20th-century Author Quotes

Some tears have to be cried no matter what the hour- until they are, they simply rave and burn inside.

Sometimes I think that Darwin made a mistake and that in fact man is descended from the pig, because eight out of every ten members of the human race are swine, and as crooked as a hog's tail.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Brilliantly lit from stem to stern, she looked like a sagging birthday cake.

You take a number of small steps which you believe are right, thinking maybe tomorrow somebody will treat this as a dangerous provocation. And then you wait. If there is no reaction, you take another step: courage is only an accumulation of small steps.

György Konrád

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863.

William Faulkner

Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people.

Adrian Mitchell

If you're a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he's good, the older he gets, the better he writes.

Mickey Spillane

In the house, and on the street, how many, many feet you meet.

The war came to me in my dreams and showed me its sole purpose: to go on, only to go on.

We are all of us invented. We are all of us cobbled together from cartilage and dust. Few of us know with certainty the name of our maker. But I do... Bram Stoker.

Sacrifice is at the heart of repentance. Without deeds, your apology is worthless.

Bryan Davis (author)

How do you show up for your relationships? Are you healthy or crippled? Are you prepared or needy? Are you ready to give or too tired to talk?

If, as you teach, the universe has no beginning and no end, why should we?

If you train yourself to listen to your intuition and to follow its bidding, you will greatly increase your percentage of success in life.

There's no app for a bourbon buzz on a warm day in a cool, dark bar. The world will always want a drink.

We can't continue to be like this. Who am I? Your fiancée or your concubine?

Evil is powerful, but good is more powerful. In fact, evil is so powerful that only good has the power to overcome evil. Darkness can be driven away only by light.

The border between music and noise is always culturally defined—which implies that, even within a single society, this border does not always pass through the same place; in short, there is rarely a consensus.... By all accounts there is no single and intercultural universal concept defining what music might be

Jean-Jacques Nattiez

Perpetrators who receive the gift of forgiveness are given a chance to change

Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela

Fear - jealousy - money - revenge - and protecting someone you love.

Frederick Knott

What I'm trying to get at is, as bad as everything seems, I think, at its heart, life is good. It doesn't throw anything at us that it knows we can't handle—and, even if it takes its time, it turns everything right side up again.

Alexandra Bracken

One of the most important results you can bring into the world is the you that you really want to be.

The candid camera is the greatest liar in the photographic family.... It is anarchic, naïve, and superficial.

Lincoln Kirstein

Ask him why there are hypocrites in the world.' 'Because it is hard to bear the happiness of others.' 'When are we happy?' 'When we desire nothing and realize that possession is only momentary, and so are forever playing.' 'What is regret?' 'To realize that one has spent one's life worrying about the future.' 'What is sorrow?' 'To long for the past.' 'What is the highest pleasure?' 'To hear a good story.

Vikram Chandra (novelist)

Enlightenment is any experience of expanding our consciousness beyond its present limits.