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Quotes by Novelist
"I don't need to look at your primal, white-hot, mutant pirate eyes, big guy. Just forget that I'm there, and I'll try to block out the fact that I ever met you. Basically we'll just act like we do every day."
37
"A man might find for a moment that he was unable to work, but that's exactly the right time to remember his past accomplishments and to consider that later on, when the obstacles has been removed, he's bound to work all the harder and more efficiently."
37
"Workshops, churches, and palaces were full of these fatal works of art; he had even helped with a few himself. They were deeply disappointing because they aroused the desire for the highest and did not fulfill it. They lacked the most essential thing-mystery. That was what dreams and truly great works of art had in common: mystery... It is mystery I love and pursue."
37
"What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had a chance!'Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity."
37
"Why are we here? Is there, really, some intelligent design? Why do we cry for someone who leaves us, if there's some Grand Pearly Gate in the sky? Why worry about how we build our lives if the ultimate ending for all is death, a single breath away?"
37
"One minute. You know nothing about him. He probably has his own joys and interests- wife, children, snug little home. That's where we practical fellows'- he smiled-'are more tolerant than you intellectuals. We live and let live, and assume that things are jogging on fairly well elsewhere, and that the ordinary plain man may be trusted to look after his own affairs."
37
"Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty and I'll show you a man."
37
"No wonder I'd never had any friends. I was shockingly bad at it."
37
"But I am a storyteller, and that involves language, for me the English language, that wonderfully rich, complex, and ofttimes confusing tongue. When language is limited, I am thereby diminished, too."
37
"Love and being in love are not the same thing. The woman takes the man she loves into her body and absorbs his oils and essence. A part of him enters her and becomes a part of her."
37
"The power of things inheres in the memories they gather up inside them, and also in the vicissitudes of our imagination, and our memory--of this there is no doubt."
37
"One of the things, though, that has always afflicted the American reality and the American vision is this aversion to history. History is not something you read about in a book, history is not even the past-it's the present. Because everybody operates, whether or not we know it, out of assumptions which are produced and produced only by our history. Now the history of this country is not bloodier than other countries, but it's bloody. It is not more criminal than that of other countries, but it's criminal. Or in short, it's not worse than the history of France or England or any country we can name-but it's different."
37
"The best way to waste your life, is by taking notes. The easiest way to avoid living is to just watch. Look for the details. Report. Don't participate."
37
"All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world."
37
"But I explained that deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope."
37
"Creamy and leggy, with long azure hair and the eyes of a silent-movie star, she moved like a poem and smiled like a sphinx."
37
"If there is on earth a house with many mansions, it is the house of words."
37
"We held each other so close that we might indeed have been one body."
37
"The terrible thing about the quest for truth is that you find it."
37
"Chance happens to all, but to turn chance to account is the gift of few."
37
"Obedience is an unpopular word nowadays, but the artist must be obedient to the work, whether it be a symphony, a painting, or a story for a small child. I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius or something very small, comes to the artist and says, "Here I am, Enflesh me. Give birth to me." And the artist either says, "My soul doth magnify the Lord," and willingly becomes the bearer of the work, or refuses; but the obedient response is not necessarily a conscious one, and not everyone has the humble, courageous obedience of Mary."
37
"I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free."
37
"All my pupils are the creme de la creme. Give me a girl of an impressionable age, and she is mine for life."
37
"Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes."
37
"Obviously this person's a hazard. Stupid people are dangerous."
37
"But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning."
37
"You have a light in you that's almost blinding. But in me there's only darkness. Sometimes I think it's like the darkness that infected you that night in the inn when you began to cry and to tremble. You were so helpless, so unprepared for it. I try to keep the darkness from you because I need your light. I need it desperately, but you don't need the darkness."
37
"I don't hate humanity and I'm not interested in people who do. Although, it's funny, actually, some of my favorite writers really do. Like Martin Amis. My dirty secret. 'London Fields' is one of my favorite books ever. And it's indefensible! But he's so funny... I forgive him everything."
37
"Who'll hold families together, if everybody has to live? Living is a compromise, between doing what you want and doing what other people want."
37
"To be a successful father... there's one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don't look at it for the first two years."
37
"Party leads to vicious, corrupt and unprofitable legislation, for the sole purpose of defeating party."
36
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