Author Quotes

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

Some day your head won't find my lap so easily. Trust is a habit you'll soon break.

Suddenly I become filled with a consuming impatience to be gone.

Erich Maria Remarque

Wednesday (as Pocahontas): You have taken the land which is rightfully ours. Years from now, my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations; your people will wear cardigans and drink highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the roadside; you will play golf and enjoy hot hors d'oeuvres. My people will have pain and degradation; your people will have stick-shifts. The gods of my tribe have spoken. They have said, "Do not trust the Pilgrims, especially Sarah Miller."
Becky (as Sarah Miller): Gary, she's changing the words!
Wednesday (as Pocahontas): And for all these reasons, I have decided to scalp you and burn your village to the ground.

When a clandestine couple kisses, it is much more likely that sex will immediately follow. This is because there is much more risk. Once you have kissed secretly, it is very difficult not to have sex. It would be impolite not to have sex. You have to show that you are serious about each other.

He put the blinker on, pulled out onto the avenue. "Well, that was nice," she said, sitting back. They had fun together these days, they really did. It was as if marriage had been a long, complicatd meal, and now there was this lovely dessert.

Elizabeth Strout

Conversation succeeds conversation, Until there's nothing left to talk about Except truth, the perennial monologue, And no talker to dispute it but itself.

Glorious is the Voice of Man, and sweet is the music of the harp.

Richard Llewellyn

Satan is neither omnipotent nor free to do everything he pleases. Prince of the world he may be, but the Prince of Peace has come and dealt him a death blow.

Harold Lindsell

Whoever interrupts the conversation of others to make a display of his own fund of knowledge, makes notorious his own stock of ignorance.

It is sweet to see how soon a spring becomes a rill, and a rill runs on into a rivulet, and a rivulet swells into a brook; and before one has time to say 'what are you at?' - before the first tree it ever spoke to is a dummy, or the first hill it ever ran down has turned blue, here we all have airs and graces, demands and assertions of a full grown river.

R. D. Blackmore

It's my red hair that interferes with my good sense. All that color so close to my brain, it plum disorients me most days.

Life is nothing without a little chaos to make it interesting.

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

The poet is always concerned with achieving a balance between the inner and the outer world; it is his business to hold in a single thought reality and justice.

Michael Roberts

Helplessness in the face of a child's suffering is the curse of parenthood.

Who, in the midst of passion, is vigilant against illness? Who listens to the reports of recently decimated populations in Spain, India, Bora Bora, when new lips, tongues and poems fill the world?

As a young woman, I dreamed of changing the world. In my twenties, I went to Africa to try and save the continent, only to learn that Africans neither wanted nor needed saving. Indeed, when I was there, I saw some of the worst that good intentions, traditional charity, and aid can produce...

Jacqueline Novogratz

The idea is to perceive your invention as a reality that can be understood as a dream. The idea is to turn flesh and blood into literary characters and literary characters into flesh and blood.

I came to the place of my birth and cried: "The friends of my youth, where are they?"--and an echo answered, "Where are they?

Humans cannot fly, but they can get the flying feeling. All they need to do is go out at night into a wild storm where the thunder roars like applause and the lightning throws itself in daggers of light at your bare feet and you suddenly find you are not afraid.

Men make the mistake of thinking that because women can't see the sense in violence, they must be passive creatures. It's just not true. In one important way, at least, men are the passive sex. Given a choice, they will always opt for the status quo. They hate change of any kind, and they fight against it constantly. On the other hand, what women want is stability, which when you stop to think about it is a very different animal.

Eric Van Lustbader

I believe there's a right way to live and to die. The people who can do that are interesting to me.

There will be three, kin of your kin, who hold the power of the stars in their paws.

As wonderful as dogs can be, they are famous for missing the point.

I love vast libraries; yet there is a doubt, If one be better with them or without,-- Unless he use them wisely, and, indeed, Knows the high art of what and how to read.

John Godfrey Saxe