Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It still amazes him how they could have been misled by her personality in Year Eleven. It's what depression does to a person, it changes them completely.
My Mother was a very wild Australian woman. When we were in Africa she could kill a snake with one blow from a crow bar, which she kept at the back door.
A good marriage ... is a sweet association in life: full of constancy, trust, and an infinite number of useful and solid services and mutual obligations.
The body enjoys a great share in our being, and has an eminent place in it. Its structure and composition, therefore, are worthy of proper consideration.
Peoples nurtured on freedom and self-government judge any other form of polity to be deformed and unnatural. Those who are used to monarchy do the same .
Punch a man on the nose, kick an old man downstairs, shoot somebody or any old thing like that, that’s my job. But argue with women in love—no thank you!
For existential mathematics, which does not exist, would probably propose this equation: the value of coincidence equals the degree of its improbability.
Conversing with children is a fine art.... An art form that demands large amounts of both honesty and misdirection. Or maybe discretion is a better word.
There is never a rational reason for a man to rejoice that a certain pretty girl exists and that he has found her. The experience, however, is universal.
The hardest of all is learning to be a well of affection, and not a fountain, to show them that we love them, not when we feel like it, but when they do.
Have you ever felt really close to someone? So close that you can't understand why you and the other person have two separate bodies, two separate skins?
Abiding happiness is not simply a possibility, but a duty; that all may live above the troubles of life; that worry is a poison and happiness a medicine.
E.B. White's essays are the best things I've read about Maine - especially the one in which he's not sure if he can go out sailing any more in his sloop.
Certain stories we carry with us, events in our life, they define who we are. It's not a matter of getting over anything; we have to make the best of it.
Someone once accused me of slumming. I don't know what that means. I play basketball. And through that, I get to see a world that is not smart-kid world.
It is when their age of passions is past that great men produce their masterpieces, just as it is after volcanic eruptions that the soil is most fertile.
Most of those who make collections of verse or epigram are like men eating cherries or oysters: they choose out the best at first, and end by eating all.
I was terribly shy and never said anything in class. Then I started getting into school plays. When you've got words to say, you've got a sort of armour.
When I encounter a sunrise, a painting, a woman, or an idea that makes my heart bound like a young calf, then I know I am standing in front of happiness.
A woman's body is a dark and monstrous mystery; between her supple thighs a heavy whirlpool swirls, two rivers crash, and woe to him who slips and falls!
Monarch of earth, I shall confess my secret craft: I've always fought to purify wild flame to light, and kindle whatever light I found to burst in flame.
Paris is not a city, it is the image, the symbol of France, its today and yesterday, the reflection of its history, its geography and its hidden essence.
Though I knew I shouldn’t have cared, the words still hurt like pinches, and pinches can be very painful when done in the same place many times in a row.
When you're around your family, and you have that history and that shared language, you say things you'd be embarrassed to hear quoted back to you later.
I can take a lot of pats on the back. I love it when I get admiring letters from people. And, of course, I'd love it if the critics would notice me, too.
Not doing is not about immobility or giving up in despair. It is first and foremost about being able to be with, to accept fully, what is in this moment.
You must have a cigarette. A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?
The fatal errors of life are not due to man's being unreasonable: an unreasonable moment may be one's finest moment. They are due to man's being logical.
There were opium-dens, where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new.
I see that any materialism in life coarsens the soul, and that the hunger of the body and the appetites of the flesh desecrate always, and often destroy.
London is too full of fogs and serious people. Whether the fogs produce the serious people, or whether the serious people produce the fogs, I don't know.
Most of the news about the state of the environment is pretty ugly. This is frightening for me personally, but actually motivational for me artistically.
The more you read about and immerse in a culture, the more it comes alive, and the more textured and nuanced and detailed and unstereotypable it becomes.
This was not a man who wanted to give up his mate. This was a man trying to do the honorable thing—and give her a choice, no matter hiw much it cost him.
Too often, companies focus on systems and structures that facilitate cultural change at the mid-management level, overlooking problems closer to the top.
I believe it, Chronicler found himself thinking. Before it was just a story, but now I can believe it. This is the face of a man who has killed an angel.
Right now my favorite thing is working to recall our absolute shitbag of a governor. He's been screwing up my state for more than a year. I want him out.
The way I was educated, maybe from just inhaling something in the air back then, I grew up believing that E. B. White occupied the apex of essay writing.
I sometimes wonder what would've happened if I'd entered the competition instead - I'd probably have come nowhere and given up on the whole fiction game.
What do we think of sex on television? Frankly, I think it's a pain. For one thing, the cable box gets wedged into your back and gets real uncomfortable.
All liaisons between homosexuals are conducted as though they were between a chorus girl and a bishop. In some cases both parties think they are bishops.
Twitter is fun because it lets me stay in touch with all my original readers who grew up with my books. I love hearing from readers instantly on Twitter.
You're much shorter than my mom." "Brat," she said, surprised into a giggle. "That's no way to talk to a vampire." "Bloodsucking brat." "Better" he said.
Crosses?" "Definitely" "Why?" "Because they're evil, soulless, bloodsucking fiends?" "So was my sixth-grade gym teacher, but he wasn't afraid of a cross.
It only says 'Leave' if you have no identification with yourself as a citizen of this country and you feel you have no obligation to pay your fair share.
Everything has been said yet few have taken advantage of it. Since all our knowledge is essentially banal, it can only be of value to minds that are not.
The very act of becoming an entrepreneur is contrarian to middle class values, study hard, get a good job, be happy with secure income and steady salary.
Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spent the rest of the day putting the pieces together.
We are the witnesses to the miracle. We are put here by creation, by God....We're here to be the audience to the magnificent. It is our job to celebrate.
I came on the old and best ways of writing through ignorance and experiment and was startled when truths leaped out of brushes like quail before gunshot.