Author Quotes

Actions are sometimes performed in a masterly and most cunning way, while the direction of the actions is deranged and dependent on various morbid impressions - it's like a dream.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

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

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

What we pay for with our lives never costs too much.

Antonio Porchia

So do the dark in soul expire, Or live like scorpion girt by fire; So writhes the mind remorse hath riven, Unfit for earth, undoom'd for heaven, Darkness above, despair beneath, Around it flame, within it death.

Expecting to be able to get rid of the competitive drive, first of all, flies in the face of human nature — and little girls certainly have this drive, as much as little boys do, or at least the little girls I have observed in my immediate family have it.

Nothing now remains for us seven but to go back to Stable Hill, proclaim the truth, and take the adventure that Aslan sends us.

Reality even when it is sad is better than illusions. Illusions are at the mercy of any winds that blow. Real happiness must come from within, from a fixed purpose and faith in one's fellow men.

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

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

The public always prefers to be reassured. There are those whose job this is. There are only too many.

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

Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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

I love Germany so dearly that I hope there will always be two of them.

François Mauriac

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.

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

He plants trees to benefit another generation.

Caecilius Statius

In November, 1964 when I was a patient at the Mayo Clinic I though seriously about killing myself.

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

Adrian Mitchell

Nothing is hidden from the eyes of the observing world.

Alexander Pushkin

You can pretend to be serious but you can't pretend to be witty.

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

I don't know what your damage is, but in case you've failed to notice, we're in a bit of trouble here. Can you focus on something other than trying to get into my pants?" His lips curled. " I can multitask.