Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Storytelling is an ancient and honorable act. An essential role to play in the community or tribe. It's one that I embrace wholeheartedly and have been fortunate enough to be rewarded for.
The funny thing with Ophelia is that I remembered her being this really cool, awesome female character when I read 'Hamlet' in high school, and when I went back and read it, no, she's not.
The thing is, the Tulsa experience that I wrote about in 'The Outsiders' is closer to the universal experience than it would be if I wrote it from L.A. or New York. It's an everyman story.
While our amplified knowledge of genetics - and the increasing precision of the field - does make it tempting to take on celebrity cases, retro-genetics can't always provide clear answers.
A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who, instead of aiming a single stone at an object, takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit.
It is the care of a very great part of mankind to conceal their indigence from the rest. They support themselves by temporary expedients, and every day is lost in contriving for to-morrow.
How can children credit the assertions of parents, which their own eyes show them to be false? Few parents act in such a manner as much to enforce their maxims by the credit of their lives
it is in the oral traditions of the villages that the arts of India are really alive. The brief Western immortality of museums is pointless to people who have seen eternity in their earth.
I realized early on that being an author is a hugely misunderstood job. Because there are no pay grades and very little structure, people make interesting assumptions about the profession.
When my characters are questioning things, it's not me leading up to an answer; it's me asking those same questions and letting the characters' lives unfold and seeing where it takes them.
You couldn't just pick and choose at will when someone depended on you, or loved you. It wasn't like a light switch, easy to turn on or off. If you were in, you were in. Out, you were out.
There are some things in this world you rely on, like a sure bet. And when they let you down, shifting from where you've carefully placed them, it shakes your faith, right where you stand.
I was so scared about being discovered, but nobody came. Nobody heard. In my own ears, though, my sobs sounded primal and scary, like something I would have turned off if I'd been able to.
If you didn't always have to choose between turning away for good or rushing in deeper. In the moments that it really counts, maybe it's enough - more than enough, even - just to be there.
You take the thing that is the worst thing that could have happened to you, the worst challenge in your life, and you turn it into fuel. You don't give up. And that's what Gotham is about.
Every character is asking: 'What's my place? Why am I here? I don't want the answer to be 'Just because.' You find your own purpose. Each finds the reason to be here and how to contribute.
I wished to have the time to put together a world view, but there was never enough time, and also, those who had it seemed to have had it from a very young age; they didn't begin at forty.
People make their own reality. That was what Praxis had taught him years ago. A hundred people can witness the exact same event, and give two hundred and three different accountings of it.
The consciousness of one's physical self had to be repressed because, socially, the female body was so visible, an ongoing provocation and incitement of specular curiosity and fascination.
That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox...
Now that the steam engine rules the world, a title is an absurdity, still I am all dressed up in this title. It will crush me if Ido not support it. The title attracts attention to myself.
Why not make an end of it all?... My life is a succession of griefs and bitter feelings.... What is death?... A very small matter,when all is said; only a fool would be concerned about it.
100 years ago, buying something you could make was considered wasteful; now making something you could buy is considered wasteful. I am not convinced this is a step in the right direction.
There’s something… strange about the way you two are together. The way he watches you — it’s so… protective. Like he’s about to throw himself in front of a bullet to save you or something.
Mike's eyes narrowed shrewdly. "Don't kid yourself, Bella. The guy's head over heels for you." "I know," I sighed. "Life is complicated." "And girls are cruel," Mike said under his breath.
She’s just a little faint,” I reassured Mrs. Hammond. “They’re blood typing in biology.” She nodded, understanding now. “There’s always one.” I stifled a laugh. Trust Bella to be that one.
It was amazing how instantaneously the choking fear vanished, amazing how suddenly the feeling of security washed over me - even before I was off the street - as soon as I heard his voice.
I want to do action of course. It is my father Jai Singh Nijar's dream to cast me in a good action-comedy film like Akshay Kumar sir. I have even trained to build up fitness for the genre.
Phoebe tapped the toe of her sneaker against the dock. “There’s only one good use for a man like Heath Champion.” “Here we go again,” Molly muttered. Phoebe’s lip curled. “Target practice.
I must still look perplexed because Gale delivers the next line very slowly. “Katniss…he’s still trying to keep you alive.” To keep me alive? And then I understand. The Games are still on.
We can't just act without thinking anymore, Tris. They've been trying to teach as that all along. I guess if we're mages, we can't exactly be kids, can we? - Sandry after the pirate attack
No more is your master a god, Nobility, but he wants offerings from all. When Black God claims us, who will be punished for giving worship and power to a false god? The prince? Or Banjiku?
Multiply your age times your realized pretax annual household income from all sources except inheritances. Divide by ten. This, less any inherited wealth, is what your net worth should be.
It is for us to begin. If we take one step towards the Lord, he takes ten towards us -- he who saw the prodigal son while he was at a distance, and had compassion and ran and embraced him.
I really wish there had been a way to phrase this as 'A thunder of worms.' Because I like that phrase. That's a phrase with soul. Worm thunder on the horizon, all is right with the cosmos.
Every now and again, a painting will get away from my control and take over. Sometimes it's a good thing. Sometimes it's a giant drooling hairy thing with pointy teeth. You know how it is.
things in this world are very roughly averaged; and although averaging is a useful, rapid way of dispatching business, it does undoubtedly waste a great deal which is too good for wasting.
There are some things that money can't buy: peace of mind, for starters, and lean muscle mass. Neither the Queen of England nor the founder of Microsoft can put in an order for either one.
Persuasion has become a kind of force. The more the advertiser knows about what consumers want, and the more desires the product and packaging seek to fulfill, the more coercive the force.
Private enterprise manages better all that to which it is equal. Anarchism declares that private enterprise, whether individual or cooperative, is equal to all the undertakings of society.
Ages when custom is unsettled are necessarily ages of prophecy. The moralist cannot teach what is revealed; he must reveal what can be taught. He has to seek insight rather than to preach.
Cruelty, if we consider it as a crime, is the greatest of all; if we consider it as a madness, we are equally justifiable in applying to it the readiest and the surest means of oppression.
The nation that will insist upon drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking by cowards.
We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it. This is the reason why it is so difficult for any but natives to speak a language correctly or idiomatically.
The affected modesty of most women is a decoy for the generous, the delicate, and unsuspecting; while the artful, the bold, and unfeeling either see or break through its slender disguises.
Quite honestly, most people are quick to "write someone off." But our God is a God of the second chance. Learn from One who is patient with you, and you'll learn to be patient with others.
We live alone in our cluttered psyches, possessed by our entrenched beliefs, our fatuous desires, our endless contradictions - and like it or not we have to put up with this in one another.
Perhaps the greatest lesson [Huxley] learned from reading Carlyle was that real religion, that emotive feeling for Truth and Beauty, could flourish in the absence of an idolatrous theology.
Let go of all ideas and images in your mind, they come and go and aren’t even generated by you. So why pay so much attention to your imagination when reality is for the realizing right now?
It seems that most of us could benefit from a brush with a near-fatal disaster to help us recognise the important things that we are too defeated or embittered to recognise from day to day.