top of page
.png){kind=small}
Quotes by Novelist
"Don't you think you're quite young?''I'm twenty-one,' said Brida. 'If I wanted to start learning ballet, I'd be conseidered too old."
58
"Then she lay on her back and gazed at the cloudless sky. Mr. Beebe, whose opinion of her rose daily, whispered to his niece that that was the proper way to behave if any little thing went wrong."
58
"Ah, well, I have no talent for nonfiction, that's my problem."
58
"Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced."
58
"God waits only the separation of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward. Why, then, should we ever sink overwhelmed with distress, when life is so soon over, and death is so certain an entrance to happiness -- to glory?"
58
"In a way, it's nice to know that there are Greek gods out there, because you have somebody to blame when things go wrong. For instance, when you're walking away from a bus that's just been attacked by monster hags and blown up by lightning, and it's raining on top of everything else, most people might think that's just really bad luck; when you're a half-blood, you understand that some devine force is really trying to mess up your day."
58
"I see in the fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars, advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of the history man, no purpose or place, we have no Great war, no Great depression, our great war is a spiritual war, our great depression is our lives, we've been all raised by television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars, but we won't and we're slowly learning that fact. and we're very very pissed off."
58
"The spirit becomes free only when it ceases to be a support."
58
"Thirteen days. Almost two weeks. And, just five days in, she had learned a fundamental truth about time: Like the accordion on which sometimes played old Pashto songs were played, time stretched and contracted depending on his absence or presence."
58
"Long before man traveled into space, rabbis debated how one would observe Shabbat there-not because they anticipated space travel but because Buddhists strive to live with questions and Jews would rather die."
58
"I wrote because I needed to and wanted to. It never occurred to me that I'd become famous."
57
"Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre."
57
"Today I feel no wish to demonstrate that sanity is impossible. On the contrary, though I remain no less sadly certain than in the past that sanity is a rather rare phenomenon, I am convinced that it can be achieved and would like to see more of it."
57
"A fool flatters himself, a wise man flatters the fool."
57
"We have to stop and be humble enough to understand that there is something called mystery."
57
"When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice."
57
"You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm."
57
"Traveling is seeing; it is the implicit that we travel by."
57
"Doubt is an illness that comes from knowledge and leads to madness."
57
"Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an I.Q. of 60."
57
"Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return."
57
"Such lovely warmth of thought and delicacy of colour are beyond all praise, and equally beyond all thanks!"
57
"In Trinidad, where as new arrivals we were a disadvantaged community, that excluding idea was a kind of protection; it enabled us - for the time being, and only for the time being - to live in our own way and according to our own rules, to live in our own fading India."
57
"If you start out by promising what you don't even have yet, you'll lose your desire to work toward getting it."
57
"Most of the time we think we're sick, it's all in the mind."
57
"Women derive a pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex, from the delicate toil of the needle."
57
"The profession of the writer has its thorns about which the reader does not dream."
57
"Modesty is the conscience of the body."
57
"It's no secret that in my books I'm trying to make the comic and the serious rub up against each other just as closely and uncomfortably as I can."
57
"If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."
57
"We are the pioneers of the world, the advance-guard sent on through the wilderness of untried things..."
57
"No social stability without individual stability."
57
"I am as I am, and that's all there is to it, I can hardly take a pair of scissors to myself, and cut out a different person..."
57
"The blue-backed notebooks, the two pencils and the pencil sharpener (a pocket knife was too wasteful) the marble-topped tables, the smell of early morning, sweeping out and mopping, and luck were all you needed. For luck you carried a horse chestnut and a rabbit's foot in your right pocket. The fur had been worn off the rabbit's foot long ago and the bones and the sinews were polished by wear. The claws scratched in the lining of your pocket and you knew your luck was still there."
57
bottom of page