Author Quotes

The answer to this riddle has a hole in the middle, And some have been known to fall in it. In tennis it's nothing, but it can be received, And sometimes a person may win it. Though not seen or heard it may be perceived, Like princes or bees it's in clover. The answer to this riddle has a hole in the middle, And without it one cannot start over.

The flowers are ravined
by bees, the fruit blossoms

are thrown to the ground, the wind
the rain forces everything.

Charles Olson
Charles Olson
A smart woman would have shut up. Did I? Hell no. Intelligence is overrated anyway.

The clouds roll on. Silent as sleepwalkers the clouds keep coming from infinity bank behind bank and line after line, and change colors on the earth.

Love is this thing that we pursue today, tonight, for ever,
We care not whither, know not who shall be at length the giver:
For Love, — our life and all our years are cast upon the waves;
Our heart is as the hand that steers; — but who is He that saves?

Arthur O'Shaughnessy
Arthur O'Shaughnessy
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?

Lauren Groff
Lauren Groff
I got nothing. Even the spies I'm spying on who are spying on other spies got nothing.

It's weird when you hear teachers call each other by their first names. It's like they're friends or something.

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

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

Count Erskyll said nothing for a moment. He was opposed to the use of force. Force, he believed, was the last resort of incompetence; he had said so frequently enough since this operation had begun. Of course, he was absolutely right, though not in the way he meant. Only the incompetent wait until the last extremity to use force, and by then, it is usually too late to use anything, even prayer.

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.

A true warrior does not fight because he wishes to but because he has to. A man who yearns for war, a man who enjoys his killing, he is a brute and a monster. No matter how much glory he wins on the battlefield, that cannot erase the fact that he is no better than a rabid wolf who will turn on his friends and family as soon as his foes.

Christopher Paolini
Christopher Paolini
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.

They say that lightning never strikes in the same place twice, but the same is not true for courage. As it turns out, when courage strikes, it almost always begets more courage.

Kathi Appelt
Kathi Appelt
The best may slip, and the most cautious fall; He's more than mortal that ne'er err'd at all.

Reverend Lawson: You men are homosexual!
Bob (correcting The Reverend): Homosexuals.

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

Over the mountains,
And over the waves,
Over the fountains,
And under the graves;
Over the floods that are deepest,
Which do Neptune obey;
Over the rocks that are steepest,
Love will find out the way.

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...

Ah! my heart is weary waiting,
Waiting for the May:
Waiting for the pleasant rambles
Where the fragrant hawthorn brambles,
Where the woodbine alternating,
Scent the dewy way;
Ah! my heart is weary, waiting,
Waiting for the May.

That he loved her was his life's greatest grace—that she loved him was a burden and mystery beyond compare.

But see, in our open clearings, how golden the melons lie; Enrich them with sweets and spices, and give us the pumpkin-pie!

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

There are fools who seek to understand the secrets of nature.

Petrarch
Petrarch