Quotes by Writers - Page 61

It is within the bonds of marriage that I, for one, found a greater freedom to be and to become and to share myself thatn I can imaine ever having found in any other kind of relationship.
Frederick Buechner
The law is not an ass but a chameleon in ass skin: it turns deathly black when around blacks and pristine white when around whites
Agona Apell
He believed he understood, for the first time, why people say life is a dream: if you live long enough, the events of a lifetime, like the events of a dream, cannot be communicated, simply because they are of no interest to anyone.Human beings themselves, after death, become figures in a dream to the survivors , they fade away and are forgotten, like dreams that were once convincing, but which no one cares to hear about. There are parents who find in their children a receptive audience, with the result that in the child's credulous imagination they find a last semblance of life, which quickly dims out as if they had never existed. ...
Adolfo Bioy Casares
In fact, if you are faced with the prospect of running across an open field in which lightning bolts are going to be a problem, you are much better off if their timing and location are determined by something, since then they may be predictable by you, and hence avoidable. Determinism is the friend, not the foe, of those who dislike inevitability.
Daniel C. Dennett
[W]e are none of us very good at silence. It says too much.
Frederick Buechner
Ask yourself, if there was to be no blame, and if there was to be no praise, who would I be then?
Quentin Crisp
There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving and that's your own self.
Aldous Huxley
I wonder what it felt to move to a country where you didn't grow up. I had thought about that often since my sister got married. Do you become a character in a story native to that land, or do you, somewhere in your heart, want to return to your homeland.
Banana Yoshimoto
Might. Is there any opiate more powerful than that word?
Libba Bray
One is happy as a result of one's own efforts once one knows the necessary ingredients of happiness: simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self denial to a point, love of work, and above all, a clear conscience.
George Sand
When I write, I feel like an armless leg less man with a crayon in his mouth.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
So I figured I'd leave the area, because I had no ties there anyway except for this girl I was seeing. We had conflicting attitudes: I really wasn't into meditating and she wasn't really into being alive. I told her I knew when I was going to die because my birth certificate has an expiration date.
Steven Wright
If the changes that we fear be thus irresistible, what remains but to acquiesce with silence, as in the other insurmountable distresses of humanity? It remains that we retard what we cannot repel, that we palliate what we cannot cure. Life may be lengthened by care, though death cannot be ultimately defeated: tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggles for our language.
Samuel Johnson
When inspiration is silent reason tires quickly.
Roger Zelazny
To me, the best, if not the only function of imaginative writing, is to lead the human imagination outward, to take it into the vast external cosmos, and away from all that introversion and introspection, that morbidly exaggerated prying into one's own vitals—and the vitals of others—which Robinson Jeffers has so aptly symbolized as "incest." What we need is less "human interest," in the narrow sense of the term—not more. Physiological—and even psychological analysis—can be largely left to the writers of scientific monographs on such themes. Fiction, as I see it, is not the place for that sort of grubbing.
Clark Ashton Smith
Such is the control, and such the public mentality, enjoyed by the Swedish planners. The rulers of the Soviet Union, although favoured by despotic power, are not so fortunate. Obstructively resentful of officialdom, the Russian, in the words of the Spanish saying, has always known how orders are 'to be obeyed but not carried out'. To the Swede, that sort of compromise is downright immoral. His elected leaders have received those political blessings denied the autocrats in the Kremlin: compliant citizens and an unopposed bureaucracy.
Roland Huntford
Conscience is a coward and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent it seldom has justice enough to accuse.
Oliver Goldsmith
Boys fight the wars. We’d have the brotherhood of man tomorrow if the politicians had to get out and fight.
Herman Wouk
The slam of a car door drew her attention to a new arrival. Maxville Deputy Sheriff Zach Manus emerged from his unmarked 2011 Camaro and stalked toward them. Deep sorrow and anger laced across his handsome features. His light-brown hair stood a little more on end than normal. He stopped in front of them, his frown deepening and his golden-brown eyes darkening.
Lia Davis
The future is all around us, waiting in moments of transition to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of the future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.
J. Michael Straczynski
We are always in these days endeavoring to separate intellect and manual labor; we want one man to be always thinking, and another to be always working, and we call one a gentleman, and the other an operative; whereas the workman ought often to be thinking, and the thinker often to be working, and both should be gentlemen in the best sense.
