Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
They say in the military that a good battle plan can last as long as five minutes in real fighting. After that, it comes down to if the general is favored by fate and the spirits.
I don't know why we choose to reach out to help another person, or why we decide that we can't, and withdraw and try to care only for ourselves, but I'm fascinated by that choice.
Why are you smiling?' 'I'm relieved,' I said honestly. 'I was worried I'd given myself cadmium poisoning, or I had some mysterious disease. This is just someone trying to kill me.
He had withdrawn solely for his own personal pleasure, only to be near to himself. No longer distracted by anything external, he basked in his own existence and found it splendid.
As a result of the asthma I was sent to school in the country, and only visited Sydney for brief, violently asthmatic sojourns on my way to a house we owned in the Blue Mountains.
There's a certain amount of tyranny in all of us to some extent, and in some people it's much more developed than in others. It's a different balance which makes us all different.
Everyone should understand that getting good photos is paramount to everything. You have to do what it takes and often comfort and sleep are the first casualties of an assignment.
Blame is a bitter and indigestible thing, even when the blame is a coat you cut for yourself, even when you stood right there and got yourself measured so you could wear it right.
You’re not seriously going out again, are you?” “Seriously, yeah. Bowling. Her name’s Laura. If you want more details, you’re gonna have to download the video like everybody else.
Cliare: "You know what? I need you right now." Shane:"Now?" Claire: "Right now." Shane: "Oh, that's so exactly what I was going to say." *dropping C. to the bed.* Claire: "Jinxies
There is a certain freedom in giving up all hope. One is no longer bound by the cords of dread or fear; you simply move toward the inevitable without thinking on the consequences.
I'm not belittling the art world. Not at all. I take it quite seriously, actually. But the logic of art is a vanguard logic that pressures art to incorporate the quotient of risk.
When I see things in the world that leap out at me, I want to make use of them in fiction. Maybe every writer does that. It just depends on what you claim or appropriate as yours.
My dad had a Vincent Black Shadow, which was a quite particular thing: it was the fastest cycle of its era... It sparked a world for me; when I was old enough, I got a motorcycle.
In being realistic we do not always have to be pessimistic. Christ never blinked his eyes at bad things. But he never became so obsessed with human evil that he lost faith in man.
I like to watch people. Sometimes I ride the subway all day and look at them and listen to them. I just want to figure out who they are and what they want and where they're going.
Chock them so ... full of "facts" they feel stuffed, but absolutely "brilliant" with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving.
I love the musical form of books. It's a different way of doing things, it's very beautiful. You're able to sing things instead of saying them. So what the heck - why not do them?
In the bare room under the old library on the hill in the town at the tip of the small peninsula on the cold island so far from everything else, I lived among strangers and birds.
I did my degree in journalism, and I then went on to being a games journalist, reviewing and previewing games and writing about the industry, visiting and interviewing developers.
Whatever you can imagine is waiting for you, fully created in the invisible, and the way to make it visible is to harness the force of love by imagining and feeling what you love.
I am a psychologically disabled person and it's difficult for me to get and hold down a job. When I don't work people accuse me of being lazy, taking advantage of government money
Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours. Do you think, if you say the word "impossible" enough times, that difficult things will suddenly become easier for you?
Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull's life is so short, and with those gone from his thought, he lived a long fine life indeed.
All we see of someone at any moment is a snapshot of their life, there in riches or poverty, in joy or despair. Snapshots don't show the million decisions that led to that moment.
To the darkness and the night, the spirits seem to have a natural claim - it is their realm; the boldest of us have sometimes felt an unaccountable creeping in the thick darkness.
I don't deny people their fantasy life, but I do think that we desperately need to start realizing just how complicated our reality is in America. Sitcoms just don't show us that.
It is the duty of a great person so to demean himself, as that whatever endowments he may have, he may appear to value himself upon no qualities but such as any man may arrive at.
Risk-taking, trust, and serendipity are key ingredients of joy. Without risk, nothing new ever happens. Without trust, fear creeps in. Without serendipity, there are no surprises.
'Seven Sonatas,' with its flowing series of meetings between men and women in an identifiable emotional world, is in the mould of Jerome Robbins' glorious 'Dances at a Gathering.'
When we have machines that are as intelligent - and then twice as intelligent - as we are, there is no reason why that relationship cannot be synergistic rather than antagonistic.
The thought came to me that all one loves in art becomes beautiful. Beauty is nothing but the expression of the fact that something is being loved. Only thus could she be defined.
...love must be regarded as one of the religious and dangerous experiences, because it lifts people out of the arms of reason and sets them afloat with no ground under their feet.
Do you realize what would happen if Moses were alive today? He'd go up to Mount Sinai, come back with the Ten Commandments, and spend the next eight years trying to get published.
Indeed, the most vivid travel experiences usually find you by accident, and the qualities that will make you fall in love with a place are rarely the features that took you there.
There is a kind of fear, approaching a panic, that's spreading through the Baby Boom Generation, which has suddenly discovered that it will have to provide for its own retirement.
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too;!
Sometimes kindness can be delivered in a clumsy way. But it's far more sincere in its clumsiness than those distinguished men you read about in books. Your father was very clumsy.
I love to feed people, and I like to cook food they want to eat and food that will be good for them. I try to cook them things that are lower in fat and see if they will eat them.
California is like a beautiful wild kid on heroin, high as a kite and thinking she's on top of the world, not knowing she's dying, not believing it even if you show her the marks.
Yet it is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded; for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadsul than its extinction.
When first the college rolls receive his name, The young enthusiast quilts his ease for fame; Through all his veins the fever of renown Burns from the strong contagion of the gown
The number of such as live without the ardour of inquiry is very small, though many content themselves with cheap amusements, and waste their lives in researches of no importance.
Yet it is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded, for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its extinction.
The prospect of penury in age is so gloomy and terrifying that every man who looks before him must resolve to avoid it; and it must be avoided generally by the science of sparing.
He said that few people had intellectual resources sufficient to forgo the pleasures of wine. They could not otherwise contrive how to fill the interval between dinner and supper.
You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.
There was a really long period of time when, if the newspapers ever referred to me, even if I was talking about, I don't know, cake making, they would put 'lesbian Sandi Toksvig.'
Afterwards, people come and say, "I felt like you said that just to me. What you said is something I'm going through right now," so you know that spiritual connection is going on.
The ability to be present with every single person and engage was a great model for me of the work that a writer needs to do. Writers, living or dead, still guide me in many ways.