Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Like many writers, I started by writing short stories. I needed to learn how to write and stories are the most practical way to do this, and less soul-destroying than working your way through a lengthy novel and then discovering it's rubbish.
'Pretty Deadly' is the story of these immortal and mortal characters, and the mortals' story follows Sarah's family, a black family, through the ages. I never made the choice of, 'Oh, this is gonna be the story of an African American family!'
Gray space is fertile ground for fiction. When I can see both sides of an argument and feel strongly in both directions, then there's a story there, then I can write real characters that I care about and believe in and champion on both sides.
... they are structures that we build every time we engage in a thought that's just a little bit higher than a thought we had a moment before, or an activity that's just a little bit more noble than the activity we engaged in a moment before.
The short story is a very natural mode of storytelling; most stories can be told quickly. I always think of them as like a tightrope walk - every sentence is a step along the rope, and you can so easily misplace your step and break your neck.
History was like some vast thing that was always over the tight horizon, invisible except in its effects. It was what happened when you weren't looking -- an unknowable infinity of events, which although out of control, controlled everything.
The name of the new religion, said Rumfoord, is The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent. . . The two chief teachings of this religion are these: Puny man can do nothing at all to help or please God Almighty, and Luck is not the hand of God.
The Clinton's secret is that they live in a morally discontinuous universe-events do not have consequences, and what happened 15 minutes ago has no connection to what happens now. Beware of power when it masters the secret of popular amnesia.
We are not created equal in talent. But the place where we are least equal is the heart. You can work at a talent, take lessons, but love, love either works or it doesn't. You love someone or you don't. You can't change it. You can't undo it.
I believe that you've created a metaphorical universe in which you can express your darkest fears. In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves, and sometimes we do such a good job, we lose track of reality.
I open a paperclip and scratch it across the inside of my left wrist. Pitiful. If a suicide attempt is a cry for help, then what is this. A whimper, a peep? I draw little window cracks of blood, etching line after line until it stops hurting.
People involve themselves in countless activities which they consider to be important, but they forget about one activity which is more important and necessary than any other, and which includes all other things: the improvement of their soul
Smiling with pleasure, they went through their memories, not sad, old people's memories, but poetic, youthful ones, those impressions from the very distant past where dream merges with reality, and they laughed softly, rejoicing at something.
For once, Evie didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t really thought of her uncle as very human. He was more like a textbook who occasionally remembered to put on a tie. But it was clear that he was, indeed, human, with a deep wound named Rotke.
I think all women have a friend who at some point dumped them or betrayed them or deeply disappointed them. And at the same time all women have a friend who they dumped or betrayed or hurt in some way. That's universal in women's friendships.
Television is fantastic because you get to follow a group of characters over time, and their stories can enrich and surprise you. And you get to work with a group of people over time as well, which can be very satisfying with the right group.
My idea of success was to be a boy - possibly because my brothers, Leon and Arthur, were my father's pride and joy, whereas he had to be introduced to me several times before he got it firmly planted in his mind that I was part of the family.
I get bored at the theatre a lot because I notice that there's not always a connection between the actors. They may be technically proficient, but they're not surprising each other. I'm thrilled by actors who make choices that are surprising.
When at eve, at the bounding of the landscape, the heavens appear to recline so slowly on the earth, imagination pictures beyond the horizon an asylum of hope, - a native land of love; and nature seems silently to repeat that man is immortal.
I found it." "People find pennies," Gansey replied. "Or car keys. Or four-leaf clovers." "And ravens," Ronan said. "You're just jealous 'cause" - at this point, he had to stop to regroup his beer-sluggish thoughts - "you didn't find one, too.
There was nothing particularly intimate about the way they sat, but something about the scene made Gansey feel strange, like he’d heard an unpleasant statement and later forgotten everything about the words but the way they had made him feel.
My whole life, I had thought that my story was, again and again: Once upon a time, there was a boy, and he had to risk everything to keep what he loved. But really, the story was: Once upon a time, there was a boy, and his fear ate him alive.
I believe we need more culturally diverse books - about disabled characters, though not about their disability, about people with different sexual orientations, or a boy who is a cross-dresser. We need to reflect the diversity of our society.
We live in a screen age, and to say to a kid, ‘I’d love for you to look at a book but I hate it when you look at the screen’ is just bizarre. It reflects our own prejudices and comfort zone. It’s nothing but fear of change, of being left out.
How on earth do people imagine we equip children for life if we never show them the sorts of issues other people encounter, if we never talk through with them how they might deal with difficulty or violence or unexpected shocks and surprises?