John Ruskin
Here, in a few words, you’ve said all you need to say. People stand by each other, but they don’t talk. It’s remarkable. I’ve investigated the extraordinary history of these walls. I think I’m the only person who knows that it’s the stones, the stones alone that set the tone here.
Jacques Yonnet
Having 'holy' thoughts, and doing bad deeds, such a lot are assholes indeed.
Fakeer Ishavardas
…So, um, you’re from Rochester? Like, New York?” Jersey asked.“Yup, we used to live out there,” Rudger confirmed, nonchalant. “You ever been?”“Naw, the closest I’ve ever been to there would be… well, believe it or not, New Jersey, the place where my parents named me after. It was crowded, polluted and full of crime… I loved it.
Rebecca McNutt
I considered quitting graduate school. I paid my ticket, I rode the ride. Right? Half the people I started with quit. I did not have to continue toward scholar. But something wouldn’t let me. Some deep wrestling match going on inside my rib house and gray matter. Some woman in me I’d never met. You know who she was? My intellect. When I opened the door and there she stood, with her sassy red reading glasses and fitted skirt and leather bookbag, I thought, who the hell are you? Crouching into a defensive posture and looking at her warily out of the corner of my eye. Watch out, woman. To which she replied, I’m Lidia. I have a desire toward language and knowledge that will blow your mind.
Lidia Yuknavitch
Mental Health is measured though motivation to live; the more plans you have and the more significant they are, the more healthy you are.
Mark Brightlife
Wherever a choice has had to be made between the man of reason and the madman, the world has unhesitatingly followed the madman. For the madman appeals to what is fundamental, to passion and the instincts; the philosophers to what is superficial and supererogatory - reason.
Aldous Huxley
Speed provides the one genuinely modern pleasure.
Aldous Huxley
The things other people have put into my head, at any rate, do not fit together nicely, are often useless and ugly, are out of proportion with one another, are out of proportion with life as it really is outside my head.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
The crying sounded even louder out of doors. It was as if all the pain in the world had found a voice. Yet had I known such pain was in the next room, and had it been dumb, I believe—I have thought since—I could have stood it well enough. It is when suffering finds a voice and sets our nerves quivering that this pity comes troubling us. But in spite of the brilliant sunlight and the green fans of the trees waving in the soothing sea-breeze, the world was a confusion, blurred with drifting black and red phantasms, until I was out of earshot of the house in the stone wall.
H.G.Wells
Indeed, the victory by the force of weapons shows just one's tenure and occupancy. Conversely, the real victory breezes only by dialogue and love.
Ehsan Sehgal
Not God, but man-made gods kill, by self-will.
Fakeer Ishavardas
You know what it's like when a cart overturns in the street? Everybody you meet has witnessed it. They saw a man's leg sliced clean off. They saw a woman gasp her last. They saw the goods looted, thieves stealing from the back-end while the carter was crushed at the front. They heard a man roar out his last confession, while another whispered his last will and testament. And if all the people who say they were there had really been there, then the dregs of London would have drained to the one spot, the gaols emptied of thieves, the beds empty of whores, and all the lawyers standing on the shoulders of the butchers to get a better look.
Hilary Mantel
Even the strongest of opponents always has a weakness.-Itachi Uchiha
Masashi Kishimoto
Don't bitch or punish the world: just create. Create something nobody's ever seen before and there is a good chance the world will notice you. Attacking teen girls on the internet is the saddest form of masturbation that exists and requires no discernible skill or talent. Because if you're not being useful in this world, you're being useless. Don't be useless: go make stuff that makes people happy.
Kevin Smith
They were a remarkable company, each one of them a unique person, yet characterized to some extent by his particular national type. And all were distinctively “scientists” of the period. Formerly this would have implied a rather uncritical leaning towards materialism, and an affectation of cynicism; but by now it was fashionable to profess an equally uncritical belief that all natural phenomena were manifestations of the cosmic mind. In both periods, when a man passed beyond the sphere of his own serious scientific work he chose his beliefs irresponsibly, according to his taste, much as he chose his recreation or his food.
Olaf Stapledon
The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.
Niccolò Machiavelli
It is the best of all trades to make songs and the second best to sing them.
Hilaire Belloc
What’s the worst that could happen?”“Don’t say that!” Bess and Corwin yelled at the same time.“You two are so superstitious.
