Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I was sent to a finishing school, which didn't last long when mother found out how badly chaperoned we were. Then I 'came out' before going to a domestic science school.
A Good Soldier is one of my favorite novels, for various reasons. But the class question is a good one, because it's not always easy to empathize with privileged people.
I don't want to say that having power is overrated, but powerlessness can give rise to a different kind of authority, and that's the kind of authority that writes books.
A religion that teaches you God is something outside the world--something separate from everything you see, smell, taste, touch, and hear--is nothing but a cheap hustle.
I swear to you on any kind of sacred whateverthefuck you favor: if I live through this I will absolutely start taking your advice." "That'll look nice on your headstone.
I am also well aware that literature only has a minimal influence on political disputes or economic crises in the world, but its significance to human beings is ancient.
People who quoted the Scriptures in criticism of others were terrible bores and usually they misapplied the text. One could prove anything against anyone from the Bible.
Of course there were areas of safety; nothing could get at me if I curled up on my father's lap, holding his ear with one thumb tucked into it... All about him was safe.
Is it a fact-or have I dreamt it-that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time?
Have you ever stopped to think how much unhappiness and downright cruelty are laid to the loving kindness of the Lord? And always by His most ardent followers, it seems.
The Belgians tend to downplay the cultural divide issue, and the far-right issue, but there's a staggering degree of casual racism in Belgium, much worse than in the UK.
I'm sure you think that I don't understand what you're going through, but I do. It's just that sometimes, our future is dictated by what we are, opposed to what we want.
If we'd never met, I think I would have known my life wasn't complete. And I would have wandered the world in search of you, even if I didn't know who I was looking for.
With 'Brooklyn,' I knew the story I wanted to tell, and I just had a very strong sense that if I turned the volume up a little bit, it could be something really special.
Really, I prefer not to read my early books. Not that I don't like them, but I don't recognize myself anymore, like an old actor watching himself as a young leading man.
The body, then, has a mind of its own. It must follow, then, that the Mind has a body of its own, even if it’s like nothing that we can see around us, or have ever seen.
I decided if I couldn't be a writer, my life would be miserable. I had this imaginary room of references to all the books I had read, a kind of bubble, in which I lived.
The failure of the U.S.'s foreign adventures often seems to have its roots in the U.S.'s total ignorance of things on the ground, of the countries that they fiddle with.
Life is short, he thought. Art, or something not life, is long, stretching out endless, like [a] concrete worm. Flat, white, unsmoothed by any passage over or across it.
You be greater than your feelings. I don't demand this of you - life does. Otherwise you'll be washed away by feelings. You'll be washed out to sea and never seen again.
Dreams? If only they had been! But I don't need dreams, Doctor, that's why I hardly have them—because I have this life instead. With me it all happens in broad daylight!
I do not say correct or savory. I do not say seemly or even natural. I say serious. Sensationally serious. Unspeakably serious. Solemnly, recklessly, blissfully serious.
To read a novel requires a certain amount of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading. If you read a novel in more than two weeks, you don't read the novel, really.
The moon of a bright silver, which dazzles by its shining, illumines a world which surely is no longer ours; for it resembles in nothing what may be seen in other lands.
I was at that time like a fledgling swallow living high up in a niche in the eaves, who from time to time peeps out over the top of its nest with its little bright eyes.
To have one's own story told by a third party who doesn't know that the character in question is himself the hero of the story being told, that's a technical refinement.
You are the nest. You are the hatchling. You are the chrysalis. You are the progeny. You are the rot that falls from stars. You may not understand what I mean. You will.
As long as you draw breath anywhere -here or ten thousands miles from here- I will love you. I can't help loving you, so I choose to hate you...to make my love bearable.
Homesickness is a bit like seasickness. You don't know how awful it is unti you get it, and when you do, it hits you right in the top of the stomach and you want to die.
Whipped cream isn't whipped cream at all if it hasnt been whipped with whips, just like poached eggs isn't poached eggs unless it's been stolen in the dead of the night.
Another of Cicero's maxims was that if you must do something unpopular, you might as well do it wholeheartedly, for in politics there is no credit to be won by timidity.
His friends were those of his own blood or those whom he had known the longest; his affections, like ivy, were the growth of time, they implied no aptness in the object.
The problem of education is twofold: first to know, and then to utter. Everyone who lives any semblance of an inner life thinks more nobly and profoundly than he speaks.
Equality and justice, the two great distinguishing characteristics of democracy, follow inevitably from the conception of men, all men, as rational and spiritual beings.
It used to be fashionable for authors to have their pictures taken with dogs, but the dogs always looked like models hired from an advertising agency, and probably were.
If there is a heaven, Jane Austen is sitting in a small room with Mother Teresa and Princess Diana, listening to Duran Duran, forever. If there's a hell, she's standing.
In Europe, it's common to hear about young professionals living with their parents. With the continent's high rents and taxes and its population density, it makes sense.
I do think there was a period there when my sanity was under intense pressure, and I didn't know what to say or do or how to act. I was literally living from day to day.
In the 1970s, British food was beginning to get good, whereas in France it was just starting its long, sad decline. My most memorable meals, however, have been in Italy.
When does he ever think?" Richard straddled a chair and accepted a wind cup from Raoul. "If he were to sell his brain, he could claim it had never been used.", Chapter 7
What's wrong with this egotism? If a man doesn't delight in himself and the force in him and feel that he and it are wonders, how is all life to become important to him?
All rivers, even the most dazzling, those that catch the sun in their course, all rivers go down to the ocean and drown. And life awaits man as the sea awaits the river.
Intellectual curiosity about one's own illness is certainly born of a desire for mastery. If I couldn't cure myself, perhaps I could at least begin to understand myself.
I enjoy domestic life. Cooking gives me great pleasure, especially if I can chop vegetables slowly and think about what I'm doing and dream a little about this and that.
The future is, of course, imaginary - an unreal place that I create from my expectations, which are made from my remembered experiences, especially repeated experiences.
Twenty-three is said to be the prime of life by those who have reached so far and no farther. It shares this distinction with every age, from ten to three-score and ten.
The gift from my Secret Santa wasn't anything special. That makes me sad. I bet you anything that Mary Elizabeth is my Secret Santa because only she would give me socks.
When people start yammering about artistic responsibility, artists become wary. The subtext of such talk is that the arts need to be regulated, which is to say censored.
When you find yourself about to say something that crosses a line, something that could cause irreparable harm, sometimes the best you can do is just not say that thing.
I must apologise because I know all writers have memories of being on the outer because it's the children on the side of the playground who become the dangerous writers.