Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
For a flicker of a moment I imagined a world completely different from the one I'd always known, a world in which I was treated with fairness, even kindness-- a world in which fathers didn't sell their daughters.
Now I know that our world is no more permanent than a wave rising on the ocean. Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper.
It is better in some respects to be admired by those with whom you live than to be loved by them; and this not on account of any gratification of vanity, but because admiration is so much more tolerant than love.
A sceptical young man one day conversing with the celebrated Dr. Parr, observed that he would believe nothing which he could not understand. "Then, young man, your creed will be the shortest of any man's I know."
Perhaps...I am the face of one of your fears. Because I am a woman, because I am Black, because I am a lesbian, because I am myself--a Black woman warrior poet doing my work--come to ask you, are you doing yours?
The fear that we cannot grow beyond whatever distortions we may find within ourselves keeps us docile and loyal and obedient, externally defined, and leads us to accept many facets of our own oppression as women.
I sit quietly and think about my mom. It's funny how memory erodes, If all I had to work from were my childhood memories, my knowledge of my mother would be faded and soft, with a few sharp memories standing out.
Childhood is what ended me up in the hospital and teetering on the edge of deathly alcoholism. It was really good for me to accept it. To accept all the embarrassment and the shame so I don't feel like I used to.
Throwing things horrified me. I suffered extreme, paralyzing anxiety when it came to anything remotely athletic. I wouldn't even run to catch the school bus because I knew I'd trip and then get teased for a year.
This world of ours is piled high with farewells and goodbyes of so many different kinds, like the evening sky renewing itself again and again from one instant to the next-and I didn’t want to forget a single one.
My family life and early political life - being exposed to the news constantly, being enrolled in an Afrocentric education program, and doing the extracurriculars I did - played a huge role in me finding my path.
I can be by myself because I'm never lonely, I'm simply alone, living in my heavily populated solitude, a harum-scarum of infinity and eternity, and Infinity and Eternity seem to take a liking to the likes of me.
...Why are all these masks winking?" Jason pointed around the room with his fork. The loremaster dabbed at his mouth with a frilled purple napkin. "One eye is open to all truth, the other closed to all deception.
When I do research, I cast my net very widely and then snatch what feels right out of that. Occasionally I'll read a specific book for a specific book, but usually I'm trying to increase my general understanding.
Superman is pretty much the way he was - you know - what he's always been. A lot of the Marvel characters are products of their time. I think Batman, as a character, has been able to adapt; he's pretty malleable.
All about us were people. Perhaps a hundred. Men. Experience had taught me that humans were cruelest when segregated by sex, and the cold feeling in the pit of my stomach became led. What had I let myself in for?
A geometrical theory in physical interpretation can never be validated with mathematical certainty ... ; like any other theory of empirical science, it can acquire only a more or less high degree of confirmation.
Until a vegan or vegetarian enters the room, people don't see themselves as meat-eaters. They are merely 'eaters', and it is we vegans who have made them aware of what they are doing. Often this is discomforting.
It doesn't matter that millions read as long as you share it with somebody. So I don't really think about readers or editors. You especially should never think of editors - especially never think about reviewers.
If someone were to call me 'the next Amy Tan,' it would not be because - or not primarily because - we have similar themes or subjects or styles. Let's be honest: it would be because we are both Chinese American.
So deeply is the gardener's instinct implanted in my soul, I really love the tools with which I work; the iron fork, the spade, the hoe, the rake, the trowel, and the watering pot are pleasant objects in my eyes.
No man can purchase his virtue too dear, for it is the only thing whose value must ever increase with the price it has cost us. Our integrity is never worth so much as when we have parted with our all to keep it.
Christmas is a time in which, of all times in the year, the memory of every remediable sorrow, wrong, and trouble in the world around us, should be active with us, not less than our own experiences, for all good.
"Ah, Miss, hope is an excellent thing for such as has the spirits to bear it!" said Mrs Wickam, shaking her head. "My own spirits is not equal to it, but I don't owe it any grudge. I envys them that is so blest!"
