Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If there was one life skill everyone on the planet needed, it was the ability to think with critical objectivity
a windy March is lucky. Every pint of March dust brings a peck of September corn, and a pound of October cotton.
Women were brought up to believe that men were the answer. They weren't. They weren't even one of the questions.
Writers of either gender ought to be able to do the opposite sex-that's one basic test of competence, after all.
Everything is your fault. You made me fall in love with you, and now I'm so upset I can't think or sleep or eat.
The future was in our own hands. If we wanted a world where such things were possible, it was for us to make it.
There is a holy, mistaken zeal in politics, as well as in religion. By persuading others, we convince ourselves.
But if these years have taught me anything it is this: you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in.
I write very, very slowly, and for me, I have to summon all sorts of resources to make one of these pieces work.
Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be.
Good crime writing holds up a mirror to the readers and reflects in a darker light the world in which they live.
Readers are very, very savvy, and I don't want to insult them by making them think I'm too lazy to get it right.
What if we had a chance to do it again and again, until we finally did get it right? Wouldn't that be wonderful?
Reading should not be presented to children as a chore or duty. It should be offered to them as a precious gift.
The world is dark, and light is precious. Come closer, dear reader. You must trust me. I am telling you a story.
Most of my books begin with an image or a voice - one small thing - and I don't know what it is going to become.
Many of us do not believe in capital punishment, because thus society takes from a man what society cannot give.
Speaking of death, LeBlanc boasted he could kill me in the waiting room. I broke his wrist. He wasn't impressed.
His gaze travelled down me, then zipped back to my face. "Sorry." "Focus, Rafe." "I am. Just on the wrong thing.
Let it Ride channels Elmore Leonard at the height of his powers, with dialogue Quentin Tarantino would kill for.
My aunt could never understand how writing could be a full-time job. She'd keep asking when I'd get a real job!.
You can't eat [literature], that's the problem," he said. "I've tried, it's very dry, and not at all nutritious.
My husband is in politics and my kids are already a campaign organ for him and I really love being their mother.
I can tell you that I never begin working on a story until I have a title centered at the top of the first page.
I wonder what the difference between love and control is, but I'm afraid to look those words up in a dictionary.
The truth is, we know so little about life, we don't really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.
That is my principal objection to life, I think: It's too easy, when alive, to make perfectly horrible mistakes.
Freud said he didn't know what women wanted. I know what women want. They want a whole lot of people to talk to.
The surface of Earth heaved and seethed in fecund restlessness. Earth was most fertile where the most death was.
Homo Americanus is going to go on speaking and writing the way he always has, no matter what dictionary he owns.
Every relationship is messed up. What makes it really perfect is if you still want to be there when things suck.
Some issues stay fresh every time you open them up. It's like evil magical Tupperware -- it stays fresh forever.
It's not the fur or the fangs that make you a monster, not always. Sometimes, it's just where you draw the line.
Sometimes love makes you selfish. Sometimes it makes you stupid. Sometimes it reminds you why you love your gun.
I guess, what I'm saying is that when I've been this surprised by my own characters and world, all bets are off.
Give your kid some credit for being smart - just because they read about something doesn't mean they will do it.
The good thing about writing a true story is that you don't have to worry about giving an impression of realism.
My faith was started off by my grandmother and mother, and so I always saw it as a very private, personal thing.
I've never sat down and thought about the difference between plot and theme. To me, that's never been important.
For if we allow that human life is always guided by reason, we destroy the premise that life is possible at all.
There is no significant idea which cannot be explained to an intelligent twelve year old boy in fifteen minutes.
Happiness consists in always aspiring perfection, the pause in any level in perfection is the pause of happiness
She did not want to talk of her sorrow, but with that sorrow in her heart she could not talk of outside matters.
The person who doesn't know how to subjugate will all too quickly feel the other's foot on the nape of his neck.
The struggle of the spirit against the senses is the gospel of modern man. I do not wish to have any part in it.
Writing can't change the world overnight, but writing may have an enormous effect over time, over the long haul.
No discussion between two persons can be of any use, until each knows clearly what it is that the other asserts.
Twinkle, twinkle little bat How I wonder what you're at! Up above the world you fly, Like a tea-tray in the sky.
I think gymnastics trained me as a person, too. Without the lessons I learned in gymnastics, I would be crushed.
Travel opens your mind as few other things do. It is its own form of hypnotism, and I am forever under its spell