Top 1200 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Novelists - Page 20

A happy childhood... is the worst possible preparation for life.

Live, and be happy, and make others so.

There is no truth. There is only perception.

Once you get into the world of dystopia, it's hard to avoid plagiarism, because other people have had such powerful visions.

Climate change joined immigration, job creation, food safety, pilot training, veterans' care, campaign finance, transportation security, labor law, mine safety, wildfire management, and scores of executive and judicial appointments on the list of matters that the world's greatest deliberative body is incapable of addressing.

Of course, everyone in the New World is an immigrant or a descendant of immigrants, and immigrants have built America and continue to do so. Legal or illegal, they are almost universally good people who work to better their lot and that of their children.

Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough - that we should try again.

Too often, stories about Afghanistan center around the various wars, the opium trade, the war on terrorism. Precious little is said about the Afghan people themselves - their culture, their traditions, how they lived in their country and how they manage abroad as exiles.

Remember: Y'all is singular. All y'all is plural. All y'all's is plural possessive.

It is so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light in the spring, to have loved, to have thought, to have done.

The haunting of history is ever present in Barcelona. I see cities as organisms, as living creatures. To me, Madrid is a man and Barcelona is a woman. And it's a woman who's extremely vain.

I am, as I am; whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge.

I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship.

If the West Point class of 1915 is called 'the class the stars fell on' for the number of World War II generals it produced, my junior-high class of 1950 is the class a ton of bricks fell on from Hollywood's gut-wrenching portrayals of mother-love in '40s-era movies.

Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.

Digital time does not flow; it flicks. Like any binary, discrete decision, it is either here or there. In contrast to our experience of the passing of time, digital time is always in the now, or in no time. It is still. Poised.

Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.

Never can the innate power of a work be hidden or locked away. A work of art can be forgotten by time; it can be forbidden and rejected but the elemental will always prevail over the ephemeral.

Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.

If I have open time, and I'm in Manhattan, I'll just walk to wherever I'm going, even if I could get there faster on the subway. I just love walking the streets of New York.

Maybe it's a little depressing to think that my vision of a perfect world is actually so messed up, but I think it means that I don't really understand what 'perfect' is.

I know exactly what it's like to stand on top of a tall building or in a high place and look down and go, 'Ohhhh my God.' I try to get into that place every time I write a scene like that. And definitely when I write the action scenes, I get overheated and my heart goes really fast. I get very involved.

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up Like a raisin in the sun? Or does it explode?

It's surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.

Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.

We fall in love more deeply when we're unhappy.

Honest people don't hide their deeds.

The whole idea of a stereotype is to simplify. Instead of going through the problem of all this great diversity - that it's this or maybe that - you have just one large statement; it is this.

Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.

The original fairy tale was about the youngest sister going into a room in the castle and finding all the bodies of the wives that came before her - she is confronted with truth, thinking about how often we think we know people and we really don't.

It's time to move on to the next step in the psychedelic revolution. We've reached a certain point, but we're not moving any more.

I see the poem or the novel ending with an open door.

Memory runs by its own itinerary, departing and arriving at stations of the past on its own schedule.

I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am.

Nothing is a matter of life and death except life and death.

The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.

Maybe we are all prospective migrants. The lines of national borders on maps are artificial constructs, as unnatural to us as they are to birds flying overhead. Our first impulse is to ignore them.

Art is man's constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.

Charlottesville is a quiet town with friendly people, good schools, lots of churches, parks, and a bustling, growing community that more or less revolves around one of the country's great public universities. Volunteerism is rampant, and dozens of nonprofits hustle about, solving problems and helping those in need.

What do you say when the feelings don't fit into words?

'The Museum of Innocence' is not about politics; it's a love story, but I think it's political in the sense that it wants to capture how a man suppresses a woman.

How can you look at the Texas legislature and still believe in intelligent design?

In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd.

Helicopters don't fly, they vibrate so badly the ground rejects them.

In everyone there sleeps. A sense of life lived according to love. To some it means the difference they could make. By loving others, but across most it sweeps. As all they might have done had they been loved. That nothing cures.

We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.

When you are enthusiastic about what you do, you feel this positive energy. It's very simple.

The trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.

There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

The point about hope is that it is something that occurs in very dark moments. It is like a flame in the darkness; it isn't like a confidence and a promise.

A writer uses a pen instead of a scalpel or blow torch.

Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.

In journalism just one fact that is false prejudices the entire work. In contrast, in fiction one single fact that is true gives legitimacy to the entire work. That's the only difference, and it lies in the commitment of the writer. A novelist can do anything he wants so long as he makes people believe in it.

I can't bear the silent ringing in my skull.

He who rides the sea of the Nile must have sails woven of patience.

The dream he needed most was the dream that frightened him more.

We are as liable to be corrupted by books, as by companions.

I have dreamed in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind.

Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.

When in Rome, do as you done in Milledgeville.