slightly fraudulent about that person. Otherwise we wouldn't have heard of him or her.
It reminds me of how grandmother always had the right costume for me to wear. You wear the right outfit and you feel like the person you're pretending to be.
In the last twenty-five years a change has come over the visual habits of Americans . . . From being a wordminded people we are becoming an eyeminded people.
Baseball and cricket are beautiful and highly stylized medieval war substitutes, chess made flesh, a mixture of proud chivalry and base-in both senses-greed.
Because abortions are illegal, women who need and want them have no choice in the matter, and you-because you know how to perform them-have no choice, either
You cannot help but learn more as take the world into your hands. Take it up reverently, for it is and old piece of clay, with millions of thumbprints on it.
A room containing Philip Roth, I have noticed, begins hilariously to whirl and pulse with a mix of rebelliousness and constriction that I take to be Oedipal.
If the worst comes true, and the paper book joins the papyrus scroll and parchment codex in extinction, we will miss, I predict, a number of things about it.
Perhaps I have written fiction because everything unambiguously expressed seems somehow crass to me; and when the subject is myself, I want to jeer and weep.
I can't do this because I can't...I can't be the man I want to be with you. And that means that this - this just becomes...another reminder of what I am not.
When I'm composing a scene for the first time, I try to imitate my character. The less critical distance the better - particularly when they're acting badly.
And meanwhile the sad truth was that not everyone could be extraordinary, not everyone could be extremely cool; because whom would this leave to be ordinary?
To live is to be among men, and to be among men is to struggle, a struggle not only with them but with oneself; with their passions, but also with one's own.
No doubt any connoisseur, any collector, some bored old millionaire when he shows off his treasures, is seeking in your praise the resurrection and the life.
We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read.
When the mind once allows a doubt to gain entrance, the value of deeds performed grow less, their character changes, we forget the past and dread the future.
Every time a blast happens, people ask, 'But why would someone do this?' Weirdly, it hasn't been answered well anywhere - neither in fiction nor non-fiction.
The truth is always an insult or a joke, lies are generally tastier. We love them. The nature of lies is to please. Truth has no concern for anyone's comfort
This country's crazy in terms of fame and what people think it means. They expect a writer to be something between a Hollywood starlet and the village idiot.
There is always a price to pay for badassery. Neo was a badass in the Matrix and the Matrix Reloaded, but the price he had to pay was The Matrix Revolutions.
Afghanistan is a rural nation, where 85 percent of people live in the countryside. And out there it's very, very conservative, very tribal - almost medieval.
The trouble with crying over an onion is that once the chopping gets you started and the tears begin to well up, the next thing you know you just can’t stop!
I love Twitter. It's like having a closet full of clever friends that you can visit twice a day, then shove back into the darkness when you're tired of them.
An inward sincerity will of course influence the outward deportment; but where the one is wanting, there is great reason to suspect the absence of the other.
Somewhere in the heart of experience there is an order and a coherence which we might purprise if we were attentive enough, loving enough, or patient enough.
You write the facts as you see them, and there isn't a lull with a lot of description. No wonder people like to write about murder mysteries and dead bodies!
Back to him she would never go, but in her lonely life still lived the sweet memory of that happy time when she believed in him and he was all in all to her.
It was fortunate that tea was at hand, to produce a lull and provide refreshment,— for they would have been hoarse and faint if they had gone on much longer.
The old man always said we should attend to the things we have some hope of understanding, and eternity isn't one of them. Well, this world isn't one either.
stop spying on the lawful citizenry. Democracy and dossiers go ill together. It is all right for God but all wrong for the State to keep its eye on sparrows.
I sometimes feel I'm a sort of cult writer, rather than a mainstream writer, in that those who like my stuff like it a lot, but the appeal is not that broad.
All my adult life I have been searching for the right adjective to describe my father's peculiarly aggressive comic style. I recently settled on 'defamatory.
Has it ever happened to you...? The color of the day suddenly changes to shadow. And you know you're going to remember that moment for the rest of your life.
You are no less or more of a man or a woman or a human for having depression than you would be for having cancer or cardiovascular disease or a car accident.
I don't like my birthday. I don't like things that are directed towards me. It took me a long time to get over people asking me to write my name in the book.
Journey over all the universe in a map, without the expense and fatigue of traveling, without suffering the inconveniences of heat, cold, hunger, and thirst.
A writer should express criticism and indignation at the dark side of society and the ugliness of human nature, but we should not use one uniform expression.
There are times in this life when a person must do or say things he doesn't want to. Human beings and chains, it is the oldest acquaintanceship in the world.
One thing about tourists is that it is very easy to get away from them. Like ants they follow a trail and a few yards each side of that trail there are none.
No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.
Language,-human language,-after all is but little better than the croak and cackle of fowls, and other utterances of brute nature,-sometimes not so adequate.
In the rural South, the only interesting people were the sexual deviants. Everybody else was able to be part of the mainstream, and could find a way somehow.
I left the University of Chicago's creative writing program for a tenure-track job at DePauw University in Indiana, then left DePauw in 2010 for Los Angeles.
I'm not perfect, either. In the end, it's only God's judgement that matters, and I've learned enough to know that no one can presume to know the will of God.
She had been proud of his decision to serve his country, her heart bursting with love and admiration the first time she saw him outfitted in his dress blues.
Studying English was useless, completely useless. It took me years to recover from that. Every time I tried to write, it sounded like a bad university essay.
One thing I've learned in all these years is not to make love when you really don't feel it; there's probably nothing worse you can do to yourself than that.
In America all too few blows are struck into flesh. We kill the spirit here, we are experts at that. We use psychic bullets and kill each other cell by cell.
MIke Lee writes with honesty, penetration, wit and the ability to surprise the reader with an unexpected turn from time to time that enriches the experience.
There is a greatness in being generous, and there is only simple justice in satisfying creditors. Generosity is the part of the soul raised above the vulgar.