Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
They did not understand a single word of what he was saying, but that made no matter, for they put their heads on one side, and looked wise, which is quite as good as understanding a thing, and very much easier.
Plenty of people say my guesses about a future drought in the western U.S. (where I live and grew up) are wrong, so I don't see why I won't be wrong in some people's eyes when I go set a story on foreign shores.
They lived the slow and invisible interpenetration of their universes, like two stars gravitating around a common axis, in ever tighter orbits, whose clear destiny is to coalesce at some point in space and time.
I wanted to be a novelist from a very early age - 11 or 12 - but I don't think I ever thought I would write historical fiction. I never thought I might write academic history because I simply wasn't good enough!
I've always felt in my own small, little way that if I could just write a story where it works out well, where the scales of justice are balanced, then that's something that I do really love to see in the world.
The attempt to discover and promulgate the truth is nevertheless an obligation upon all scientists, one that must be persevered in no matter what the rebuffs—for otherwise what is the point in being a scientist?
Do not study commentaries, lesson helps or other books about the Bible: study the Bible itself. Do not study about the Bible, study the Bible. The Bible is the Word of God, and only the Bible is the Word of God.
there is more to this hijab than the whole modesty thing. These girls are strangers to me but I know that we all felt an amazing connection, a sense that this cloth binds us in some kind of universal sisterhood.
Everywhere people are at work to build a better world in which we - and some of the beauty of this world - will be guaranteed to survive. Everywhere they are at war with the forces threatening us and the planet.
I asked myself what it was that I wanted from writing and where my connection with books began, and the answer to that question was definitely in childhood, because that's where my connection with reading began.
You are energy, and energy cannot be created or destroyed. Energy just changes form. And that means You! The true essence of You, the pure energy of You, has always been and always will be. You can never not be.
I looked at what my talents and desires are and decided to start my own business. I like the advantage of being able to work at a slower pace if I need to do that and there is no one pressuring me to work faster
Reputation is what people think you are. Character is who you really are. Take care of your character and your reputation will take care of itself. The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.
This kind of thinking, he found, is not the way to make one's self popular with other birds. Even his parents were dismayed as Jonathan spent whole days alone, making hundreds of low-level glides, experimenting.
I think brown marks a reunion of peoples, an end to ancient wanderings. Rival cultures and creeds conspire with Spring to create children of a beauty, perhaps of a harmony, previously unknown. Or long forgotten.
Cinematic and symphonic: this is a compelling story revealed in a sequence of voices that are as pitch-perfect as they are irresistible. This is a wonderfully impressive debut: tender, muscled and unforgettable.
Varied are the ideas of what constitutes "success," e.g. money, position, power, achievement, honours, and the like. But these are not open to every man-nor do they bring what is real success, namely, happiness.
A man who risks his life in shooting big game in order to secure good specimens for natural history collections, or to rid a district of a man-eater or other dangerous neighbor, is a sportsman in the true sense.
I'm often characterized as an optimistic writer, and certainly my 'Neanderthal Parallax' and 'WWW' trilogies shade toward the utopian. I like to think that's not simple naivete, but rather a reasonable approach.
Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships.
For only fools, fanatics, and mental cases can stand living at the highest pitch of soul; a sane person must be content with declaring that life would not be worth living without a spark of that mysterious fire.
Often and often afterwards, the beloved Aunt would ask me why I had never told anyone how I was being treated. Children tell little more than animals, for what comes to them they accept as eternally established.
The reason I write romance is that I like happy endings. The idea, you know, 'It's not literature unless is ends badly,' and I really don't like that. There's enough misery and bad things happening in the world.
I've never written a novel before, and part of the reason I haven't is I was worried about getting 50,000 words into a book and realizing I'd made a mistake on word three that would mean throwing everything out.
If lawyers were to undertake no causes till they were sure they were just, a man might be precluded altogether from a trial of his claim, though, were it judicially examined, it might be found a very just claim.
Will you not, as a loyal student of dear old Baylor, lay aside for a few days the usual cares of life, come back to your alma mater, renew former associations and friendships, and catch that Baylor spirit again?