Georgette St. Clair
I started this dirty quote business when I noticed that I only tend to read authors when their quotes convince me of wit and style. In a world overflowing with bad literature and corrupted product-placement critics the only weapon one has is either word of mouth or quotes, and me I highly prefer the latter. So I have just decided that I will only post to facebook through goodreads quotes. That's policy that makes a lot of sense for a writer.
Martijn Benders
I don't think writers need to be insane. Just crazy.
Rayne Hall
I believe one would write better if the climate were bad. If there were a lot of wind and storms for example...
Aldous Huxley
You pays your money and you takes your choice.
Aldous Huxley
The farmhouse sat on a rise at the end of a long dirt road, in a clearing surrounded by fruit trees and ninety acres of pines. It was painted white, and peeling, and some former hippie tenant had painted a mandala on the wall just inside the door with fine-point Magic Marker. I painted over it, but it bled through, again and again. I finally left it there, a pale and pastel version of itself, hanging ghostlike in the hall.
Marjorie Hudson
Great thoughts come from the heart.
Vauvenargues
When evening comes, I go back home, and go to my study. On the threshold I take off my work clothes, covered in mud and filth, and put on the clothes an ambassador would wear. Decently dressed, I enter the ancient courts of rulers who have long since died. There I am warmly welcomed, and I feed on the only food I find nourishing, and was born to savor. I am not ashamed to talk to them, and to ask them to explain their actions. And they, out of kindness, answer me. Four hours go by without my feeling any anxiety. I forget every worry. I am no longer afraid of poverty, or frightened of death. I live entirely through them.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Garry Shandling has always been a pioneer of… meta entertainment. He's always been a defender of the creative right to use the frame as part of the painting.
Dan Harmon
And what if the other kids laugh at me?” Kerry complained to her parents as she nibbled on a piece of toast that morning. “I have a Cape Breton accent! They’ll know I’m from Canada and they’ll start asking me if I lived in an igloo or ate maple syrup, bacon and seal meat every day!”“You’re really overreacting,” Susan chuckled, sipping on a glass of orange juice. “Canada is a lot like the States and the only thing separating both countries is an imaginary boarder! If anyone laughs at you, tell them it doesn’t snow year-round, you got free health care while you were there and that you never rode a polar bear to school. Besides, do you know how many popular movies and TV shows from the States were filmed in Canada?”“It’s not just the Canada stuff mom,” Kerry sighed worriedly. “I’m from Dym, it’s an industrial dump!”“Yeah, and have you looked at Pittsburgh lately?” Susan asked. “Full of coal mines and steel mills, just like Sydney was when we lived there! I actually rather came to like the pollution, I don’t think I’d ever want to leave it.
Rebecca McNutt
Whatever liberates our spirit without giving us mastery over ourselves is destructive.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Responsibility is the thing people dread the most of all. Yet it is the one thing in the world that develops us, gives us manhood or womanhood fiber.
Frank Crane
One day, this Establishment will fall. It will not do so on its own terms or of its own accord, but because it has been removed by a movement with a credible alternative that inspires. For those of us who want a different sort of society, it is surely time to get our act together.
Owen Jones
I’m so afraid I’m not worth the breath you gave me…
Rebecca Donovan
A great artist is conscious of the talent and the power he possesses, otherwise he would not see his faults, and so would not be able to improve.
H.S. Ede
Do you look like the photograph on your book jackets? Authors, I find, seldom do.
Hilary Mantel
To write what is worth publishing, to find honest people to publish it, and get sensible people to read it, are the three great difficulties in being an author.
Charles Caleb Colton
Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit.
Antoine De Saint Exupery
Instruction does much, but encouragement everyt
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
In comparison, young unmarried women in America were fortunate: They had a certain measure of sexual freedom. Eighteenth-century parents allowed their daughters to spend tie with suitors unsupervised, and courting couples openly engaged in "bundling," the practice of sleeping together without undressing, in the girls' homes. (Theoretically, that is, they were sleeping together without undressing: in fact, premarital pregnancy boomed during the period of 1750 to 1780, when bundling was nearly universal.) But by the turn of the century, in a complete reversal of previous beliefs about women's sexuality, the idea took hold that only men were carnal creatures; women were thought to be passionless and therefore morally superior.
Leora Tanenbaum
I set free the phantoms of my imagination.
Frigyes Karinthy
I'd do anything for you, Tessa. I know you don't realize that now, but you will.
Aileen Erin