top of page
.png){kind=small}
Quotes by Novelist
"The more stupid one is, the closer one is to reality. The more stupid one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence squirms and hides itself. Intelligence is unprincipled, but stupidity is honest and straightforward."
88
"Life is a great sunrise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one."
87
"I think the sport of wrestling, which I became involved with at the age of 14... I competed until I was 34, kind of old for a contact sport. I coached the sport until I was 47. I think the discipline of wrestling has given me the discipline I have to write."
87
"To have them putting him on, trying him on, trying him out while he himself puts them on like a sock over a foot onto the stub of himself-his extra sensitive thumb, his tentacle, his delicate, stalked slug's eye which extrudes, expands, winces and shrivels back into himself when touched wrongly, grows big again. Bulging a little at the tip, traveling forward as if along a leaf into them, avid for vision. To achieve vision in this way; this journey into a darkness that is composed of women-a woman-who can see in darkness while he himself strains blindly forward."
86
"He seriously thought that there is less harm in killing a man than producing a child: in the first case you are relieving someone of life, not his whole life but a half or a quarter or a hundredth part of that existence that is going to finish, that would finish without you; but as for the second, he would say, are you not responsible to him for all the tears he will shed, from the cradle to the grave? Without you he would never have been born, and why is he born? For your amusement, not for his, that's for sure; to carry your name, the name of a fool, I'll be bound " you may as well write that name on some wall; why do you need a man to bear the burden of three or four letters?"
86
"We're living in an age in which everything is allowed, and democracy is being devoured and destroyed by that limitless freedom."
86
"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth."
86
"Loving Chicago is like loving a woman with a broken nose."
85
"Fear is always triggered by creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome. This is nothing to be ashamed of. It is, however, something to be dealt with."
85
"My only regret is that I signed away the world rights and in America they've been far and away my most successful books, but I never saw a cent from any of it."
85
"We cannot tear out a single page of our life, but we can throw the whole book in the fire."
85
"Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it."
85
"Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow."
85
"No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true."
84
"Are these things really better than the things I already have? Or am I just trained to be dissatisfied with what I have now?"
84
"Don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair."
83
"The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it."
82
"Power doesn't corrupt people, people corrupt power."
82
"What is suffering? I'm not sure what it is, but I know that suffering is the name we give to the origin of all the sighs, screams, and groans - small and large, crude and multifaceted - that concern us. The word defines our gaze even more than what we are looking at."
82
"But what worries me is not your shooting me, because after all, for people like us it's a natural death." He laid his glasses on the bed and took off his watch and chain. "What worries me," he went on, "is that out of so much hatred for the military, out of fighting them so much and thinking about them so much, you've ended up as bad as they are. And no ideal in life is worth that much baseness."
82
"Faithfulness in Christian marriage entails that: great mortification. For a Christian man there is no escape. Marriage may help to sanctify and direct to its proper object his sexual desires; its grace may help him in the struggle; but the struggle remains. It will not satisfy him as hunger may be kept off by regular meals. It will offer as many difficulties to the purity proper to that state, as it provides easements. No man, however truly he loved his betrothed and bride as a young man, has lived faithful to her as a wife in mind and body without deliberate conscious exercise of the will, without self-denial."
82
"I believe it went like this-and stop me if I'm wrong, Mousey: 'Listen, we may not be our own continent and everything, but we have a big country over in America too."
81
"Scientists dream about doing great things. Engineers do them."
80
"I didn't make any money from my writing until much later. I published about 80 stories for nothing. I spent on literature."
80
"Regrets are the natural property of grey hairs."
80
"Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee."
80
"My life is very monotonous," the fox said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored."
80
"Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation."
80
"I may be a little like the grown-ups. I must have grown old."
80
"Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet."
79
"Like a compass needle that points north, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman. Always."
79
"It was impossible, of course. But when did that ever stop any dreamer from dreaming."
79
bottom of page