Poker isn't the roulette wheel of pure chance, nor is it the chess of mathematical elegance and perfect information. Apart from the underlying mathematics, poker depends on the nuanced reading of human intention, interactions, and deceptions.
But most weeks I've gone through 12 books, maybe even 15 some weeks, depending on the length. So I go through my long form, and then my day begins. I usually try to do most of my writing earlier in the day because I sort of lump out later on.
But in reality the point of free speech is for the stuff that’s over the line, and strikingly unbalanced. If free speech is only for polite persons of mild temperament within government-policed parameters, it isn’t free at all. So screw that.
I just know that right now, we want to be proud. For once. We want to take the struggle and rise above it. We want to frame it, live it, survive it. We want to put it in our mouths and taste it and never forget it, because it makes us strong.
Teens are not like the weird, dumb dwarves you have around your house. They are actually you when you were younger. Why not write a book which is as sophisticated as a book for an adult, but is about the concerns that teenagers actually have?
To be anorexic...she thought, amounted to wanting to shed yourself of some of the imperfect mosaic of pieces that made you who you were. She could understand that now for, maybe underneath that desquamated self you would locate a new version.
When your dream dies, create another dream; don't waste your time to resurrect the dead one! Remember that you are mortal and don't stuck on one dream! Give other dreams a chance! Be just! Remember, you are mortal and your time is very short!
Thanks to the night, we long for the day; thanks to the day, we long for the night! The purpose of the opposites is to make us long for something! Thanks to the crowds, we long for the solitude; thanks to the solitude, we long for the crowds!
What's with what you're wearing?" Griggs asks while we stand outside waiting for the others. "It's pretty hideous, isn't it?" I say. "Don't force me to look at it," he says. "It's see-through." That kills conversation for a couple of seconds.
If spirituality is the sense of awe and humility in the face of the creation, what could be more awesome and humbling than the deep space discovered by Hubble and the cosmologists, and the deep time discovered by Darwin and the evolutionists.
The reason people turn to supernatural explanations is that the mind abhors a vacuum of explanation. Because we do not yet have a fully natural explanation for mind and consciousness, people turn to supernatural explanations to fill the void.
While our pulse beats and we feel emotion, let us put off the business. Things will truly seem different to us when we have quieted and cooled down. It is passion that is in command at first, it is passion that speaks, it is not we ourselves.
Our world is... longing to see people whose God is big and holy and frightening and gentle and tender... and ours; a God whose love frightens us into His strong and powerful arms where He longs to whisper those terrifying words, 'I love you.'
With my father and sister being very depressed for most of their lives, it was incumbent on me to try to make them laugh, in this ridiculous way. They were the wittiest people I knew, but to get a smile from them was like winning the lottery.
Yes, Manila had its slums; one saw them on the drive from the airport: vast districts of men in dirty white undershirts lounging idly in front of auto-repair shops - like a poorer version of the 1950s America depicted in such films as Grease.
Outside of America, there are many people, myself included, who champion values that in some senses could be thought of as traditionally American: The idea that everybody is equal; the idea that the rights of women and men should be the same.
When I started writing, I didn't have the common sense to use a pseudonym, so I write under my own name. If I did have a pen name, though, it would be something very historical - something that sounds very sort of Regency... Sophia something.
British food is a celebration of comfort eating. Our traditional savoury recipes are all about warmth and sustenance, our puddings a roll call of sweet jollity, our cakes are deep and cosy. We appear to be a nation in need of a big, warm hug.
I think sometimes bad behaviour can be liberating for certain people. They need to behave badly to find themselves - to go off path to find their path. You see it with kids all the time: They're testing boundaries, and I think that's healthy.
And I have this little litany of things they can do. And the first one, of course, is to write - every day, no excuses. It's so easy to make excuses. Even professional writers have days when they'd rather clean the toilet than do the writing.
Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.
Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation, and conversation must have a common basis, and between two people of widely different culture the only common basis possible is the lowest level.
Shakespeare might have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the white streets of London, or seen the serving-men of rival houses bite their thumbs at each other in the open square; but Hamlet came out of his soul, and Romeo out of his passion.
When I but hear her sing, I fare Like one that raised, holds his ear To some bright star in the supremest Round; Through which, besides the light that's seen There may be heard, from Heaven within, The rests of Anthems, that the Angels sound.
I think kids in France, and certainly in my household, don't necessarily stop interrupting when you tell them, but they gradually become more aware of other people, and that means that you can have the expectation of finishing a conversation.