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Quotes by Novelist
"Right before the game, she strolled up to me. "Hey, Seaweed Brain.""Will you stop calling me that?"She knows I hate that name, mostly because I never have a good comeback. She's the daughter of Athena, which doesn't give me a lot of ammunition. I mean, "Owl-head" and "Wise Girl" are kind of lame insults."
42
"In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness."
42
"To the untrue man, the whole universe is false--it is impalpable--it shrinks to nothing within his grasp."
42
"There is an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for."
42
"SOON was the first novel where I used a rough outline. Usually I have characters and an idea and write as a process of discovery. Like working without a net."
42
"How can one take delight in the world unless one flees to it for refuge?"
42
"Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that we live, if we do."
42
"A theater person should know what holds an audience and what does not."
42
"Pornography is a satire on human pretensions."
42
"That's the biggest purpose of religious gathering: permission to look terrible in public. We used to go to church to confess our worst behaviour, to be heard and forgiven, then to be redeemed and accepted back into our community."
42
"Are wars anything but the means whereby a nation is nourished, whereby it is strengthened, whereby it is buttressed?"
42
"Marriage, like money, is still with us; and, like money, progressively devalued."
42
"Nine tenths of education is encouragement."
42
"But when he thought to complain about the burden of its weight, he remembered that, because he had the jacket, he had withstood the cold of the dawn.We have to be prepared for change, he thought, and he was grateful for the jacket's weight and warmth.The jacket had a purpose, and so did the boy."
42
"Until you have lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is."
42
"It's true that it's a solitary occupation, but you would be surprised at how much companionship a group of imaginary characters can offer once you get to know them."
42
"... I have always thought of Christmas-time... as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys."
42
"Maybe it's okay to be a kid once in a while."
42
"The one ironclad rule is that I have to try. I have to walk into my writing room and pick up my pen every weekday morning."
42
"At seventeen, the smallest crises took on tremendous proportions; someone else's thoughts could take root in the loam of your own mind; having someone accept you became as vital as oxygen. Adults, light years away from this, rolled their eyes and smirked "this too shall pass" - as if adolescence was a disease like chicken pox, something that everyone recalled as a mild nuisance, completely forgettingone how painful it had been at the time."
42
"Ever since my youth it has disturbed me that of the literary works that survived their own epoch, so many dealt with historical rather than contemporary subjects."
42
"I am not against hasty marriages where a mutual flame is fanned by an adequate income."
42
"Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of a fake messiah."
42
"Nature has no principles. She makes no distinction between good and evil."
42
"Well, you may abuse me, be angry with me if you like," Porfiry Petrovitch began again, "but I can't resist. Allow me one little question (I know I am troubling you). There is just one little notion I want to express, simply that I may not forget it."
42
"There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception."
42
"When I get back from this book tour, I'm planning to learn the internet. Maybe I can hook up in cyberspace."
42
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