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Quotes by Novelist
"The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own."
23
"Percy: "You asked Poseidon for" me? Tyson: "For a friend, young cyclopes grow up alone on the streets, learns to make things out of scraps. Learn to survive." Percy: "But that's so cruel! Tyson: "Makes us appreciate blessings, not be greedy and mean and fat like Polyphemus. But I got scared. Monsters chased me so much, clawed me sometimes--" Percy: "The scars on your back? Tyson: "Sphinx on Seventy-second Street. Big Bully. I prayed to Daddy for help. Soon the people at Meriwether found me. Mey you. Biggest blessing ever. Sorry I said Poseidon was mean. He sent me a brother."
23
"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."
23
"The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness."
23
"Prometheus is reaching out for the stars with an empty grin on his face."
23
"Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking..."
23
"A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience."
22
"My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted."
22
"The world outside existed in a kind of darkness; and we inquired about nothing."
22
"I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child."
22
"I never married because there was no need. I have three pets at home which answer the same purpose as a husband. I have a dog which growls every morning, a parrot which swears all afternoon, and a cat that comes home late at night."
22
"His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred."
22
"One always writes comedy at the moment of deepest hysteria."
22
"If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."
22
"Charles Wallace and the unicorn moved through the time-spinning reaches of a far glazy, and he realized that the galaxy itself was part of a mighty orchestra, and each star and planet within the galaxy added its own instrument to the music of the spheres. As long as the ancient harmonies were sung, the universe would not entirely lose its joy."
22
"Mento mori-remember death! These are important words. If we kept in mind that we will soon inevitably die, our lives would be completely different. If a person knows that he will die in a half hour, he certainly will not bother doing trivial, stupid, or, especially, bad things during this half hour. Perhaps you have half a century before you die-what makes this any different from a half hour?"
22
"Whatever the scientists may say, if we take the supernatural out of life, we leave only the unnatural."
22
"Strictly speaking, every citizen above a certain level of income is guilty of some offense."
21
"Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon."
21
"The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary."
21
"Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon."
21
"In the fight between you and the world, back the world."
21
"I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter."
21
"But after I got them to leave and shut the door and turned off the light it wasn't any good. It was like saying good-by to a statue. After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain."
21
"A chaplain's biggest gift is to be present and just listen."
21
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