Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Why is it that so few people are truly free? Because they try to conform to ideas, concepts, and beliefs in their heads.
Adolescence is a period of rapid changes. Between the ages of 12 and 17, for example, a parent ages as much as 20 years.
Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.
We study biology, physics, movements of glaciers... Where are the classes on envy, feeling wronged, despair, bitterness.
Alcohol-inspired fights are a reminder of the price we pay for our daily submission at the altars of prudence and order.
I know that something dies when i give up my books, and that my memory keeps going back to them with mournful nostalgia.
Art is one of the means whereby man seeks to redeem a life which is experienced as chaotic, senseless, and largely evil.
Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.
But a priest's life is not supposed to be well-rounded; it is supposed to be one-pointed - a compass, not a weathercock.
Indeed optimists rather than defeatists have produced the results for which serious genealogical research is best known.
I tell younger writers that indeed it is devastating to be rejected. You feel like the bottom dropped out of your world.
It's through the small things that we develop our moral imagination, so that we can understand the sufferings of others.
Botswana is actually very peaceful. It's democratic. It never was in debt. They've been fortunate, they've had diamonds.
Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.
The custom and fashion of today will be the awkwardness and outrage of tomorrow - so arbitrary are these transient laws.
My father always wanted to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding and the baby at every christening.
How could it be that you could love someone so much and keep it secret from yourself as you woke daily so far from home?
when a person implores you to be reasonable what he means is that you should speed round forthwith to his point of view.
Texts and e-mails travel no faster than phone calls and telegrams, and their content isn't necessarily richer or poorer.
I want to be a writer. I do not want to spend 40 hours a week handling e-mails, formatting covers, finding editors, etc.
As a rule, I don't enjoy being tossed into closets and having the door shut on my face, but I knew he was protecting me.
One of my earliest lessons in guilt was imparted in childhood through the story of the death of Mahatma Gandhi's father.
I think you would like Warren. He drinks Courvoisier in a Coke can, and has a laugh like you'd find in a cartoon bubble.
Take a moment think who would actually miss you if you deactivate all your social networking accounts, whatsapp, BBM etc
I had known a couple of people who had died, but the loss of my mother contained something of the profoundly unknowable.
She felt so much aware of her own beauty it seemed inconceivable that everybody else wouldn't notice the difference too.
The best doctrine may become the worst, if imperfectly understood, erroneously interpreted, or superstitiously followed.
What should a good children’s book be like? If you ask me, I can tell you after thinking long and hard: It must be good.
Change is the immediate responsibility of each of us, wherever and however we are standing, in whatever arena we choose.
Which came first, the mind or the idea of the mind? Have you never wondered? They arrived together. The mind is an idea.
I have tried very hard as a novelist to say, 'Novels are about individuals and especially larger than life individuals.'
Evolution in action: First, God said, 'Let there be light.' Then, he created two nude models. Now we have photographers.
I have friends among the Christians, whom I love, and never for a moment have I thought of attacking their Christianity.
The only thing that would make her jealous would be if I led a parade riding a unicorn while ballerinas sang love songs.
Was life like that? You could look ahead to the future or back to the past, but the present moved too quickly to absorb.
I had so many wonderful guys that I worked with and great matches - that's what was most important to me - and the fans.
There is nothing more I ask of this life than this moment, exactly so. And suddenly forever seems like too short a time.
It's TV shows like 'Buffy' and 'Angel' that usually have an incredible cliffhanger every commercial break that amaze me.
I had always believed that I left a bit of me wherever I went. I also believed that I took a bit of every place with me.
Poetry is the establishment of a metaphorical link between white butterfly-wings and the scraps of torn-up love-letters.
It happened this way: I fell in love and then, because the love was ruining everything I cared about, I had to fall out.
I hate her." Merlin laughed, tossing the stick down. "Not so. You have forgotten how to love. That's a different sorrow.
Revenge is a debt, in the paying of which the greatest knave is honest and sincere, and, so far as he is able, punctual.
The poorest man would not part with health for money, but the richest would gladly part with all their money for health.
The mob is a monster, with the hands of Briareus, but the head of Polyphemus,--strong to execute, but blind to perceive.
Don't be afraid! We won't make an author of you, while there's an honest trade to be learnt, or brick-making to turn to.
No varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself.
Affery, like greater people, had always been right in her facts, and always wrong in the theories she deduced from them.
Of little worth as life is when we misuse it, it is worth that effort. It would cost nothing to lay down if it were not.
I think I'm smart, and I know I was a good mom. But there wasn't a lot I could point to and say, that's why I'm special.