A few decades ago, many people didn't drink water outside of a meal. Then beverage companies started bottling the production of far-off springs, and now office workers unthinkingly sip bottled water all day long.
While markets are supposed to ensure transparency by showing orders to everyone simultaneously, flash orders are currently allowed because of a loophole in securities regulations that allows for immediate trades.
Books of quick interest, that hurry on for incidents are for the eye to glide over only. It will not do to read them out. I could never listen to even the better kind of modern novels without extreme irksomeness.
What I'm hoping for is something that goes much, much further than the conservative enablers of dog-eat-dog capitalism putting on a puppet show of cleaning house. But that's probably not going to happen just yet.
The real challenge in this line of work is being able to weed the productive ones from the chaff, to decide which you're going to spend the next six to nine months turning into something that people will pay for.
The fountain of information lies at your fingertips and is accessible anywhere at anytime and schools need to emphasize this. We are no longer in a world where you need to go seek enlightenment, it is everywhere.
Management cares about only one thing. Paperwork. They will forgive almost anything else - cost overruns, gross incompetence, criminal indictments - as long as the paperwork's filled out properly. And in on time.
Some of the worst writing around suffers from inert verbs and the unintended use of the passive voice. Yet the passive voice remains an important arrow in the rhetorical quiver. After all, it exists for a reason.
If you want others to like you, if you want to develop real friendships, if you want to help others at the same time as you help yourself, keep this principle in mind: Become genuinely interested in other people.
An argument would have begun to steam and boil and sputter - and you know how arguments end. Even if I had convinced him that he was wrong, his pride would have made it difficult for him to back down and give in.
That's how I work, whether with stories or novels - they start with an image that comes to me in a daydream, and a lot of times I'm walking around with these pictures in my head for awhile before I start writing.
As a high-school drop-out, I knew I wanted to write, but I wasn't overly confident that I was going to be writing anything serious. I was happy enough with the idea that I could be a penny-a-word guy and survive.
But of course there's no logic to San Francisco generally, a city built with putty and pipe cleaners, rubber cement and colored construction paper. It's the work of fairies, elves, happy children with new crayons
[People] didn't vote for me because they thought I was a racist and if you look at my campaign literature it is not much different than a lot of Republican literature and some conservative Democrats in the South.
My parents called themselves progressives. The agenda was a Soviet America...the slogan of the communist party in those days was peace, jobs, democracy. Sound familar? The communist party is the democratic Party.
Seem to be telling this, but really telling that. Three-dimensional writing, like three-dimensional chess. Nabokov was the other master of that. You could learn something from Nabokov on every page he ever wrote.
I'd always rather stand or fall on my own mistakes. There's nothing worse than looking back, in a published book, at a line edit or a copy edit that you felt queasy about and didn't want to take, but took anyway.
When beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles and the bottle's on a poodle and the poodle's eating noodles... ...they call this a muddle puddle tweetle poodle beetle noodle bottle paddle battle.
And when you're alone there's a very good chance you'll meet things that scare you right out of your pants There are some, down the road between hither and yon, that can scare you so much you won't want to go on.
I love you, and because I love you I believe in you. But if I did not believe, still should I love. Had you come back for me, and had there been no other way, I would have gone into the jungle with you - forever.
It is not book learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebra which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies, do a thing.
You can also make explicit certain social problems which, again, would be prejudged or not encountered at all in real life, because people have set up defenses against it. Fantasy allows you to get past defenses.
In the end, arguing about affirmative action in selective colleges is like arguing about the size of a spigot while ignoring the pool and the pipeline that feed it. Slots at Duke and Princeton and Cal are finite.
I don't have Facebook or Twitter accounts yet. Being a compulsive storyteller, I always make up for myself discouraging stories about how such accounts will get me into embarrassing and time-consuming situations.
Most writers in the course of their careers become thick-skinned and learn to accept vituperation, which in any other profession would be unimaginably offensive, as a healthy counterpoise to unintelligent praise.
There is no excuse for anyone to write fiction for public consumption unless he has been called to do so by the presence of a gift. It is the nature of fiction not to be good for much unless it is good in itself.