Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Writers are magpies by nature, always collecting shiny things, storing them away and looking for connections of things.
It's not like we wanted to talk about the fact that we're gay all the time, but the world has forced it to be an issue.
Neither can oath nor promise bind any such people to obey and maintain tyrants against God and against his truth known.
[Beauty is] a delicate bait with a deadly hook; a sweet panther with a devouring paunch, a sour poison in a silver pot.
He that comes in print because he would be known, is like the fool that comes into the market because he would be seen.
A soul disengaged from the world is a heavenly one; and then are we ready for heaven when our heart is there before us.
I'm not quite pompous enough to think of myself as an educator or a man capable of definitive refutation of falsehoods.
I have sometimes suspected that the only thing that holds no mystery is happiness, because it is its own justification.
Mir Bahadur Ali is, as we have seen, incapable of evading the most vulgar of art's temptations: that of being a genius.
Ah, in every age there is always some new wonder to astound mankind until they grow accustomed to it and lose interest.
Questing... is not an ego trip; it is an adventure to bring into fulfillment your gift to the world, which is yourself.
My wife who is non-Jewish regrets it all the time that I can say these terrible things about fellow Jews and she can't.
Attention is like a narrow mouthed vessel; pour into it what you have to say cautiously, and, as it were, drop by drop.
History needs distance, perspective. Facts and events which are too well attested cease, in some sort, to be malleable.
Like true philosophers I've come to believe that religion is an illusion of childhood, outgrown after proper education.
True love is spelled G-I-V-E. It is not based on what you can get, but rooted in what you can give to the other person.
I am not a Christian because God changed my life; I am a Christian because of my convictions about who Jesus Christ is.
A pier is a disappointed bridge; yet stare at it for long enough and you can dream it to the other side of the Channel.
As I've explained to my wife many times, you have to kill your wife or mistress to get on the front page of the papers.
Going to university is only one avenue to gain knowledge. There are others. A degree isn't insurance against ignorance.
- Nothing else has any efficacy, I might as well be myself. - But your yourself sucks! - It is, lamentably, all I have.
I never loved you any more than I do, right this second. And I'll never love you any less than I do, right this second.
People don't just love mysteries. They are obsessed with them - especially the kind that are never definitively solved.
The most incomprehensible talk comes from people who have no other use for language than to make themselves understood.
How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print.
Ethics are not necessarily to do with being law-abiding. I am very interested in the moral path, doing the right thing.
Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark. Begin at the beginning. Tell Gregory a story. Make some light.
Going out and not only meeting the kids, but meeting the teachers and the librarians and seeing the world, fills me up.
Humans waste words. They toss them like banana peels and leave them to rot. Everyone knows the peels are the best part.
Simon: Anyone ever tell you your sense of timing really sucks? Derek: That's why I don't play the drums. Now what's up?
I understand that I may make mistakes with characters who don't share my own background, but I commit to doing my best.
I don't believe that any human mind is capable of 100 percent error... Nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the time.
When it comes to my Uncle Jack, my father, or any other loved ones we've lost, I believe in honoring lives, not deaths.
I was also ready to believe, though, that whatever good things I had managed to set upright could topple at any second.
Birth is a dream, spontaneous and innate. Death, on the other hand, is a slow, false, divine calamity. It is like love.
I think for one, we have to really accept that anger is a normal human emotion that can be a positive force for change.
That is how you get to be a writer, incidentally: you feel somehow marginal, somehow slightly off-balance all the time.
The more you wish to be, the wiser you are; while the wish to have is apt to be foolish in proportion to its largeness.
Not to forgive is to be imprisoned by the past, by old grievances that do not permit life to proceed with new business.
There had to be a circle of Hell where you were eternally fourteen, eternally in junior high. One of the lower circles.
Why is it that most things you might willingly do under other circumstances become distasteful when you have no choice?
Do they choose to be so dense? Were they born that way? I have no friends. I have nothing. I say nothing. I am nothing.
Our happiest moments as tourists always seem to come when we stumble upon one thing while in pursuit of something else.
One aspect of serendipity to bear in mind is that you have to be looking for something in order to find something else.
As long as there are slaughterhouses there will be battlefields. A vegetarian diet is the acid test of humanitarianism.
The chief attraction of military service has consisted and will consist in this compulsory and irreproachable idleness.
It is the privilege of true genius, And especially genius who opens up a new path, To make great mistakes with impunity
Do not, oh do not indulge such a wild idea that a newspaper might err! If so what have we to trust in this age of sham?
You could not see a cloud, because No cloud was in the sky: No birds were flying overhead - There were no birds to fly.
Speak English!' said the Eaglet. 'I don't know the meaning of half those long words, and I don't believe you do either!