Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If I could repeat my childhood, I would repeat it exactly as it was, with the poverty, the cold, little food, with the flies and pigs, all that.
I don't recall exactly when I first began reading about Lewis and Clark and their Corps of Discovery, but I suspect that it was in fourth grade.
In the absence of an effective general mythology, each of us has his private, unrecognized, rudimentary, yet secretly potent pantheon of dreams.
We who are quotatious are never truly alone, but always hear the cheerful flow of remarks made by dead writers so much more intelligent than we.
The soul that is the abode of chastity acquires an energy which enables her to surmount with ease the obstacles that lie along the path of duty.
You better arm yourselves to answer your children's and grandchildren's questions... no matter what the question is... without being judgmental.
When actresses jump on the anti-Iraq bandwagon, they often combine down-home momism with an ignorance of Islamist intent which is truly awesome.
We hide so well. This is the bottom line: how hidden is male subjectivity? Name five books where male subjectivity is produced in an honest way.
Art is not boosterism, it's not propaganda, and it's not spin, but that's not something that art does, and nor has it historically ever done it.
Beauty—real everlasting beauty—lives not on our faces, but in our attitude and our actions. It lives in what we do for ourselves and for others.
I'm afraid. I know L. I don't want you to get hurt. I won't. What if you do. I'll wait for you. Even if I'm dark? Even if you're very very dark.
From sentence to sentence, in fairy tales there is no reality that is subordinated to any other. Just as, outside the pages there is no reality.
I think pink is one of the saddest colors in the world, and many American humans are taught not to take anything pink seriously, which is weird.
I have a part-time dog. I'm actually an aunt to a dog, and he's an awful dog, but I love him. He's only interested in doing what he wants to do.
I nearly always find, when I ask a vegetarian if he is a socialist, or a socialist if he is a vegetarian, that the answer is in the affirmative.
Letters are the real curse of my existence. I hate to write them: I have to. If I don't, there they are - the great guilty gates barring my way.
Two days a week, I go to my office at The Grotto, a writer's collective in San Francisco. I get there at 8:15 and write until around 1 or 2 P.M.
There is only one history of any importance, and it is the history of what you once believed in, and the history of what you came to believe in.
I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.
Do you realize that all great literature is all about what a bummer it is to be a human being? Isn't it such a relief to have somebody say that?
My special situation was that I was the son and grandson of architects. And so I saw building. We were building the city, and that was exciting.
One good thing about TV is, if you die violently, God forbid, on camera, you will not have died in vain because you will be great entertainment.
I left the Middle West for Schenectady because the General Electric Company offered me a more congenial, better paying job than did anyone else.
It has been wisely observed by the greatest of modern thinkers that mankind has progressed more rapidly in every other respect than in morality.
If you really believe in what you're doing, work hard, take nothing personally, and if something blocks your route, find another. Never give up.
In my short stories there's a lot of focus on people successfully and not successfully responding to some sorts of discomforts or instabilities.
Science is meaningless because it gives no answer to our question, the only question important for us: 'What shall we do and how shall we live?'
Both salvation and punishment for man lie in the fact that if he lives wrongly he can befog himself so as not to see the misery of his position.
Always the same. Now a spark of hope flashes up, then a sea of despair rages, and always pain; always pain, always despair, and always the same.
American Jews, like Americans, have a very consumerist attitude toward their identity: they pick and choose the bits of this and that they like.
In modern praxis lost positions are salvaged most often when the play is highly complicated with many sharp dynamic variations to be calculated.
I wish I dared dispense with all costume. Naked children are so perfectly pure and lovely; but Mrs. Grundy would be furious - it would never do.
All too soon will Childhood gay Realise Life's sober sadness. Let's be merry while we may, Innocent and happy Fay! Elves were made for gladness!
The game of life is a lot like football. You have to tackle your problems, block your fears, and score your points when you get the opportunity.
The idiot who invented instant grits also thought of frozen fried chicken, and they ought to lock him up before he tries to freeze-dry collards.
There is an ancient tribal proverb I once heard in India. It says that before we can see properly we must first shed our tears to clear the way.
Instead of holding on to the Biblical view that we are made in the image of God, we come to realize that we are made in the image of the monkey.
Why did New York feel more like home to me than home did? I'd heard of love at first sight, but I didn't know it could happen with a whole city.
We're told that men are strong & brave, but I think women know how to endure, accept defeat & bear physical & mental agony much better than men.
We live in times that are in many ways ambiguous. Maybe that's why kids want precision in what they read - they don't like that moral ambiguity.
I don't know what you mean when you say 'the whole world' or 'generations before him.'I thought there was only us. I thought there was only now.
Public circulation is what renders something a quotation. It's quotable because it's been quoted, and its having been quoted gives it authority.
You're responsible for yourself. You messed up your life, and it's up to you to fix it. No one else is going to do it for you -- for any of you.
Nothing I force myself to write about ever turns out well, and so I've learned to wait for the voice, the incident, the image that reverberates.
As with email, the recipient of a texted question seems to have the option to ignore it, while nevertheless saying hello, lovely day, and so on.
I think the trick of writing a good picture book manuscript is to leave that space for illustration. An illustrated novel can do the same thing.
Good taste cannot supply the place of genius in literature, for the best proof of taste, when there is no genius, would be, not to write at all.
Basically there can be no categories such as 'religious' art and 'secular' art, because all true art is incarnational, and therefore 'religious.
Infinity is present in each part. A loving smile contains all art. The motes of starlight spark and dart. A grain of sand holds power and might.
When we are self-conscious, we cannot be wholly aware; we must throw ourselves out first. This throwing ourselves away is the act of creativity.