Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was the last time. My greatest regret was how much I believed in the future.
It is economic power that determines political power, and governments become the political functionaries of economic power.
If we cannot live entirely like human beings, at least let us do everything in our power not to live entirely like animals.
Courage is nine-tenths context. What is courageous in one setting can be foolhardy in another and even cowardly in a third.
My soul is always lifted up, and my spirit cheered and comforted, when I hear good music. I rejoice in it very much indeed.
Earthly greatness is a nice thing, and requires so much chariness in the managing, as the contentment of it cannot requite.
Fishing the small streams of New Hampshire is a pastime that combines hiking, map reading, and bushwhacking - plenty of it.
As someone who has moved around a fair amount, I wondered what it would be like to stay rooted to one place, one community.
When I interview people accused of capital offenses, I never even ask if they did it. I would consider that unprofessional.
Hearts got broken every day. Nobody died from that. But it did kind of fade the sunlight and drain the color from the days.
Tolerance is the worst roar of all, including tolerance for homosexuals, feminists, and religions that don't follow Christ.
I believe myself capable of great things. Some days it feels as if I can't do it alone. It is nice to know I don't have to.
The Feminist Me says that a woman's right to her own body should be inviolate at all times, free from fear of peeping paps.
'Oscar Wao' for example cohered in a period of terrible distress. All the novels that I wanted to write were not happening.
We make assumptions: nurses should be nice, teachers should be good. But everyone has a dark side, some darker than others.
I grew up reading thrillers. Honestly, I was always drawn to the very detailed ones like Patricia Cornwell. I love details.
The book that first made me want to be a writer is Flannery O'Connor's short story collection 'A Good Man Is Hard To Find.'
I am just always, always paying attention - waiting for the words, or image, or name that will be the beginning of a story.
The complete destruction of traditional marriage and the nuclear family is the 'revolutionary or utopian' goal of feminism.
if you are perfectly willing to shock an individual verbally, the next thing you will be doing is to shock him practically.
Y.A. wasn't really a specific genre when I was fifteen, but if it was, I would probably have shunned it; I was a huge snob.
I was born in a place humans call central Africa, in a dense rain forest so beautiful, no crayons could ever do it justice.
Cut the things out of your life that keep you from reaching your dream. It doesn't matter if it's cooking or belly dancing.
The ingredients that make a good poem often differ from those that make a good essay and from those that make a good novel.
Successful cult memes induce intense social interaction behaviour between cult members. This trips the attention detectors.
The digital revolution is almost as disruptive to the traditional media business as electricity was to the candle business.
Diplomats willing to sit for an interview usually prefer the terra firma of CNN over the whoopee cushion of Comedy Central.
When I was young, I assumed that authors must have traveled the world or done exotic things in order to tell great stories.
Poetry and prose are of equal importance to me as a reader, and there doesn't seem to be much difference in my own writing.
It occurred to her suddenly, sharply, that she wanted to be in love... She wanted not to feel so damned alone in the world.
That’s the secret of artistic unity. Anybody can achieve it, if he or she will make something with only one person in mind.
Here is the solution to the American drug problem suggested a couple years back by the wife of our President: "Just say no.
I couldn't help wondering if that was what God put me on Earth for--to find out how much a man could take without breaking.
Everybody knows that the dumbest people in any American university are in the education department, and English after that.
America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves.
If you appear in the 'Atlantic' or 'Harper's' or the 'New Yorker,' by God, you must be a writer, because everybody says so.
For knowledge is not given as gift...but through study...The free mind, not afraid of labor, presses on to attain the good.
You can't kill us all, human.' He was right. I raised the machine gun a little. 'True, but who's going to be first in line?
Still it might be nice, once in a while, not to have to choose between evils. Just once, couldn't I choose the lesser good?
Very few people see their own actions as truly evil,... It is left to their victims to decide what is evil and what is not.
I have entered high school with the wrong hair, the wrong clothes, the wrong attitude. And I don't have anyone to sit with.
If I can write a book that will help the world make a little more sense to a teen, then that's why I was put on the planet.
I don't care about the little guy. I just hate the big guy. I hate big smug people who think they can get away with things.
All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.
It's too easy to criticize a man when he's out of favour, and to make him shoulder the blame for everybody else's mistakes.
Here I am...wanting to accomplish something and completely forgetting it must all end--that there is such a thing as death.
You have to run as fast as you can just to stay where you are. If you want to get anywhere, you'll have to run much faster.
Of what does politics consist except the making of imperfect decisions, many of them unjust and quite a few of them deadly?
People have a habit of inventing fictions they will believe wholeheartedly in order to ignore the truth they cannot accept.
I am no longer content to be the scared, obedient schoolgirl. Who are you, a stranger, to tell me what I can and cannot do?