But if everything was always smooth and perfect, you'd get too used to that, you know? You have to have a little bit of disorganization now and then. Otherwise, you'll never really enjoy it when things go right.
Everything hurt. I closed my eyes, pressing my cheek to the street, and waited. What for, I didn't know. To be rescued. Or found. But no one came. All I'd ever thought I wanted was to be left alone. Until I was.
Nick’s right, you are psychotic. (Talon) The correct term is sociopathic and yes, I am. But at least I have no delusions about myself. (Zarek) Meaning? (Talon) Take your meaning wherever you can find it. (Zarek)
Nick, space. Now. (Acheron) Go, Nick, fetch. Here, boy, here. You should let me borrow one of those leather collars you wear and give me a tag with Kyrian’s number on it. ‘In case of loss, call my owner.’ (Nick)
While I respect suicidal tendencies on most days, you’d do well to remember who you’re addressing and, more to the point, what I can do to you. No one says you have to go back to Tartarus in one piece. (Acheron)
Start walking. When you hit a spot where you’re gasping for breath, that should tell us our limitations. (Xypher) Oh, joy. I can’t wait to be the guppy. (Simone) Glub, glub, little fishy. Start walking. (Xypher)
Yes, but if we hurt the Abadonna in the process, we’re going to find out what it feels like to be turned inside out. Literally. Like most beings, I actually like the fact that my skin is outside my body. (Urian)
The nice girl meets a guy and acts like she joined a cult. In the beginning, a guy might ask her what she likes. The nice girl makes the mistake of shrugging her shoulders and saying: 'I like anything you like.'
The innumerable conflicts that set men and women against one another come from the fact that neither is prepared to assume all the consequences of this situation which the one has offered and the other accepted.
Love and action always imply a failure, but this failure must not keep us from loving and acting. For we have not only to establish what our situation is, we have to choose it in the very heart of its ambiguity.
I attended an extremely small liberal arts school. There were approximately 1,600 of us roaming our New England campus on a good day. My high school was bigger. My freshman year hourly calorie intake was bigger.
Obviously, the anti-ERA people are tickled about my ordeal because it proves that the ERA breaks up families. When they point out that feminism is a dangerous thing, I just say marriage is pretty precarious too.
All I have left is my anger at the foolishness of the world. The unnecessary cruelties, the pomposity and vanity of people who should know better. Most of the time I just want to shake some sense into the world.
The student of arithmetic who has mastered the first four rules of his art, and successfully striven with money sums and fractions, finds himself confronted by an unbroken expanse of questions known as problems.
Actually the family is still the core social unit. Culturally, traditional masculinity was a removed father. That was a false conception of masculinity and the proper relationship between a man and his children.
Is he your warden now too? You know I saw this story on the news last week about controlling, abusive teenage relationships and- "Okay!" I cut him off, and then shoved his arm. "Time for the werewolf to get out!
She ran her hands over her body as if to bid it good-bye. The hipbones rising from a shrunken stomach were razor-sharp. Would they be lost in a sea of fat? She counted her ribs bone by bone. Where would they go?
Paintings invariably sum up; photographs usually do not. Photographic images are pieces of evidence in an ongoing biography or history. And one photograph, unlike one painting, implies that there will be others.
Finally, the most grandiose result of the photographic enterprise is to give us the sense that we can hold the whole world in our heads – as an anthology of images. To collect photographs is to collect the world
I didn't think of myself as importing, I thought it was more interesting to write about things people didn't know about than what they did. When I became aware that I was in fact "importing", I stopped doing it.
Real novelists, those we admire, those we consider timeless in their language and character and scene, those who receive accolades for inventive language and form, have writing lives we imagine in specific ways.
Well, I knew that goat would be a little gold mine," I say. Yes, of course I was referring to that, not the lasting joy you gave your sister you love so much you took her place in the reaping," says Peeta drily.
When I grew up in West Baltimore, anything associated - and I'm talking about my childhood - with white people 99 percent of the time was something malevolent, like it was an explanatory force for something bad.
The big ideas always come in flashes. I don't really craft stories that much. I genuinely don't know where these people come from and I've often wondered if writing is just a socially acceptable form of madness.