Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The connection was so bad, and I couldn’t talk at all during most of the call. How terrible it is when you say I love you and the person at the other end shouts back ‘What?
Hobbits delighted in such things, if they were accurate; they liked to have books filled with things that they already knew, set out fair and square with no contradictions.
It is the way of my people to use light words at such times and say less than they mean. We fear to say too much. It robs us of the right words when a jest is out of place.
Their horses were of great stature, strong and clean-limbed; their gray coats glistened, their long tails flowed in the wind, their manes were braided on their proud necks.
The one word love means too little for what it is. It doesn't communicate even a fraction of the feelings involved. Love. The word is not enough for what it is. Love. Love.
I'm a writer. I never expected to be recognised on the street. I never expected to get that kind of coverage, good or bad. I never expected to sell as many books as I have.
Coming after all the bullshit related to A Million Little Pieces, nobody was expecting anything from me. No publisher, no agent, no one. Just me and the book. It was great.
Science fiction literature's focus is on ideas, the concept of change, and the impact on humanity. Those concepts are hard to capture on film. They work better in the mind.
As far as making a living, if plumbing earned more, I'd probably do it. At least you can leave the job at home once the tools are put away. A writer works in his mind 24/7.
I think only now am I at the age where I've forgiven the past enough to say, 'You know what? Slavery was there. Let's talk about it in ways that will help us face tomorrow.
Any astronomer can predict with absolute accuracy just where every star in the universe will be at 11.30 tonight. He can make no such prediction about his teenage daughter.
The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.
Somebody's sent a funny little valentine to me. It's a bunch of baby-roses in a vase of filigree, And hovering above them ... is a fairy cupid tangled in a scarf of poetry.
Never does one feel oneself so utterly helpless as in trying to speak comfort for great bereavement. I will not try it. Time is the only comforter for the loss of a mother.
Intuition works best when you remember that “tuition” is part of it. You need to have paid ahead of time (ie done your prep work) so as to prepare the ground for intuition.
I want to be there when you get Cubbin. And I don’t want to be left out of the television show either. Little people are sexy now. Have you seen Game of Thrones? We’re hot.
Putting together a list of heroes for 'Original Sin' was a long process, just like figuring out the villains. Along the way, some were taken out, and a few more were added.
All men, even those we call savages, have been so tormented by the passion for strong drinks, that limited as their capacities were, they were yet able to manufacture them.
Capitalism is like Japanese Knotweed: nothing kills it off. If there were only two people left on the planet, one of them would find a way of making money out of the other.
The new disease was named chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and the NFL fervently and repeatedly denied that such a thing had anything to do with the league or its players.
Hope can be imagined as a domino effect, a chain reaction, each increment making the next increase more feasible... There are moments of fear and doubt that can deflate it.
When are we going to realize that hating other women - no matter how much money they have or how far they've fallen - is just as bad for ourselves as it is for anyone else?
The more you know yourself, the more clarity there is. Self-knowledge has no end - you don't come to an achievement, you don't come to a conclusion. It is an endless river.
Let's plunge ourselves into the roar of time, the whirl of accident; may pain and pleasure, success and failure, shift as they will -- it's only action that can make a man.
If we could do away with death, we wouldn't object; to do away with capital punishment will be more difficult. Were that to happen, we would reinstate it from time to time.
There are people who pay attention to the weaknesses of their friends; that is to no avail. I have always closely watched and profited from the strengths of my adversaries.
How shall we plan, that all be fresh and new-- Important matter yet attractive too? [Ger., Wie machen wir's, dass alles frisch und neu Und mit Bedeutung auch gefallig sei?]
Man, be he who he may, experiences a last piece of good fortune and a last day. [Ger., Der Mensch erfahrt, er sei auch wer er mag, Ein letztes Gluck und einen letzten Tag.]
Ill-humor is nothing more than an inward feeling of our own want of merit, a dissatisfaction with ourselves which is always united with an envy that foolish vanity excites.
As in Rome there is, apart from the Romans, a population of statues, so apart from this real world there is a world of illusion, almost more potent, in which most men live.
A new life? There’s not such thing. It was only in the magazine headlines that people got a new life. Stopped drinking or taking drugs, found a new love. But the same life.
What is essential - the one thing that could stop us being coarsened to other lives - is that we feel a great, living wave of animal life all around us, covering the earth.
Rocks are records of events that took place at the time they formed. They are books. They have a different vocabulary, a different alphabet, but you learn how to read them.
Many have puzzled themselves about the origin of evil. I am content to observe that there is evil, and that there is a way to escape from it, and with this I begin and end.
My personality has two sides: a very social side and a reclusive side. I love writing fiction, although I can't imagine ever being locked up in a room writing all the time.
As a means of motivating people to be cruel or inhumane-as a means of inciting evil, to borrow the vocabulary of the devout-there may be no more potent force than religion.
Lying is too much trouble. You have to make sure to taste each word before letting it off your tongue. I hate that. It's hard enough making people understand without lying.
The angel said, "I like black-and-white films more than color because they're more artificial. You have to work harder to overcome your disbelief. It's sort of like prayer.
I said I kicked a French chicken in the stomach once." "Huh?" "It said, 'Oeuf.'" "What is that?" "It's a joke. Do you want to hear another, or have you already had un oeuf?
Imagine being served a plate of sushi. But this plate also holds all of the animals that were killed for your serving of sushi. The plate might have to be five feet across.
I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.
I think it's all to the good that a writer shouldn't be too famous. Because, in a country where a writer may be famous, he may be pandering to the mob, celebrity and so on.
Breaking out is following your bliss pattern, quitting the old place, starting your hero journey, following your bliss. You throw off yesterday as the snake sheds its skin.
A bit of advice Given to a young Native American At the time of his initiation: As you go the way of life, You will see a great chasm. Jump. It is not as wide as you think.
When I was in India I met and conversed briefly with Shri Atmananda Guru of Trivandrum, and the question he gave me to ponder was this: 'Where are you between two thoughts?
Electronic calculators can solve problems which the man who made them cannot solve; but no government-subsidized commission of engineers and physicists could create a worm.
The allegedly 'classy' magazines often seem to be in an endless, undeclared competition to see who can climb furthest up the fundament of Gwyneth Paltrow or Jennifer Lopez.
Few people have courage enough to appear as good as they really are. Most people confuse greatness with power, despite the fact that greatness has nothing to do with power.
It took me 11 years to struggle through one dumb book, and every day you just want to give up. But you don't find out you're an artist because you do something really well.
We who grew up with 'drop and cover' drills know all too well what wonders science can bring us, and we like to see the guy in the white lab coat suffer a little. Or a lot.