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Quotes by Novelist
"Mechanical difficulties with language are the outcome of internal difficulties with thought."
35
"The question I'm always asking myself is: are we masters or victims? Do we make history, or does history make us? Do we shape the world, or are we just shaped by it? The question of do we have agency in our lives or whether we are just passive victims of events is, I think, a great question, and one that I have always tried to ask."
35
"Globalization means standardization. The very rich and the very poor must want the same things, but only the rich can have them."
35
"Even if it was just walls and a roof with papers inside, it had bewitched him, and drawn him in, and given him everything he needed to become himself."
35
"Love takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within."
35
"The waste basket is the writer's best friend."
35
"The problem with being a liar is you can never believe anyone else."
35
"For centuries, as pope and emperor tore each other apart in their quarrels over power, the excluded went on living on the fringe, like lepers, of whom true lepers are only the illustration ordained by God to make us understand this wondrous parable, so that in saying 'lepers' we would understand 'outcast, poor, simple, excluded, uprooted from the countryside, humiliated in the cities.' But we did not understand; the mystery of leprosy has continued to haunt us because we have not recognized the nature of the sign."
35
"What likelihood is there of corrupting a man who has no ambition?"
35
"In business, as in politics, the public is ever so tolerant of those who slime."
35
"I do my best to love everybody...I'm hard put,sometimes- baby,its never an insult o be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is,it doesn't hurt you."
35
"Better reality than a dream: if something is real, then it's real and you're not to blame."
35
"The only thing a boyfriend was good for was a shattered heart."
35
"A writer flirts with schizophrenia, nurtures synesthesia, and embraces obsessive-compulsive disorder. Your art feeds on you, your soul, and, yes, to a degree, your sanity. Writing novels worth reading will bugger up your mind, jeopardize your relationships, and distend your life. You have been warned."
35
"Since I became a novelist I have discovered that I am biased. Either I think a new novel is worse than mine and I don't like it, or I suspect it is better than my novels and I don't like it."
35
"I was able to read a movie before I was able to read a book."
35
"I think I'm drawn to writing about something which feels intense and important."
35
"To me, a witch is a woman that is capable of letting her intuition take hold of her actions, that communes with her environment, that isn't afraid of facing challenges."
35
"I won't fatten them in cages, though. I won't ply them with poisoned fruit items. I won't change them into clockwork images or talking shadows. I won't drain out their life's blood. They can do all those things for themselves."
35
"God and religion before every thing!' Dante cried. 'God and religion before the world.' Mr Casey raised his clenched fist and brought it down on the table with a crash.'Very well then,' he shouted hoarsely, 'if it comes to that, no God for Ireland!''John! John!' cried Mr Dedalus, seizing his guest by the coat sleeve. Dante stared across the table, her cheeks shaking. Mr Casey struggled up from his chair and bent across the table towards her, scraping the air from before his eyes with one hand as though he were tearing aside a cobweb. 'No God for Ireland!' he cried, 'We have had too much God in Ireland. Away with God!"
35
"I saw this moment as attached by threads to eternity and woven between all the other braided moments of my past and my future."
35
"Your uncle," Poseidon sighed, "has always had a flair for dramatic exits. I think he would've done well as the god of theater."
35
"I expect nothing of man, and disown the race. The only folly is expecting what is never attained; man is most contemptible when compared with his own pretensions. It is better to laugh at man from outside the universe, than to weep for him within."
35
"Whenever the government of the United States shall break up, it will probably be in consequence of a false direction having been given to public opinion."
35
"He couldn't be a doctor, or he would have a quieter and more persuasive manner."
35
"He had not the benefit of existentialist terminology; but what he felt was a very clear case of the anxiety of freedom - that is, the realization that one is free and the realization that being free is a situation of terror."
35
"So I hear we get to go to town this weekend. Want to catch a movie or something?--ZP.S. That is, if Jimmy doesn't mind.Translation: This weekend might be a good chance for us to see each other outside our school in a social environment, free of competetiton. I do not view other boys as threats, and I enjoy making them seem insignificant by calling them the wrong names. (Translation by Macey McHenry)"
35
"He thought about his long life and gave thanks for all the bounty and joy that he had been given. To want more, to wish for yet more, he knew, would be petty. He sighed happily, and listened to the wind sweeping down from the mountains, to the chirping of night birds."
35
"Teachers're always using that "in your own words." I hate that. Authors knit their sentences tight. It's their job. Why make us unpick them, just to put it back together more shonkily? How're you s'posed to say Kapellmeister if you can't say Kapellmeister?"
35
"I had never encountered a being who deliberately perpetuated fraud against himself."
35
"Suddenly she felt strong and happy. She was not afraid of the darkness or the fog and she knew with a singing in her heart that she would never fear them again. No matter what mists might curl around her in the future, she knew her refuge. She started briskly up the street toward home and the blocks seemed very long. Far, far too long. She caught up her skirts to her knees and began to run lightly. But this time she was not running from fear. She was running because Rhett's arms were at the end of the street."
35
"The mere attempt to examine my own confusion would consume volumes."
35
"Solitude is a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot, a tug of impalpable thread on the web pulling mate to mate and predator to prey, a beginning or an end."
35
"Spring is made of solid, fourteen-karat gratitude, the reward for the long wait. Every religious tradition from the northern hemisphere honors some form of April hallelujah, for this is the season of exquisite redemption, a slam-bang return to joy after a season of cold second thoughts."
35
"We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation. It's one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it's another to think that yours is the only path."
35
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