Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
People will sometimes say, "Why don't you write more politics?" And I have to explain to them that writing the lives of women IS politics.
All good novelists have bad memories. What you remember comes out as journalism; what you forget goes into the compost of the imagination.
I am finding it very hard to get my novel started. I suffer from stylistic abscesses; and sentences keep itching without coming to a head.
Tourism, human circulation considered as consumption is fundamentally nothing more than the leisure of going to see what has become banal.
Icelanders are grateful to meet foreigners who have heard of their country. And even more grateful to hear someone say it deserves better.
Security ... it's simply the recognition that changes will take place and the knowledge that you're willing to deal with whatever happens.
Everyone who has something is afraid of losing it, and people with nothing are worried they'll forever have nothing. Everyone is the same.
Everything was too sharp and clear, so that I could never tell where to start- the way a map that shows too much can sometimes be useless.
The power to concentrate was the most important thing. Living without this power would be like opening one’s eyes without seeing anything.
It was spring break, so the theater was always packed with high schools students. It was an animal house. I wanted to burn the place down.
At the entrance to the original tower, there is a stone into which Jung carved some words with his own hand: 'Cold or not, God is present.
What I'd like to be is a unique writer who's different from everybody else. I want to be a writer who tells stories unlike other writers'.
It is an admitted fact that the ordinary tomtit of commerce has a sounder aesthetic taste than the average female relative in the country.
Why should antitrust laws be used to block mergers that the market, by the existence of willing buyers and sellers, shows to be desirable?
The worst sin that can be committed against the artist is to take him at his word, to see in his work a fulfillment instead of an horizon.
A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation. Lend and borrow to the maximum.
The moment one is on the side of life; peace and security drop out of consciousness. The only peace, the only security, is in fulfillment.
[Heresy is] the dislocation of a complete and self-supporting scheme by the introduction of a novel denial of some essential part therein.
My love of performers is not really different than my love for painters. Everyone's really high-strung and trying to do the best they can.
I am terribly interested in the paragraph: the paragraph as an object, the construction, and the possibilities of what a paragraph can do.
Education commences at the mother's knee, and every word spoken within hearsay of little children tends toward the formation of character.
I can't be found in myself; I discover myself in others. That much is clear. And I suspect that I also love and care for myself in others.
To avail yourself of His certain wisdom, ask of Him whatever questions you have. But do not entreat Him, for that will never be necessary.
The kind of world I'm endlessly going on about is pretty well doomed, but nevertheless I think there are recesses of it worth celebrating.
There are just too many Americans grubbing for free stuff and a preponderance of Republicans eager to parcel it out in exchange for power.
People seldom learn from the mistakes of others-not because they deny the value of the past, but because they are faced with new problems.
People ask what are my intentions with my films - my aims. It is a difficult and dangerous question, and I usually give an evasive answer.
I can feel it... the chance to start over, to live right, to love right, to burn up in a fiery cloud and never again be buried in the mud.
Sweet is the day of sacred rest; No mortal cares shall seize my breast; O may my heart in tune be found Like David's harp of solemn sound.
He realized...that the loudest are the least sincere, that arrogance is a quality of the ignorant, and that flatterers tend to be vicious.
A man who cooks is very sexy. A woman who cooks is not that sexy. Because it's associated in our mind to the domestic cliche of the woman.
He who knows not and knows not he knows not: he is a fool -- shun him. He who knows not and knows he knows not: he is simple -- teach him.
I became something I had no name for in solitude and only later discovered the word for what I was and realized there were others like me.
He directed that the stone over his grave be inscribed: Hic jacet hujus sententiae primus auctor: DISPUTANDI PRURITUS ECCLESIARUM SCABIES.
If you sat around there long enough and heard all the phonies applauding and all, you got to hate everybody in the world, I swear you did.
Thank you, Sam," he said in a cracked whisper. "How far is there to go?" I don't know," said Sam, "because I don't know where we're going.
I'll get there, if I leave everything but my bones behind," said Sam. "And I'll carry Mr. Frodo up myself, if it breaks my back and heart.
Saruman," I said, standing away from him, "only one hand at a time can weild the One, and you know that well, so do not trouble to say we!
Imagine having "no chain of titles for cars, no VIN numbers, and no DMV. There'd be total chaos! But that's basically the system for debt.
He who would be useful, strong, and happy must cease to be a passive receptacle for the negative, beggarly, and impure streams of thought.
I turn and I slowly walk away and I don't look back. It has always been a fault of mine, but it is the way I am. I never look back. Never.
Metaphor impinges on everything, allowing us - poets and non-poets alike - to experience and think about the world in fluid, unusual ways.
For me, a good friend is someone you might only see once or twice a year but each time it feels as though you've just seen them last week.
A good day's writing, when I turn off my computer after I know that I've written okay, or as well as I can write, that's a day well spent.
I write stories that are already in the air, and I think it's important to have the correct listening device to tune in to that frequency.
Loving can be hard. Sometimes we don't feel loving, but it isn't all about feeling. Very often it is about will. Practice that if you can.
English country life is more like Chekhov than 'The Archers' or Thomas Hardy or even the Updike ethic with which it is sometimes compared.
I knew there were no such things as death cooties. Unfortunately, that's an intellectual fact. And death cooties are an emotional reality.
Transitions are critically important. I want the reader to turn the page without thinking she's turning the page. It must flow seamlessly.
Lots of times I'm not crazy about the writing, but I keep moving ahead and somehow it gets better. The important thing is to move forward.