Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It is the chief value of legend to mix up the centuries while preserving the sentiment.
Religious unity can look like a carnival and religious liberty can look like a funeral.
Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.
Most writers write books that they wouldn't read. I ought to know; I've done it myself.
I might become an ascetic, live in India. A little rice is about the best I can do now.
As a schoolboy, I read most of Carl Sandburg's six-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln.
There is a terrible garrulousness in most American writing, legacy of the old Frontier.
At one with the One, it didn't mean a thing besides a glass of Guinness on a sunny day.
Do not imagine you can exorcise what oppresses you in life by giving vent to it in art.
Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness; nothing but faith, faith and freedom.
Snicker on hearing his name: 'the gentleman who thinks we are descended from the apes.'
But an infinity of passions can be contained in a minute, like a crowd in a tiny space.
If you choose to turn your back, you don't really have a say in what goes on behind it.
It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not stake their own.
But-! I say! The common conventions of humanity-' 'Are all very well for common people.
For man is essentially alone, and one should pity him and love him and grieve with him.
To know what a person has done, and to know who a person is, are very different things.
We do not so much want books for good people, as books which will make bad ones better.
I write a kind of surreal fantasy, but they can't put 'surreal fantasy' on a paperback.
The conservatives nearly always tolerate the demagogue while he is destroying liberals.
You can keep as quiet as you like, but one of these days somebody is going to find you.
When I start to write, I don't have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.
It was tough attempting to be social with people who'd rather pretend you didn't exist.
I could read at a very early age and I loved stories, losing myself in stories, novels.
Life is enriched by aspiration and effort, rather than by acquisition and accumulation.
War is an attempt of one group to impose its will upon another group by armed violence.
Privacy is like sleep - something you don't appreciate until you have to go without it.
The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life.
For the artist to attach himself to his work, or identify himself with it, is suicidal.
Prayers are offered up daily - without charge... Refreshments are served when demanded.
Of all fatiguing, futile, empty trades, the worst, I suppose, is writing about writing.
In order to successfully impersonate men, the woman [Margaret Thatcher] launched a war.
They say that nameless things change constantly—that names fix them in place like pins.
I know how to be the witness to her grief. I don't know how to be this kind of villain.
Boys never believe I can beat them, she told me back then. But I always win in the end.
Because here's the thing about a book: when you pick up a story, you put down your own.
In rural Spain, at least, it is far better to arrive than to travel, however hopefully.
Never let your zeal outrun your charity. The former is but human, the latter is divine.
How can there be pride in a contrite heart? Humility is the earliest fruit of religion.
Ours is the age which is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to.
Technology is knowledge of how the universe works that enables you to change the world.
Maybe you have to live under cover for a while before you can find your true character.
Liberals can always be trusted to see God in Mumia Abu-Jamal and the devil in the Pope.
My pictures are always part of my thinking, and my emotions, tensions, dreams, desires.
It's rare that I read more than two or three books by any one author, usually only one.
...and we'll see what happens when we say Yes while this rigor mortis world screams No.
If there are rules, we're the ones making them. We can change them whenever we want to.
It's rare that I read more than two or three books by any one author; usually only one.
'Warm Bodies' ended up becoming one of the most personal relatable things I've written.
Photographs deceive time, freezing it on a piece of cardboard where the soul is silent.