Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There is a kind of laughter people laugh at public events, as if a joke were a charity auction and they want to be seen to be bidding.
I buried Little Ann by the side of Old Dan. I knew that was where she wanted to be. I also buried a part of my life along with my dog.
We like to see death as an unfair conspiracy, and what we want is a magic practitioner, a combination of Dr Watson and Sherlock Holmes.
In fact, everybody should wake up smelling nice. I go further, there is not an excuse, ever, not to smell nice, particularly your feet.
IQ in general has improved since tests first began. Psychologists think that this is because modern life becomes ever more complicated.
I should prefer to have a politician who regularly went to a massage parlour than one who promised a laptop computer for every teacher.
You can't accuse the creator of The Boondocks, ... Jesus was black, Ronald Reagan was the devil and the government is lying about 9/11.
It is hard for many people today to make the distinction between religion and religiosity, the latter a dangerous parody of the former.
Don't stand back with your arms folded; step forward... There is hope and light to resist injustice and promote peace without violence.
If you prefer smoke over fire then get up now and leave. For I do not intend to perfume your mind's clothing with more sooty knowledge.
For me, every translation is a new book, with the translator inevitably broadening the meaning of the original book in any translation.
Instead of bringing back 1600 plants, we might return from our journeys with a collection of small unfêted but life-enhancing thoughts.
Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.
Writing a book has about it some of the anxiety of telling a joke and having to wait several years to know whether or not it was funny.
As far as I can see, it's not important that we have free will, just as long as we have the illusion of free will to stop us going mad.
I still can't believe it . . . him comin' here everyday, nobody realizin'. Still, that's life: lotta stuff happens under the waterline.
The lion will lay down with the lamb...but every morning they'll have to provide a new lamb. Maybe this world is another planet's hell.
Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unshown marble of great sculpture. The silent bear no witness against themselves.
...we were back at home, and I had returned to that reassuring but profoundly unsatisfactory state known as 'being in one's right mind.
The nature of power is such that even those who have not sought it, but have had it forced upon them, tend to acquire a taste for more.
I resist when someone calls me a novelist: it implies some kind of inherent superiority of the novel. I'm not a novelist, I'm a writer.
Everything in Italy that is particularly elegant and grand borders upon insanity and absurdity or at least is reminiscent of childhood.
It is rare that one can see in a little boy the promise of a man, but one can almost always see in a little girl the threat of a woman.
My own 'sentimental favorite' is always the novel I haven't yet written - I suppose that's the one I consider my 'masterpiece' as well.
For many decades my relations with my parents constituted unfinished business. I had dealt with them through sheer avoidance and guilt.
The impartiality of history is not that of the mirror, which merely reflects objects, but of the judge, who sees, listens, and decides.
What I told you before is still true. I want to know that when you're with me, it's because you want to be, not because you have to be.
Fire and light compete today in the East. But there is a lot of green firewood in this fire, and there is a lot of smoke in that light.
What ultimately happened is that my country had a war. I think it would be extraordinary, as a writer, not to want to write about that.
Books are the most mannerly of companions, accessible at all times, in all moods, frankly declaring the author's mind, without offense.
Don't keep saying, "I don't know where the time goes." It goes the same place it's always gone and no one has ever known where that is.
We are what we are. Nothing more, nothing less. There is good and evil among every kind of people. It's the evil among us who rule now.
Ignorance and poverty are the best condiments for the great feast of the world, but the inexperienced and poor are never invited to it.
To make a book convincing, it's less important that the right tree be in the right place than that the characters are emotionally real.
Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.
It is the missed opportunity that counts, and in a love that vainly yearns from behind prison bars you have perchance the love supreme.
Perhaps it seems odd that a casual meeting on the street could have brought about such change. But sometimes life is like that isn't it
The thing which makes one man greater than another, the quality by which we ought to measure greatness, is a man's capacity for loving.
If you hate your life, you haven't' seen enough of it. If you hate your life, it's because your life is too small and doesn't' fit you.
A man's free will cannot cure him even of the toothache, or a sore finger; and yet he madly thinks it is in its power to cure his soul.
Yes, the Boy Scouts of America should definitely allow gay adult leaders and I think it's really going to hold them back if they don't.
Getting well is not the only goal. Even more important is learning to live without fear, to be at peace with life and ultimately death.
A good woman is one who loves passionately, has guts, seriousness and passionate convictions, takes responsibility, and shapes society.
Words of wisdom for every photographer: 'Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking'. So said Goethe.
Too many of us take great pains with what we ingest through our mouths, and far less with what we partake of through our ears and eyes.
If you're right & I'm not, I'm going to be hell to live with, she said. So, you better think about that next time you want to be right.
Fantasy/science-fiction stories have been around almost as long as each genre, but every hybrid now lives in the shadow of 'Star Wars.'
More often than not, real life is so rich, complex and unpredictable that it would seem completely implausible in the pages of a novel.
The propositions of mathematics are devoid of all factual content; they convey no information whatever on any empirical subject matter.
And those who say, "I'll try anything once," often try nothing twice, three times, arriving late at the gate of dreams worth dying for.