Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If you have an anecdote from one source, you file it away. If you hear it again, it may be true. Then the more times you hear it the less likely it is to be true.
I stopped by Politics & Prose to sign a few copies of 'Constellation.' A couple days later, I learned that Barack Obama also stopped by and left with one of them.
The swan who goes on living in its parents' tree will die; this is why those who are beautiful and talented bear the burden of finding their own way in the world.
The real tragedy of the Library at Alexandria was not that the incendiaries burned immensely, but that they had neither the leisure nor the taste to discriminate.
New York City is a place where you can lock yourself up in your little studio apartment, and not go outside at all, and not feel in the slightest guilty about it.
If I were a serial killer, I would not be the kind that stabs and then eats the victim. I would be the kind that hides in a tree and shoots at the aerobics class.
You must not believe anyone in the search for truth; you have to find out for yourself. But although you are on your own, help will come when it is really needed.
Survival is not about being fearless. It's about making a decision, getting on and doing it, because I want to see my kids again, or whatever the reason might be.
At first an ordeal and then an accomplishment, the daily run becomes a staple, like bread, or wine, a fine marriage, or air. It is also a free pass to friendship.
Unable to attribute misfortune to chance, unable to accept their ultimate insignificance within the greater scheme, the people looked for monsters in their midst.
American women were frustrated in just the role of housewife - but they also managed to enlarge it. And they weren't just housewives, they were community leaders.
Faith can move mountains but let them happily fall down on the heads of other people. What's the point in moving mountains when it's so simple to climb over them?
Women? Women are like...thunderstorms. They're beautiful to look at, and sometimes they're nice to listen to-but most of the time they're just plain inconvenient.
For now, I only wish to make a simple acknowledgement of the woman who held the power just before me. Of all of us who touched it, I feel she was the most worthy.
If there is any secret to this life I live, this is it: the sound of what cannot be seen sings within everything that can & there is nothing more to it than that.
Poetry is the arithmetic of the easiest way and the primrose path, matched up with foam-flanked horses, bloody knuckles, and bones, on the hard ways to the stars.
Man is a long time coming. Man will yet win. Brother may yet line up with brother: This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.There are men who can't be bought.
We can be dry as dust, distracted and insensible to God's presence. Still we can pray...and if we make even the smallest gesture of availability he will be there.
As I hold the flower in my hand and think of trying to describe it, I realize how poor a creature I am, how impotent are words in the presence of such perfection.
I'm just kind of really interested in athletes as artists of a pretty serious variety and people who devote themselves to what they do in a really incredible way.
Physicians must discover the weaknesses of the human mind, and even condescend to humor them, or they will never be called in to cure the infirmities of the body.
Professors in every branch of the sciences, prefer their own theories to truth: the reason is that their theories are private property, but truth is common stock.
Inside us lies every possibility that is available to a sentient being. Every darkness, every light. It is the choices we make that decide who or what we will be.
Try to do unto others as you would have them do to you, and do not be discouraged if they fail sometimes. It is much better that they should fail than you should.
It being a part of Mrs. Pipchin's system not to encourage a child's mind to develop and expand itself like a young flower, but to open it by force like an oyster.
Shall we speak of the inspiration of a poet or a priest, and not of the heart impelled by love and self-devotion to the lowliest work in the lowliest way of life?
Are you thankful for not being young?' 'Yes, sir. If I was young, it would all have to be gone through again, and the end would be a weary way off, don't you see?
Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead," said Scrooge. "But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change.
Quadruped lions are said to be savage, only when they are hungry; biped lions are rarely sulky longer than when their appetite for distinction remains unappeased.
I have heard it said that as we keep our birthdays when we are alive, so the ghosts of dead people, who are not easy in their graves, keep the day they died upon.
For most of Wall Street's history, stock trading was fairly straightforward: buyers and sellers gathered on exchange floors and dickered until they struck a deal.
Be not frightened at the hard words "imposition," "imposture;" give and ask no questions. Cast thy bread upon the waters. Some have, unawares, entertained angels.
The one thing that does happen, every time, though, is that I never get to write a book until I've already been thinking about it for a period of months to years.
Obviously the transgender movement has not progressed in the way that the gay and lesbian movement has. But I'm an activist - that's just the kind of person I am.
Americans think African writers will write about the exotic, about wildlife, poverty, maybe AIDS. They come to Africa and African books with certain expectations.
In a few breaths' time I will speak some sad words to you. But you must hear them the same way we have agreed to see scars now. Sad words are just another beauty.
When I was in my mid-twenties, I was a copy editor at Doubleday, and for a brief period, it was my job to help shepherd Pat Conroy's 'Beach Music' into the world.
The whole of Christianity is comprised in three things--to believe, to love, and to obey Jesus. These are things, however, which we must be learning all our life.
If there was anything I learned from John the Baptist, it was that the sooner you confess a mistake, the quicker you can get on to making new and better mistakes.
Novels are more difficult simply because they are longer and require more juggling, but short stories are closer to perfection, if you can get the language right.
It is much more fun to write about villains then heroes. The villains are the ones that think out the scheme, and the heroes just kind of come along for the ride.
If you argue and rankle and contradict, you may achieve a victory sometimes; but it will be an empty victory because you will never get your opponent's good will.
Remember that the people you are talking to are a hundred times more interested in themselves and their wants and problems than they are in you and your problems.
I didn't read about it for school. It was just for myself. I was interested in cults in general but Jonestown was the most interesting of all the cults I studied.
When I was a young artist, I liked and was interested in belonging to the mainstream comics group. I didn't introduce myself as an author, but only as a designer.
In my brief glimpse of what is to come I realize how little I care to witness it. I have seen the future and I'm fairly relieved to say, it looks nothing like me.
The rigors of creativity - the self-doubt, the revising, the solitude - do require a kind of self-consumption. It comes at a cost; a cost that isn't for everyone.
Stories took twists and turns down fairy-tale paths or down very human everyday ones. You think you’re at the end of the book, and it’s only the end of a chapter.
Success is almost totally dependent upon drive and persistence. The extra energy required to make another effort or try another approach is the secret of winning.
Wizard Howl," said Wizard Suliman. "I must apologize for trying to bite you so often. In the normal way, I wouldn't dream of setting teeth in a fellow countryman.