Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There comes with old age a time when the heart is no longer fusible or malleable, and must retain the form in which it has cooled down.
You couldn't hurt a fly." Actually I was pretty good at pinging flies right out of the air, but I tried to look appropriately harmless.
For centuries many of the world's distinguished philosophers have assaulted Christianity as being irrational, superstitious and absurd.
I once knew a writer who, after saying beautiful things about the sea, passed through a Pacific hurricane, and he became a changed man.
A bed or a chair will trick you if you stay still on them long at a time. They will draw out your strength and leave you weak as water.
Most of us remember adolescence as a kind of double negative: no longer allowed to be children, we are not yet capable of being adults.
Families, generally, suck. And I say that as someone who, like my husband, had parents who proved the proverbial exception to the rule.
I'll declare my own interest right here at the start and admit that, like the vast majority of people, I find youthful looks appealing.
If you begin to give away parts of yourself, eventually you'll give it all. And once you've lost yourself, haven't you lost everything?
Personally I always feel like I could use a little more of poetry apothegmatic power in my own work but we're always lacking something.
There is a point. I don't know what it is, but everything I've had, and everything I've lost, and everything I felt—it meant something.
I watched the way they looked at each other. Any idiot could see they were in love, even if they were the only two idiots who couldn't.
Crafting a piece of gripping, narrative true crime that engages the world is not that different from crafting a piece of crime fiction.
Sexual enlightenment is that hardhearted process which for hygienic reasons forbids young people to satisfy their curiosity themselves.
When a man is treated like a beast, he says, 'After all, I'm human.' When he behaves like a beast, he says 'After all, I'm only human.'
There's a Buddhist precept that the only thing you deserve is the chance to do the work, and I've been given the chance to do the work.
The history of the world begins with a seed. The seed is the kernel of what you are, but it is also the promise of what you can become.
The ostrich burying its head in the sand does at any rate wish to convey the impression that its head is the most important part of it.
It is possible to reclaim your future, to build a happy life despite an imperfect past. We can order the universe to our will and mind.
Obsidian was caused by volcanoes, an eruption of steam and gas so furious that it melted the earth itself into this hard, shiny object.
Jonathan Franzen seems like the grumpiest guy, and he doesn't seem to like much of anything, so I really don't care what he has to say.
Anyone who has ever had the feeling of being higher than a kite after giving a public speech is well aware of the effects of attention.
She's useful to me, I'm useful to her. As long as that continues, Rowan Street is safe from an old-lady smack down of epic proportions.
Objective is the wrong word. Rather, it's fairness. Objectivity is a false God. Instead we should strive for fairness and transparency.
It's harder to make money when you're not a machine in a massive apparatus designed only to make money, but artists will figure it out.
It is nothing, to give one’s life for Ireland. I’m not the first and maybe I won’t be the last. What’s my life compared with the cause?
I keep an ongoing list of my fifty favorite books, which I recalibrate whenever I discover a new one that seems to demand a spot there.
When I was a boy, one of my uncles had a cabin on a lake in Wisconsin. My family went there for parts of three summers, and I loved it!
Beauty is power and elegance, right action, form fitting function, intelligence, and reasonability. And very often expressed in curves.
Things have value Because somebody buys them, Because somebody pays money; If you can find a buyer, Even a lie is worth a thousand yen.
If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.
The New York Daily News suggested that my biggest war crime was not killing myself like a gentleman. Presumably Hitler was a gentleman.
One might be led to suspect that there were all sorts of things going on in the Universe which he or she did not thoroughly understand.
The only way to get anything out of a writer's brains is to leave him or her alone until he or she is damn well ready to write it down.
I need to finish this scarf/shawl/blanket thing so I can start something for Emma- a hat, maybe, or a sweater for her stuffed elephant.
You see things really different when your father is so intimately, so indisputably in charge of your continued existence on the planet.
Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself.
And once he had seen this, he could never again see it otherwise, just as we cannot reconstruct an illusion once it has been explained.
Friends we shall never be, you know that yourself. Whether we shall be the happiest or the wretchedest of people--that's in your hands.
You can't imagine what a pleasure this complete laziness is to me: not a thought in my brain- you might send a ball rolling through it!
When it was seen that many of the wicked seemed quite untroubled by evil conscience ... then the idea of future suffering was advanced.
I have often seen a cat without a grin - but a grin without a cat - remember the cat kept appearing and disappearing slowly bit by bit.
When we talk about the foreign, the question becomes one of us versus them. But in the end, is one just the opposite side of the other?
I am a jumble of passions, misgivings, and wants. It seems that I am always in a state of wishing and rarely in a state of contentment.
It is funny how you do not miss affection until it is given, but once it is, it can never be enough; you would drown in it if possible.
She knew what it was to wait for someone who would never come home. She knew that grief, like a scar, faded but never really went away.
The question in crisis or ordeal is not: Are you going to be an extremist? The question is: What kind of extremist are you going to be?
Americans are obsessed with wild, outlandish things. Marilyn Monroe, Mickey Mouse, and Michael Jackson are all wild, outlandish things.
We (the Chinese) eat food for its texture, the elastic or crisp effect it has on our teeth, as well as for fragrance, flavor and color.
The classics tell us that, in relationships, the one between teacher and student comes second only to the one between parent and child.