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Quotes by Writer
"The nod of a head is such a small thing, it can mean so little, yet it is the gesture of assent that allows, that makes to be. The nod is the gesture of power, the yes. The numen. the presence of the sacred, is called by its name."
47
"She recognized in Kelsey the nationalism of liberal Americans who copiously criticized America but did not like you to do so; they expected you to be silent and grateful, and always reminded you of how much better than wherever you had come from America was."
47
"There was no last animal I treated. When young farm lads started to help me over the gate into a field or a pigpen, to make sure the old fellow wouldn't fall, I started to consider retiring."
47
"Accepting oneself, in all your glory and in all your shortcomings, is a major point in becoming your best possible self."
47
"Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want."
47
"We owe to the Middle Ages the two worst inventions of humanity - romantic love and gunpowder."
47
"It is not in numbers, but in unity, that our great strength lies."
47
"I maintain an ongoing survey of Internet Publishing and self publishing, so that it is now possible for any writer with a book to get it published at nominal cost or free, and to have it on sale at booksellers like Amazon.com."
47
"To give without any reward, or any notice, has a special quality of its own."
47
"Any relations in a social order will endure, if there is infused into them some of that spirit of human sympathy which qualifies life for immortality."
47
"A censor is an expert in cutting remarks. A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to."
Man,
47
"De pronto no puedo decírtelo que yo te debo decir, hombre, perdóname; sabrás que aunque no escuches mis palabras no me eché a llorar ni a dormir y que contigo estoy sin verte desde hace tiempo y hasta el fin. I can't just suddenly tell you what I should be telling you, friend, forgive me; you know that although you don't hear my words, I wasn't asleep or in tears, that I am with you without seeing you for a good long time and until the end."
47
"Why don't you get a haircut? You look like a chrysanthemum."
47
"While we stop to think, we often miss our opportunity."
47
"She had come to understand that American parenting was a juggling of anxieties, and that it came with having too much food: a sated belly gave Americans time to worry that their child might have a rare disease that they had just read about, made them think they had the right to protect their child from disappointment and want and failure. A sated belly gave Americans the luxury of praising themselves for being good parents, as if caring for one's child was the exception rather than the rule."
47
"If you can find collaborators whose strengths compliment your own, the result can be more than the sum of its authors."
47
"Did she say anything before she died?" he asked."Yes," the surgeon said. "She said, 'Forgive him'""Forgive him?" my father asked."I think she was referring to the drunk driver who killed her."Wow.My grandmother's last act on earth was a call for forgiveness, love and tolerance.She wanted us to forgive Gerald, the dumb-ass Spokane Indian alcoholic who ran her over and killed her.I think My Dad wanted to go find Gerald and beat him to death.I think my mother would have helped him.I think I would have helped him, too.But my grandmother wanted us to forgive her murderer.Even dead, she was a better person than us."
47
"Working within the limitations of the shared world generally made the writing easier, because I didn't have to invent any of the characters or background, which is usually the hardest part."
47
"But isn't it true that an author can write only about himself?"
47
"But other vampire stories? Well, no, I really haven't read too many, and I can't say I'm crazy about romantic vampires anyway - to me the vampire is simply an evil monster."
47
"God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say "thank you?""
47
"Be able to live alone, even if you don't want to and think you will never find it necessary."
47
"He had a better mind and a more rigorous temperament than me; he thought logically, and then acted on the conclusion of logical thought. Whereas most of us, I suspect, do the opposite: we make an instinctive decision, then build up an infrastructure of reasoning to justify it. And call the result common sense."
47
"The portrait of my parents is a complicated one, but lovingly drawn."
47
"It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you."
47
"I like new ballets because they're totally new. As you get older, new experiences are harder and harder to come by, so it's pretty great to have a new experience."
47
"The reward of the general is not a bigger tent but command."
47
"The function of Theology? The recitation of the incomprehensible by the unspeakable to pick the pockets of the unthinking."
47
"Every idea is an incitement... Eloquence may set fire to reason."
47
"Lyra learns to her great cost that fantasy isn't enough. She has been lying all her life, telling stories to people, making up fantasies, and suddenly she comes to a point where that's not enough. All she can do is tell the truth. She tells the truth about her childhood, about the experiences she had in Oxford, and that is what saves her. True experience, not fantasy - reality, not lies - is what saves us in the end."
47
"In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others."
47
"There's no way for me to know, but my best guess, as it must be for everyone, is that other people are pretty much like me."
47
"Man is a creature who walks in two worlds and traces upon the walls of his cave the wonders and the nightmare experiences of his spiritual pilgrimage."
47
"Recognition of function always precedes recognition of being."
47
"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world."
47
"Cookery means, English thoroughness, French art, and Arabian hospitality; it means the knowledge of all fruits and herbs and balms and spices; it means carefulness, inventiveness, and watchfulness."
47
"He drew from under the table a sheet of strangely scented yellow-Chinese paper, the brushes, and slab of India ink. In cleanest, severest outline he had traced the Great Wheel with its six spokes, whose centre is the conjoined Hog, Snake, and Dove (Ignorance, Anger, and Lust), and whose compartments are all the heavens and hells, and all the chances of human life."
47
"I mean, I wasn't stupid. I knew we'd make money and sell a lot of Dune books."
47
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