Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
What I'm interested in doing in a story is bringing certain different languages, people, events together and then letting the reader make what he wants of it.
If we only knew how many times our seemingly clever comment cut straight into the heart of the person with whom we have just spoken, it is we who would bleed.
I double-knot my shoe laces. It's a pain untying your shoes afterward-particularly if you get them wet-but so is stopping in the middle of a race to tie them.
Long habit so reconciles us to almost any thing, that the grossest improprieties cease to strike us when they once make a part of the common course of action.
If a slave is unwilling to go with his new master, he is whipped, or locked up in jail, until he consents to go, and promises not to run away during the year.
All people interested in their work are liable to overrate their vocation. There may be makers of dolls' eyes who wonder how society would go on without them.
A Libertarian society of unfettered individualism spreads its benefits to virtually everyone - not just those who have the resources to seize political power.
Social Security is a fraudulent scheme in which the government collect money from you for your retirement - and immediately spend the money on something else.
To be able to talk to your heart’s content about a book you like with someone who feels the same way about it is one of the greatest joys that life can offer.
What I feel for her is a wholly different emotion. It stands and walks on its own, living and breathing and throbbing and shaking me to the roots of my being.
I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it -- to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once.
I get up early in the morning, 4 o'clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that's enough. In the afternoon, I run.
I closed my own jazz bar so I could be a man who can write novels as I like. I was pleased about that. This pleasure was connected to the pleasure of writing.
Whether in music or in fiction, the most basic thing is rhythm. Your style needs to have good, natural, steady rhythm, or people won't keep reading your work.
He seems the incarnation of everything soft and silky and velvety, without a sharp edge in his composition, a dreamer whose philosophy is sleep and let sleep.
I'm yours for ever--for ever and ever. Here I stand; I'm as firm as a rock. If you'll only trust me, how little you'll be disappointed. Be mine as I am yours.
It is difficult to know how the Tudors actually spoke because we're going back before Shakespeare; much of the drama from that period is courtly, allegorical.
She'll soon forget." "Caddy," said Saffron impatiently, "she is headmistress of the private school! She's probably never forgotten anything in her whole life!
Ministers who threaten death and destruction employ weapons of weakness. Argument and kindness are alone effectual, flavored by the principles of Divine love.
Inexpensive phones and pay-as-you go services are already spreading mobile phone technology to many parts of that world that never had a wired infrastructure.
The child taught to believe any occurrence a good or evil omen, or any day of the week lucky, hath a wide inroad made upon the soundness of his understanding.
My mother didn't want me to be a feminist, a radical, political person, because she was scared. She wanted me to be protected and safe, but my life never was.
Don't hate me because I can't remember some person immediately. Especially when they look like everybody else, and talk and dress and act like everybody else.
O! Where are you going With beards all a-wagging? No knowing, no knowing What brings Mister Baggins, And Balin and Dwalin down into the valley in June ha! ha!
You must understand, young Hobbit, it takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish. And we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say.
A sister they had, Galadriel, most beautiful of all the house of Finwë; her hair was lit with gold as though it had caught in a mesh the radiance of Laurelin.
I keep a guitar around while writing and will improvise music. I do this for several reasons, such as that it's fun, and sometimes it helps me with the meter.
Beauty is a luster which love bestows to guile the eye. Therefore it may be said that only when the brain is without love will the eye look and see no beauty.
That's what makes best friends. It's not whether or not you live on the same block or go to the same school, but how you feel about each other in your hearts.
It is the world, my boy," he said. "All the World, in ink and blood, vellum and parchment, leather and hide. It is the World, and it is yours to save or lose.
I am aware that the battle I am fighting is a petty one, but I am also aware that in order to win that which is great, you must first win that which is small.
They had dreams but they called them dreams because they were unrelated to reality, they were a distant unknown, an impossibility, they would never come true.
I'm layering away: sauce, noodles, I belong to you, cheese, sauce, my heart is yours, noodles, cheese, I hear your soul in your music, cheese, cheese, CHEESE.
He doesn’t look very smart,” Diesel said. “He’s not even giving me the finger.” “Can monkey’s do that?” Hal asked. Carl gave him the finger. “Cool!” Hal said.
Normally when a person has a stellar image another person's waiting in the wings to tear them apart. They're waiting for that one fatal flaw to expose itself.
If being a spokesman for a generation is a fleeting occupation, being a symbol of an era is downright dangerous for anyone who has the bad luck to outlive it.
What Cicero said of men-that they are like wines, age souring the bad, and bettering the good-we can say of misfortune, that it has the same effect upon them.
The conscience of children is formed by the influences that surround them; their notions of good and evil are the result of the moral atmosphere they breathe.
It's hard to remember that this day will never come again. That the time is now and the place is here and that there are no second chances at a single moment.
History is a string full of knots, the best you can do is admire it, and maybe tie it up a bit more. History is a hammock for swinging and a game for playing.
It would be something that another person had written down without understanding its significance; just a sentence or two that would be like a flash of light.
Books are my very favorite gift to give. If you give a book to someone and they really respond to it, you feel you've actually changed their life in some way.
Don't you make fun of me or my children! Some babies are premature. Mine were all postmature. That's why they're so smart. Their brains had longer to develop.
'Borne,' in a weird way, even though it's a totally different universe, picks up where the 'Southern Reach Trilogy' leaves off, because it's post-apocalyptic.
Baby," groaned the guy-Ted? Tad?-something like that-and crushed his lips against the side of her neck, shoving her face against the wall of the toilet stall.
Back in the day, when I was starting out, I'd get five or 10 emails and I'd respond to every one. But after my third or fourth book it got too time-consuming.
Each death and departure comes to us as a surprise, a sorrow never anticipated. Life is a long series of farewells; only the circumstances should surprise us.
Yoga exercises are excellent; the speaker does them every day, for an hour or more; but that is merely physical exercise, to keep the body healthy, and so on.
We grow the aspects of our lives that we feed - with energy and engagement - and choke off those we deprive of fuel. Your life is what you agree to attend to.
My father always told me that in this world we are going to make a truckload of mistakes, but the best mistake we can ever make is to err on the side of mercy