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Quotes by Writer
"Proverbs may not improperly be called the philosophy of the common people."
37
"The important information you need at the beginning of an issue. Like way they did the old Frank Miller Daredevil issues in the first five pages he always had to state his origins and how he got his powers."
37
"I do not believe we can stop them, Samori, because they must ultimately stop themselves. And still I urge you to struggle. Struggle for the memory of your ancestors. Struggle for wisdom. Struggle for the warmth of The Mecca. Struggle for your grandmother and grandfather, for your name. But do not struggle for the Dreamers. Hope for them. Pray for them, if you are so moved. But do not pin your struggle on their conversion. The Dreamers will have to learn to struggle themselves, to understand that the field for their Dream, the stage where they have painted themselves white, is the deathbed of us all. The Dream is the same habit that endangers this planet, the same habit that sees our bodies stowed away in prisons and ghettos."
37
"True revolutionaries are like God - they create the world in their own image. Our awesome responsibility to ourselves, to our children, and to the future is to create ourselves in the image of goodness, because the future depends on the nobility of our imaginings."
37
"I don't judge other people's work and I don't see enough of it either."
37
"A homely face and no figure have aided many women heavenward."
37
"There's always moral instruction whether the writer inserts it deliberately or not. The least effective moral instruction in fiction is that which is consciously inserted. Partly because it won't reflect the storyteller's true beliefs, it will only reflect what he BELIEVES he believes, or what he thinks he should believe or what he's been persuaded of. But when you write without deliberately expressing moral teachings, the morals that show up are the ones you actually live by. The beliefs that you don't even think to question, that you don't even notice-- those will show up. And that tells much more truth about what you believe than your deliberate moral machinations."
37
"We have to learn not to feel guilty about letting our imagination browse around, and you know, in writing fiction particularly. But I think, in any kind of writing, we have to learn to allow ourselves to approach it in a contemplative way."
37
"In a battle between - two ideas, the best one doesn't necessarily win. No, the idea that wins is the one with the most fearless heretic behind it."
37
"I was in love with the whole world and all that lived in its rainy arms."
37
"I've often said that there's no such thing as writer's block; the problem is idea block."
37
"What makes the prospect of death distinctive in the modern age is the background of permanent technological and sociological revolution against which it is set, and which serves to strip us of any possible faith in the permanence of our labours. Our ancestors could believe that their achievements had a chance of bearing up against the flow of events. We know time to be a hurricane. Our buildings, our sense of style, our ideas, all of these will soon enough be anachronisms, and the machines in which we now take inordinate pride will seem no less bathetic than Yorick's skull."
37
"Fanny spoke her feelings. "Here's harmony!" said she; "here's repose! Here's what may leave all painting and all music behind, and what may tranquillise every care, and lift the heart to rapture! When I look out on such a night as this, I feel as if there could be neither wickedness nor sorrow in the world; and there certainly would be less of both if the sublimity of Nature were more attended to, and people were carried more out of themselves by contemplating such a scene."
37
"Social work is an opportunity for huge hearts they remember to do small things."
37
"In my third novel there is an actual black hole that swallows everything you love."
37
"We have done with Hope and Honour, we are lost to Love and Truth,We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung,And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth.God help us, for we knew the worst too young!from "Gentleman Rankers."
37
"How much of what is there do you allow yourself to see?"
37
"Like any normal fifth grader, I preferred my villains to be evil and stay that way, to act like Dracula rather than Frankenstein's monster, who ruined everything by handing that peasant girl a flower. He sort of made up for it by drowning her a few minutes later, but, still, you couldn't look at him the same way again."
37
"Books are, let's face it, better than everything else. If we played Cultural Fantasy Boxing League, and made books go fifteen rounds in the ring against the best that any other art form had to offer, then books would win pretty much every time."
37
"Leftist ideas are a part of the very atmosphere which American youth breathes."
37
"Although there exist many thousand subjects for elegant conversation, there are persons who cannot meet a cripple without talking about feet."
37
"On every formal visit a child ought to be of the party, by way of provision for discourse. In the present case it took up ten minutes to determine whether the boy were most like his father or mother, and in what particular he resembled either, for of course every body differed, and every body was astonished at the opinion of the others."
37
"Democratic forms of government are vulnerable to mass prejudice, the so-called tyranny of the majority."
37
"Because these fools always look up for power. People above you, they never want to share power with you. Why you look to them? They give you nothing. People below you, you give them hope, you give them respect, they give you power, cause they don't think they have any, so they don't mind giving it up."
37
"Conversation of the Day - He: How do you describe yourself in two words?Me: You don't."
37
"Nobody can be more clownish, more clumsy and sententiously in bad taste than Herman Melville."
37
"The most important training, though, is to experience life as a writer, questioning everything, inventing multiple explanations for everything. If you do that, all the other things will come; if you don't, there's no hope for you."
37
"Just tell me why; why the fucking why?" To which the universe would hollowly respond, "My ways cannot be known, oh man." Which is to say, "My ways do not make sense, nor do the ways of those who dwell in me."
37
"Just because you haven't got a home, doesn't make you homeless.andJust because you don't have a heart, doesn't make you heartless.Now, does it?"
37
"Censorship is alive and well in America."
37
"Kindness never use harsh words its touch warmth the needy person."
37
"In Japanese and Italian, the response to ['How are you?'] is 'I'm fine, and you?' In German it's answered with a sigh and a slight pause, followed by 'Not so good."
37
"Intelligent design itself does not have any content."
37
"Everyone has their first date and the object is to hide your flaws. And then you're in a relationship, and it's all about hiding your disappointment. And then, once you're married, it's about hiding your sins."
37
"She's very selfish. Not exactly self-centered, but totally indifferent to everyone and everything. Don't you agree?' 'I don't think that's possible,' said Mr Satterthwaite, slowly. 'I mean everyone's interest must go somewhere."
37
"The world's not getting any stranger.We are!"
37
"To paint comic books as childish and illiterate is lazy. A lot of comic books are very literate - unlike most films."
37
"He'd kill you all right. No sweat. But for the wrong reasons. Amateur's reasons. Of course, you'll be just as dead."
37
"And time for reflection with colleagues is for me a lifesaver; it is not just a nice thing to do if you have the time. It is the only way you can survive."
37
"I consider the two years in Beaufort when I taught high school as perhaps the happiest time of my life. My attraction to melodrama and suffering had not yet overwhelmed me, but signs of it were surfacing. No one had warned me that a teacher could fall so completely in love with his students that graduation seemed like the death of a small civilization."
37
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