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"I think situations are more important than plot and character."
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"Integrity is more than truth and honesty; integrity is an unshackled mind, a happy heart, and a light spirit. Integrity is inner peace with a clear, clean conscience. Integrity is self-respect, honor, and credibility. Integrity is healthy and unfettering, and it is worth defending."

"The main qualities that had earned him this universal respect in the service were, first, an extreme indulgence towards people, based on his awareness of his own shortcomings; second, a perfect liberalism, not the sort he read about in the newspapers, but the sort he had in his blood, which made him treat all people, whatever their rank or status, in a perfectly equal and identical way; and, third - most important - a perfect indifference to the business he was occupied with, owing to which he never got carried away and never made mistakes."

"The psychoanalysis of neurotics has taught us to recognize the intimate connection between wetting the bed and the character trait of ambition."

"The Christian should stand out like a sparkling diamond against a rough background. He should be more wholesome than anyone else. He should be poised, cultured, courteous, gracious, but firm in the things that he does and does not do. He should laugh and be radiant, but he should refuse to allow the world to pull him down to its level."

"Who you are in public is a test of your conviction; who you are in private, integrity."

"Santi and Wolfe exchanged a look. Wolfe inclined his head a little to the side, with a strange, crooked smile. "You see? They're as bad as we are.""Worse," Santi sighed."

"Life is a test. It was designed to be so. It is where we taste the bitter and the sweet; where we feel pain and pleasure; where we learn right from wrong; where we pass through both darkness and light. It is a time to make choices. And through this process we form our characters-some grand and glorious, some barely decent, and others just plain monstrous."

"Always the wild child, conceived in flames, born of fire. Drawn to the forbidden, witch, warlock, burning stones. Her blood is made of moonlight; part dark, part light. Her heart, it's a sword; fiercely loyal and will fight to the death for those whom she loves. You can throw her in the fire, she always returns as a flame: the fervor is her anchor, her safe-haven... her blood."
Explore more quotes by Harry Mathews

"What I said about John was that he liberated me from my anxieties about writing in a correct, acceptable way."

"My next project is to get back to that. Actually, to learn how to write poetry. I'm not kidding."

"When Niki and I moved to Paris, there was also the challenge of Paris, an extremely daunting city."

"After the navy, I transferred to Harvard and finished there. I was there the spring term of 1951 and I stayed through the summer term and a whole other year, so I was able to do two years in a little less than a year and a half."

"Well, the great thing for me about poetry is that in good poems the dislocation of words, that is to say, the distance between what they say they're saying and what they are actually saying is at its greatest."

"Well, I had this little notion - I started writing when I was eleven, writing poetry. I was passionately addicted to it; it was my great refuge through adolescence."

"I thought Cheever was magnificent and that if I could write like him that would be the best I could do. And then I realized that what I really wanted to write had nothing to do with what he was doing."
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