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Quotes by Writer
"These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves."
41
"Constitutions become the ultimate tyranny," Paul said. "They're organized power on such a scale as to be overwhelming. The constitution is social power mobilized and it has no conscience. It can crush the highest and the lowest, removing all dignity and individuality. It has an unstable balance point and no limitations."
41
"Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content."
41
"I'm not absolutely certain of my facts, but I rather fancy it's Shakespeare-or, if not, it's some equally brainy lad-who says that it's always just when a chappie is feeling particularly top-hole, and more than usually braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with a bit of lead piping."
41
"The past week, Mother had denied her a pass to the market for some minor, forgettable reason, and she'd taken it hard. Her market excursions were the acme of her days, and trying to commiserate, I'd said, 'I'm sorry, Handful, I know how you must feel. It seemed to me I did know what it felt to have one's liberty curtailed, but she blazed up at me. 'So we just the same, me and you? That's why you the one to shit in the pot and I'm the one to empty it?"
41
"Hand, nobody told me about the weight. Why didn't our parents tell us about the weight?-What weight?-The fucking weight, Hand. How does the woman Ingres live? The one from Marrakesh? If we're vessels, and we are, then we, you and I, are overfull, and that means she's at the bottom of a deep cold lake. How can she stand the hissing of all that water?-We are not vessels; we are missiles.-We're static and we're empty. We are overfull and leaden.-We are airtight and we are missiles and all-powerful."
41
"Government even in its best state is but a necessary evil in its worst state an intolerable one."
41
"Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon."
41
"When love is at its best, one loves so much that he cannot forget."
41
"To kill a human being is, after all, the least injury you can do him."
41
"To be successful be ahead of your time, but only a little."
41
"I never give my real self. I have a hundred sides, and I turn first one way and then the other. I am playing a deep game. I have a number of strong cards up my sleeve. I have never been myself, excepting to two friends."
41
"Religion kept some of my relatives alive, because it was all they had. If they hadn't had some hope of heaven, some companionship in Jesus, they probably would have committed suicide, their lives were so hellish."
41
"Lately, when I didn't have room to bitch, I didn't. Maturity, at last."
41
"Confidence is a life ingredient that is essential to success and wholeness. It is perhaps the single most important trait that enables seemingly average people to do and become all that they can. And the good news is ' it can be learned. No one has to suffer a lifetime of low confidence."
41
"Time flows in strange ways on Sundays, and sights become mysteriously distorted."
41
"It is always safe to assume that people are more subtle and less sensitive than they seem."
41
"Usually speaking the worst-bred person in company is a young traveller just returned from abroad."
41
"When two partners always agree, one of them is not necessary.' If there is some point you haven't thought about, be thankful if it is brought to your attention."
41
"In reality the workings of your governing system are opaque and covert, while hiding in the chattering spotlight of an ostensible transparency, even though the ultimate objective is clear."
41
"The sun shineth upon the dunghill, and is not corrupted."
41
"Take the word for it of a man who has made his way inch by inch, and does not believe that we'll wake up to find our work done because we've lain all night a-dreaming of it; anything worth doing is devilish hard to do!"
41
"Our nights are different. She falls asleep like someone yielding to the gentle tug of a warm tide, and floats with confidence till morning. I fall asleep more grudgingly, thrashing at the waves, either reluctant to let a good day depart or still bitching about a bad one. Different currents run through our spells of unconsciousness."
41
"Finally, I began to write about becoming an older woman and the trepidation it stirred. The small, telling 'betrayals' of my body. The stalled, eerie stillness in my writing, accompanied by an ache for some unlived destiny. I wrote about the raw, unsettled feelings coursing through me, the need to divest and relocate, the urge to radically simplify and distill life into a new, unknown meaning."
41
"Not setting the 'proper and accepted' religious example for them conjured up images of the bad mother, the worst mother. Yet wouldn't the example of a mother being true to her journey, taking a stand against patriarchy, and questing for spiritual meaning and wholeness, even when it meant exiting circles of orthodoxy, be a worthwhile example?"
41
"The deep, personal material of the latter half of your life is your children. You can write about your parents when they're gone, but your children are still going to be here, and you're going to want them to come and visit you in the nursing home."
41
"And I began to suspect that the ultimate sacrifice isn't death after all, the ultimate sacrifice is willingly bearing the fullest penalty for your own actions."
41
"How was your day? If your answer was "fine," then I don't think you were leading."
41
"Everyone has a right to a university degree in America, even if it's in Hamburger Technology."
41
"Sometimes when you love someone so deeply, that is the thing that hurts the most."
41
"You can not die of grief, though it feels as if you can. A heart does not actually break, though sometimes your chest aches as if it is breaking. Grief dims with time. It is the way of things. There comes a day when you smile again, and you feel like a traitor. How dare I feel happy. How dare I be glad in a world where my father is no more. And then you cry fresh tears, because you do not miss him as much as you once did, and giving up your grief is another kind of death."
41
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