Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Man is the unnatural animal, the rebel child of nature, and more and more does he turn himself against the harsh and fitful hand that reared him.
I am for world-control of production and of trade and transport, for a world coinage, and the confederation of mankind. I am for the super-State.
Our business here is to be Utopian, to make vivid and credible, if we can, first this facet and then that, of an imaginary whole and happy world.
The law of England is much more severe upon offences against property than against the person, as becomes a people whose ruling passion is money.
There are secrets at the heart of every story; there is something that must be uncovered or discovered, both by the reader and by the characters.
The power of choice. You have it. But you forfeit it when you imagine that you can choose for others. You can't. But you can choose for yourself.
Politicians are notoriously economically illiterate. And even when they know what would be the right thing, we don't really expect them to do it.
So the fact that I’m me and no one else is one of my greatest assets. Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent.
One listless day followed another, with nothing to distinguish one from the next. You could have changed the order and no one would have noticed.
If I used being busy as an excuse not to run, I'd never run again. I have only a few reasons to keep on running, and a truckload of them to quit.
All decent people live beyond their incomes; those who aren't respectable live beyond other people's; a few gifted individuals manage to do both.
The women one meets - what are they but books one has already read? You're a library of the unknown, the uncut. Upon my word I've a subscription.
The house of fiction has in short not one window, but a million, ... but they are, singly, as nothing without the posted presence of the watcher.
One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.
Analysis brings no curative powers in its train; it merely makes us conscious of the existence of an evil, which, oddly enough, is consciousness.
Whatever I do is done out of sheer joy; I drop my fruits like a ripe tree. What the general reader or the critic makes of them is not my concern.
Back of every creation, supporting it like an arch, is faith. Enthusiasm is nothing: it comes and goes. But if one believes, then miracles occur.
He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment.
I'm one of these children who grew up at the knee of my grandmother and her elder sister, listening to very old people talk about their memories.
I don't know what else teaches you as much as writing. Perhaps reading. So if I don't have one or the other in the course of the day, I feel old.
My earliest memory of books is not of reading but of being read to. I spent hours listening, watching the face of the person reading aloud to me.
If gratitude is due from children to their earthly parent, how much more is the gratitude of the great family of men due to our father in heaven.
Ultimately, my character is defined by the quality of my sensitivity to other people. I exist in equilibrium. I am here to the degree I am there.
Mostly, I hope that by having some fun with Shakespeare's style I'll encourage young people who are intimidated by Shakespeare to give him a try.
I was friends with Russians who said I should see Russia. I went there in '93 and it was so exciting, and I went to Siberia and had a great time.
I'd prostitute my talents if it would further my cause, steal if there was no way out, killing my friends or anyone else if it would help my art.
When you die, you are extinguished. From being you will be transformed to non-being. A god does not necessarily dwell among our capricious atoms.
She's forgetting,' Ellen said to Jack, plumping herself down on a chair. 'All of her life is leaking out of her. Soon there will be nothing left.
The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.
More than anything, all I have ever wanted is to be close to someone. More than anything, all I have ever wanted is to feel as if i wasn't alone.
'On earth the living have much to bear;' the difference is chiefly in the manner of bearing, and my manner of bearing is far from being the best.
One of the main uses of a home is to stay in it, when one is too weak and spiritless for conforming, without effort, to the ways of other houses.
You can get through very serious and sometimes horrible and sometimes embarrassing and very awkward situations with humor. It gives us a way out.
It was a weird sensation. Like getting caught eavesdropping, or lying, or sitting on the toilet and having the bathroom walls suddenly drop away.
My world is better. Why would I want to waste my time playing golf? I can get up in the morning and be in this whole other world. I love my life.
Many perfumes promise to lure men to women. None of them smell of motherhood. None of them proclaim the wearer to be tidy, thrifty, and sensible.
When I look at my life I realise that the mistakes I have made, the things I really regret, were not errors of judgement but failures of feeling.
The best visual book I can think of is Lynda Barry's What It Is, but although I refer to it all the time it's not a creative writing book per se.
If you write thrillers or mysteries or horror fiction or quote-unquote speculative fiction, men might read you, and the 'Times' might notice you.
If you put a pink cover on something, critics make a certain set of assumptions and may not even read the book. But my readers are happy with it.
I didn't want to make the same mistake my parents made. I didn't want my love to fade away one day like an old scar. I wanted it to burn forever.
The world must be rather a rough place for clever people. Ordinary folk dislike them, and as for themselves, they hate each other most cordially.
When a man or woman loves to brood over a sorrow and takes care to keep it green in their memory, you may be sure it is no longer a pain to them.
[T]here is one and only one way to possess that in which we are defective, therefore that which we need, therefore that which we want. Become it.
Savor the little moments, son, that's my advice. They're what life is. All the little things that happen while you're waiting for something else.
They do the same thing [with cigarette] that they do in the kind of action picture where you know 200 people are killed and then there's no pain.
And when our sun explodes and we are all destroyed, we'll be rocks and chunks of I am not sure what, and maybe we'll rain down on somewhere else.
The first and last thing required of genius is the love of truth. [Ger., Das erste und letzte, was vom Genie gefordert wird, ist Wahreits-Liebe.]
Tell me, how do you cope so calmly With crazy youth's arrogant way? Indeed, youth would be insufferable, Had I myself not also been insufferable.
A man would create another man if one did not already exist, but a woman might live an eternity without even thinking of reproducing her own sex.