top of page
.png){kind=small}
Quotes by Writer
"To confer dignity, forgive. To express contempt, forget."
42
"Well, they each seem to do one thing well enough, but fail to realize that literature depends on doing several things well at the same time."
42
"No time spent with a book is ever entirely wasted, even if the experience is not a happy one: there's always something to be learned. It's just that, every now and again, you hit a patch of reading that makes you feel as if you're pootling about. But what can you do about it? We don't choose to waste our reading time; it just happens. The books let us down."
42
"Apologize!That's the least you can do to try to make right something you have wronged."
42
"We are gods in the chrysalis."
42
"The silver Thames takes some part of this county in its journey to Oxford."
42
"All of these white kids and teachers, who were so suspicious of me when I first arrived, had learned to care about me. Maybe some of them even loved me. And I'd been so suspicious of them. And now I care about a lot of them. And loved a few of them."
42
"Paradoxes are less paradoxical in their reference to truth than most of the most plausible axioms."
42
"Ability and luck makes success happen ,no matter what the circumstances are."
42
"Regrets are about decisions that you know you should have done different."
42
"Geisha because when I was living in Japan, I met a fellow whose mother was a geisha, and I thought that was kind of fascinating and ended up reading about the subject just about the same time I was getting interested in writing fiction."
42
"Learn from me, if not by my precepts, then by my example, how dangerous is the pursuit of knowledge and how much happier is that man who believes his native town to be the world than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow."
42
"I think," Tehanu said in her soft, strange voice, "that when I die, I can breathe back the breath that made me live. I can give back to the world all that I didn't do. All that I might have been and couldn't be. All the choices I didn't make. All the things I lost and spent and wasted. I can give them back to the world. To the lives that haven't been lived yet. That will be my gift back to the world that gave me the life I did live, the love I loved, the breath I breathed."
42
"Crisis alone is not enough. There must also be a basis, though it need be neither rational nor ultimately correct, for faith in the particular candidate chosen."
42
"No man can understand why a woman shouldn't prefer a good reputation to a good time."
42
"The American grips himself, at the very sources of his consciousness, in a grip of care: and then, to so much of the rest of life, is indifferent. Whereas, the European hasn't got so much care in him, so he cares much more for life and living."
42
"It is always safe to learn, even from our enemies; seldom safe to venture to instruct, even our friends."
42
"As it turns out, social scientists have established only one fact about single women's mental health: employment improves it."
42
"I've never created a riot before. I did cause a brawl at the last formal. A large number of young women there actually arrived with the expectation of seducing me into matrimony, and a couple of their mothers came to blows. It was hilari-I mean, dreadful. Simply dreadful."
42
"God is never in a hurry, but he is always on time."
42
"What we encounter in works of art and philosophy are objective versions of our own pains and struggles, evoked and defined in sound, language or image. Artists and philosophers not only show us what we have felt, they present our experiences more poignantly and intelligently than we have been able; they give shape to aspects of our lives that we recognise as our own, yet could never have understood so clearly on our own. They explain our condition to us, and thereby help us to be less lonely with, and confused by it."
42
"But secluding my experience during that early period was both cowardly and wise. Some things are too fragile, too vulnerable to bring into the public eye. Tender things with tiny roots tend to wither in the glare of public scrutiny. By holding my awakening within, I contained the energy of it, and it fed me the way blood feeds muscle. It fed me a certain propelling energy, and I kept moving forward."
42
"If we did not flatter ourselves, the flattery of others could never harm us."
42
"The past is still visible. The buildings haven't changed, the layout of the streets hasn't changed. So memory is very available to me as I walk around."
42
"Most people sell their souls, and live with a good conscience on the proceeds."
42
"The loneliness you get by the sea is personal and alive. It doesn't subdue you and make you feel abject. It's stimulating loneliness."
42
"The topics we learn from our four core subjects during our childhood and adolescent stage of our lives help us to understand the norms of common knowledge and take pride of our citizenship."
42
"He toasted his bacon on a fork and caught the drops of fat on his bread; then he put the rasher on his thick slice of bread, and cut off chunks with a clasp-knife, poured his tea into his saucer, and was happy."
42
"It was like there was a pile of kindling that was in the back of my imagination just waiting there. Once I lit it, it just flared up and I kept getting ideas and ideas."
42
"When the civil rights battle was won, all the Jews and hippies and artists were middle class white people and all the blacks were still poor. Materially, not much changed."
42
"I would carry some of it if I could, Bean said silently. Like I did today, you can turn it over to me and I'll do it, if I can. You don't have to do this alone.Only even as he thought this, Bean knew it wasn't true. If it could be done, Ender was the one who would have to do it. All those months when Bean refused to see Ender, hid from him, it was because he couldn't bear to face the fact that Ender was what Bean only wished to be - the kind of person on whom you could put all your hopes, who could carry all your fears, and he would not let you down, would not betray you.I want to be the kind of boy you are, thought Bean. But I don't want to go through what you've been through to get there."
42
"One word absent from a sentence, or misinterpreted incorrectly, can change the entire meaning of a sentence. One word can change the meaning of everything. Before you believe anything about God or anybody, ask yourself how well do you trust the transmitter, translator or interpreter. And if you have never met them, then how do you know if the knowledge you acquired is even right? One hundred and twenty-five years following every major event in history, all remaining witnesses will have died. How well do you trust the man who has stored his version of a story? And how can you put that much faith into someone you don't know?"
42
"Here's a funny question:What is your favorite word?Think about it-maybe it's a word that makes you absolutely happy, or a word that sounds gloriously beautiful, or a word that evokes awe and wonder. Maybe you are reminded of a great time when you hear it, or maybe it represents your life's dream.So, what is it? What is your favorite word of all words?Thought about it yet?Good.."
42
"In these troubled, uncertain times, we don't need more command and control; we need better means to engage everyone's intelligence in solving challenges and crises as they arise."
42
"A large fraction of the most interesting scientists have read a lot of SF at one time or another, either early enough that it may have played a part in their becoming scientists or at some later date just because they liked the ideas."
42
"I might add that you change as a person as you grow older, so you change as a writer, too."
42
bottom of page