Author Quotes

Everyone tends to remember the past with greater fervor as the present gains greater importance.

Not for no cold did freeze,
Nor any cloud beguile
Th'eternal flowering spring

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.

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

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

Naive eyes see friends everywhere
Sullen eyes see enemies everywhere
Terrified eyes see traps everywhere
Greedy eyes see gold everywhere
Sorrowful eyes see desolation everywhere
Smiling eyes see brightness everywhere
Two eyes often struggle against each other
One is too naive
The other too sullen
Therefore the eyes behold total confusion
Enemies look like friends
And friends look like enemies.

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

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.

What to know about pain is how little we do to deserve it, how simple it is to give, how hard to lose.

Frederick Busch

He was an admirer of the bullfight, and had once drawn my attention to the fact that only cricket and bullfighting had inspired any appreciable literature.

The treasures of Cathay were never found.
In this America, this wilderness
Where the axe echoes with a lonely sound,
The generations labor to possess
And grave by grave we civilize the ground.

Every person and every team will be tested on their journey. It is part of the curriculum of life. It's just like riding a bicycle. In the beginning you're going to fall off and get knocked down but the important thing is to get back on, stay strong, and after a while once you master it you'll ride with the confidence of a champion.

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

Secreted and hidden in the heart of the world and in the heart of the human is the light which can illuminate all life, the future and the past. Shall we not search for it?

Work - other people's work - is an intolerable idea to a cat. Can you picture cats herding sheep or agreeing to pull a cart? They will not inconvenience themselves to the slightest degree.

Louis J. Camuti

Sometimes I come here just to be a lost mariner
but I am never lost:
there are the snowflakes frozen to the porthole of a jewelry store,
here is the treasure chest open to a single pearl
laid on a velvet slab,
there is the plashing of faces in the aisles
and the row of lockers stuffed with the coats and hats of the drowned
and it is night, and the moon rows over
the gentle waters of the parking lot.

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

Technology itself has changed. Not for us the giant steam snorting wonders of the past: the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the nuclear power plant. Eighties tech sticks to the skin, responds to the touch: the personal computer, the Sony Walkman, the portable telephone, the soft contact lens.

Songs, stories are beyond value; they are the memory and wisdom of a people, the particular individual rivers of the sea of life which constitutes us all.

Discipline is rarely enjoyable, but almost always profitable.

Hener was the hero-king,
Heaven-born, dear to us,
Showing his shield
A shelter for peace.

There were times when I thought I got a bit more punishment than was coming to me, but I don't regret a minute of it now. Each of us must be tempered in some fire. Nobody had more to do with choosing the fire that tempered me than myself, and instead of finding fault with the fire I give thanks that I had the metal to take the temper and hold it.

Jack Black (author)

If the curriculum we use to teach our children does not connect in positive ways to the culture young people bring to school, it is doomed to failure.

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

Our minds have a tendency to wander. To duck and feint and keep us at a slight remove from the moment at hand.