Author Quotes

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

True human life does not take place in time but always "is" at the "timeless" point where the past becomes the future - a point which we incorrectly label the present. This is a timeless point, and people are free only at this point.

"A child!" said Edith, looking at her. "When was I a child? What childhood did you ever leave to me? I was a woman - artful, designing, mercenary, laying snares for men - before I knew myself, or you, or even understood the base and wretched aim of every new display I learnt. You gave birth to a woman. Look upon her. She is in her pride tonight."

Charles Dickens

I feel that the longest and worst punishment should be reserved for those who slandered God by inventing Hell.

Words want to find chimes with each other, things want to connect.

To write weekly, to write daily, to write shortly, to write for busy people catching trains in the morning or for tired people coming home in the evening, is a heartbreaking task for men who know good writing from bad. They do it, but instinctively draw out of harm's way anything precious that might be damaged by contact with the public, or anything sharp that might irritate its skin.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is stoned to death.

Faith is not trying to believe something regardless of the evidence; faith is daring to do something regardless of the consequences.

There are times when Science does not satisfy.

Rudyard Kipling

A persuadable temper might sometimes be as much in favour of happiness as a very resolute character.

She moves the way clocks move. And on her face, as on a clock dial which someone shines a light onto at night, a strange, briefly shown hour stands: a terrifying hour, in which someone dies.

Rainer Maria Rilke

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

Beautiful... as the fortuitous encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table.

Comte de Lautréamont

My desk, most loyal friend
thank you. You've been with me on
every road I've taken.
My scar and my protection.

Marina Tsvetaeva

The story of civilization is, in a sense, the story of engineering-that long and arduous struggle to make the forces of nature work for man's good.

L. Sprague de Camp

Summary riposte
To the dreary wail
There's no knowing what
Love is all about.
Poets know a lot.

To feel admiration for a man all through one's married life would, I think, be excessively tedious.

Agatha Christie

He plants trees to benefit another generation.

Caecilius Statius

Everyone chases after happiness, not noticing that happiness is at their heels.

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

Try not to turn your life into a race, least of all an obstacle race.

José Bergamín

The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

Misery's fine - as long as you know you can get out of it when you want to.

Art is a misleading, deceptive superstition; in it we think that we have before us the last, innermost essence of humanity itself; and yet, it merely foists upon us a beautiful product of man, in which are set down all of the egotistical, self-satisfying thoughts and emotions which remain sterile and ineffective in the world of action. And I, imbecile, esteem this product more highly than the human being himself, whom God has created.

Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder

Sometimes it's easier not to think about things you can't do anything about.