Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
More generally, people who lived in a period when maternal, infant and childhood mortality were still high would have been tougher than most of us can imagine.
My family was pious and Presbyterian mainly because my grandfather was pious and Presbyterian, but that was more of an inherited intuition than an actual fact.
There is a design behind the world that we are living in, which is veiled to most of us most of the time, but every once in a while, you catch a glimpse of it.
He moved like a dancer, which is not surprising; a horse is a beautiful animal, but it is perhaps most remarkable because it moves as if it always hears music.
Kingsley Amis was a lenient father. His paternal style, in the early years, can best be described as amiably minimalist - in other words, my mother did it all.
In this choice, as I look back over more than half a century, I can only follow - and trust - the same sort of instinct that one follows in the art of fiction.
You seek for knowledge and wisdom as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been.
It is hardly surprising that women concentrate on the way they look instead of what is in their minds since not much has been put in their minds to begin with.
If she were a writer she would collect her pencils and notebooks and favourite cat and write in bed. Strangers and lovers would never get past the locked door.
The last three books are much more a case of a moment of history, what happened almost by accident or coincidence, like being in the same elevator or lifeboat.
The first sentence of every novel should be: Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human. Meander if you want to get to town.
Sometimes, it is not the kings and queen who make for the most fascinating history but the shadowy souls who happen to be in the right place at the right time.
I held Nefertiti's body closer to mine, trying to press her spirit into me, to bring it back. But the reign of Nefertiti was finished. She was gone from Egypt.
Historians ought to be precise, faithful, and unprejudiced; and neither interest nor fear, hatred nor affection, should make them swerve from the way of truth.
I am filled with uncertainty and fear when thinking about how my two daughters will grow into this world as Hoosiers, as Americans, as women and free thinkers.
You are the answer to every prayer I've offered. You are a song, a dream, a whisper, and I don't know how I could have lived without you for as long as I have.
In the blink of an eye, something happens by chance - when you least expect it - sets you on a course that you never planned, into a future you never imagined.
I don't get involved in casting, budgets, location or promotion. Just the script. And, of course, the promotional tour. Which is fine with me - I'm a novelist.
The secret is to know how to lie" he used to say, " and to know when someone's lying to you". His father, Steve eventually decided, must have known how to lie.
There's a saying in the movie industry that if your movie is about what you actually think it's about, you're in big trouble. I think it's the same with books.
We spent all those years talking about stuff we had in common, and the last few months noticing all the ways we were different and it broke both of our hearts.
One of the depressing things one realizes as one gets older is how much of one's tastes and attitudes are simply products of economic circumstance at the time.
There's a subterranean impetus towards pornography so powerful that half the business world is juiced by the sort of half sex that one finds in advertisements.
Whatever be the motives which induce men to write,--whether avarice or fame,--the country becomes more wise and happy in which they most serve for instructors.
I couldn't say who I am, I haven't the remotest notion of myself; I am someone without antecedents, without a history, without a country, and on that I insist!
Everything good in my life can be traced back to my mother's sobriety. She showed me that broken people can - with the help of others - turn themselves around.
When I'm in the field, when I'm working, I keep very careful notes. I wear big shirts with big breast pockets, and I carry in them two little spiral notebooks.
The mentally disturbed do not employ the Principle of Scientific Parsimony: the most simple theory to explain a given set of facts. They shoot for the baroque.
When he turned on the tape-transport once more, Arctor was saying, "-- as near as I can figure out, God is dead." Luckman answered, "I didn't know He was sick.
In a way. Magic is the act of making a wish come about. Like praying, like plotting, like herbs, like exerting your will on the world, making something happen.
Without magic, there is no art. Without art, there is no idealism. Without idealism, there is no integrity. Without integrity, there is nothing but production.
Steve Yarbrough's Safe from the Neighbors will take your breath away. Ambitious, funny, sad, smart, and beautifully crafted, it's everything a novel should be.
Some places speak distinctly. Certain dark gardens cry aloud for a murder; certain old houses demand to be haunted; certain coasts are set apart for shipwreck.
To be apt in quotation is a splendid and dangerous gift. Splendid, because it ornaments a man's speech with other men's jewels; dangerous, for the same reason.
My dear fellow, my whole life is moved by the principle that the one thing which is more important than peace is music. It is because I believe that I am poor.
Fantasy is my genre and my home in the writing world. I consider it the biggest writing room in all literature, where there are literally no boundaries at all.
Teen fiction should be about teenagers - no matter how many arguments there are about what YA lit should be, this seems like the one thing we can all agree on.
I have always thought, the secret purpose of the book tour is to make the writer hate the book he's written. And, as a result, drive him to write another book.
thought I was doing two things. One is inquiring into the phenomenon of revelation, if you are not a religious person. But, clearly, it's a sincere phenomenon.
I do have a lot of time for people in my life, and friendship is a very important subject for me. I think I'm unusual among the writers I know in that respect.
Anyone who has had the experience of going through American security checks knows the purpose of these checks is not to make you safer; it's just to annoy you.
People see themselves as 'succeeding' because they are individually exceptional -- they don't see that there is a mechanism that has made it possible for them.
Damn the great executives, the men of measured merriment, damn the men with careful smiles, damn the men that run the shops, oh, damn their measured merriment.
As for me, I've been in love with women and men. I get how people fall in love with different kinds of people, but to fall in love with God: I didn't get that.
The fact that we die is one of the more interesting things that happen to us. Fiction ought to be about bottom lines, and that's as bottom-line as you can get.
Something indefinite is always worse than something definite, a strong fear that doesn't last very long is easier than one that's nebulous but doesn't go away.
If the right thing came along, I would absolutely direct something I did not write because I love the process so much, but we'll see. I'm taking it day by day.
Whatever soul I had, Katie, I think I placed it in your keeping twenty years ago. And now, it's as if...every time we kiss, you give a little piece of it back.
The perfect woman, you see [is] a working-woman; not an idler; not a fine lady; but one who [uses] her hands and her head and her heart for the good of others.
It's a hard thing to explain to somebody who hasn't felt it, but the presence of death and danger has a way of bringing you fully awake. It makes things vivid.