Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I don't know anything offhand that mystifies Americans more than the cotton they put in pill bottles. Why do they do it? Are you supposed to put the cotton back in once you've taken a pill out?
There was this real fear in doing 'Square Pegs' after getting such a fast ride to glory on 'Saturday Night Live'. I was afraid that the word would be 'peaks early, fails to live up to promise.'
Not merely can people like me write things that would never have been printed before but I think an enormously dramatic change has taken place in public opinion, possibly for the wrong reasons.
The fact that evil exists in the world bothers me. I think that people do terrible things for ideological or political reasons. I think that evil stems from ideology. People are taught to hate.
I grew up, as many Indians do, in an archipelago of tongues. My maternal grandfather, who was a surgeon in the city of Madras, was fluent in at least four languages and used each of them daily.
But I'm acutely aware that the possibility of fraud is even more prevalent in today's world because of the Internet and cell phones and the opportunity for instant communication with strangers.
And then I became aware of all the magnificent silk wrapped around my body, and had the feeling I might drown in beauty. At that moment, beauty itself struck me as a kind of painful melancholy.
Raising Black children-female and male-in the mouth of a racist, sexist, suicidal dragon is perilous and chancy. If they cannot love and resist at the same time, they will probably not survive.
The compelling thing about making art - or making anything, I suppose - is the moment when the vaporous, insubstantial idea becomes a solid there, a thing, a substance in a world of substances.
I joined the Army at 19 as a soldier and spent about four and a half years with them. Then I broke my back in a freefall parachuting accident and spent a year in rehabilitation back in the U.K.
Money spent on carbon cuts is money we can't use for effective investments in food aid, micronutrients, HIV/AIDS prevention, health and education infrastructure, and clean water and sanitation.
It may be an extreme example brought about by abnormal circumstances - but the criteria of human rights kick in, surely, precisely when the conditions are extreme and the situation is abnormal.
All we need to begin with is a # dream that we can do better than before. All we need to have is faith, and that dream will come true. All we need to do is act, and the time for action is now.
Valor is a gift. Those having it never know for sure whether they have it till the test comes. And those having it in one test never know for sure if they will have it when the next test comes.
Atheist is really ʺa thoroughly honest, unambiguous term,ʺ it admits of no paltering and of no evasion, and the need of the world, now as ever, is for clear - cut issues and unambiguous speech.
Constant success shows us but one side of the world. For as it surrounds us with friends who will tell us only our merits, so it silences those enemies from whom alone we can learn our defects.
For what are the triumphs of war, planned by ambition, executed by violence, and consummated by devastation? The means are the sacrifice of many, the end, the bloated aggrandizement of the few.
The further we advance in knowledge, the more simplicity shall we discover in those primary rules that regulate all the apparently endless, complicated, and multiform operations of the Godhead.
"... he had understood, better than anyone ... the beauty that grew out of the simple knowledge that everything, no matter how small or large it might be, was a perfect example of what it was."
Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honour, on the plausible pretence that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means.
It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour.
While the flowers, pale and unreal in the moonlight, floated away upon the river; and thus do greater things that once were in our breasts, and near our hearts, flow from us to the eternal sea.
Every habit is made of three parts... a cue, a routine and a habit. Most people focus on the routine and behavior, but these cues and rewards are really the way you make something into a habit.
Rags, which are the reproach of poverty, are the beggar's robes, and graceful insignia of his profession, his tenure, his full dress, the suit in which he is expected to show himself in public.
If I was a Marxist I'd call it the crisis of capitalism. Even though I'm not a Marxist, that seems like a not unreasonable term for the widening gap between the rich and poor that we're seeing.
The paucity of near-future U.S. scifi is about the country becoming pessimistic, not being able to see the future clearly. There's a trend in U.S. scifi towards militarism and far-future stuff.
I confused gender identity with sexual orientation. Your gender identity is about who you are, how you feel, the sex that you feel yourself to be. Sexual orientation is who you're attracted to.
When I go back home now, when I go back to Nigeria now, I get off the plane in Lagos and I just don't think of race. I get on the plane and arrive in Atlanta, and immediately I'm aware of race.
'Malice' wasn't about horror to start with but an underground comic driven by the power of rumour. However, as nothing fuels a rumour like fear, I decided that it had to be a frightening comic.
Jesse, we can’t do this.” “Sure we can, honey. It’s the perfect night for it. You’re a woman, I’m a man. Those little twinkling things overhead are stars. I believe it’s referred to as romance.
The thrill of a fish at the end of the line, that thing that sparks from the dark water to spinal cord, is a vestige of an archetypal joy that has to do with sustenance, material and spiritual.
More people have died in the name of religion than have ever died of cancer. And we try to cure cancer... What makes us take up arms against those who pray to the same God with different words?
Ask the Outsider what he ultimately wants,and he will admit he doesn't know.Why? Because he wants it instinctively,and it is not always possible to tell what your instincts are driving towards.
Not everything you hear about yourself can be considered good publicity. And if you have delicate sensibilities, the currycomb of public imagination frequently rubs your vanities the wrong way.
My boarding school experience was the only thing I had strong enough feelings to write about for hundreds and hundreds of pages. I can still smell the formaldehyde of the fetal pigs in biology.
It's a very performative thing, grief. As with so much in modern life, I think there's a whole performative layer to what we do because we feel like there's a private TV show viewing our lives.
Last year when my grandma fell and broke her hip she couldn't paint her toenails anymore. So my grandpa started doing it for her, even after he fell and broke his hip, too. For me, that's love.
In terms of the way people see me, it breaks down into two very clear and distinct groups: those who think they know me from reading the papers and those who really know me by reading my books.
I value kindness in myself and others. I try to remain super-vigilant about my targets and make extra sure that my sometimes barbed comments are deserved and in response to genuine malefaction.
War is about remaking the world to suit the whims of some powerful group over the whims of some other powerful group. The dead are just the sparks that fly from the metal as they grind it down.
It was one of those times you feel a sense of loss, even though you didn't have something in the first place. I guess that's what disappointment is- a sense of loss for something you never had.
To be a writer is to connect and to play and to attempt to see clearly and understand. It astounds me regularly that feeling things deeply and writing them down is basically my job description.
The first kiss plummeted him down a hole and popped him out into a world he thought he could get along in—as if he’d been pulling hard the wrong way and was now turned around headed downstream.
Goals provide the energy source that powers our lives. One of the best ways we can get the most from the energy we have is to focus it. That is what goals can do for us; concentrate our energy.
I have like 250 letters that I have to whittle it down to 150. Only then do you have the whole overview of a book. When it was finally edited, at least my take was, everybody's lying. You know?
One of the reasons I write about religion is due to my own envy of people who truly feel the presence of god in their lives, good souls who believe devoutly in a supreme being and an afterlife.
I began to see new buildings, too, which were connected by futuristic walkways lit from beneath. Long, cool perspectives of modern architecture, rising phosphorescent and eerie from the rubble.
Strange, the workings of the heart. One could go on for years, habituated to loss, reconciled to it, and then, in a moment's unwary thought, the pain resurfaced, sharp and raw as a fresh wound.
If you can discover what you like, if you can discover what you truly believe about most of the major matters of life, you will be able to write a story which is honest and original and unique.
It is ridiculous to take on a man's job just in order to be able to say that 'a woman has done it - yah!' The only decent reason for tackling a job is that it is your job and you want to do it.