Better Quotes (page 208)
There is nothing you can do except try to write it the way that it was. So you must write each day better than you possibly can and use the sorrow that you have now to make you know how the early sorrow came. And you must always remember the things you believed because if you know them they will be there in the writing and you won’t betray them. The writing is the only progress you make.
Ernest Hemingway
There was, of course, nowhere better in the world to be than New York City. This fact was the foundation of her family's satisfaction with itself, the platform from which all else could be ridiculed, the collateral of adult sophistication that bought them the right to behave like children.
Jonathan Franzen
If a king should fall under such contempt or envy that he could not keep his subjects in their duty but by oppression and ill usage, and by rendering them poor and miserable, it were certainly better for him to quit his kingdom than to retain it by such methods as make him, while he keeps the name of authority, lose the majesty due to it.
Thomas More
Hang in there, Frank!' Freud called - to the entire lobby. 'Don't let anyone tell you you're queer! You're a prince, Frank!' Freud cried. 'You're better than Rudolf!' Freud yelled to Frank. 'You're more majestic than all the Hapsburgs, Frank!' Freud encouraged him. Frank couldn't speak, he was crying so hard.
John Irving
Perhaps I love you. Perhaps I love you very much. But probably just for this reason it would be better if we remain as we are. I think a man and a woman love each other all the more when they don't live together and when they know about each other only that they exist, and when they are grateful to each other for the fact that they exist and that they know they exist. And that alone is enough for their happiness.
Milan Kundera
Until you're about the age of twenty you read everything, and you like it simply because you are reading it. then between twenty and thirty you pick up what you want, and you read the best, you read all the great works. after that you sit and wait for them to be written. But you know the least know, the least famous writers, they are the better ones.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it
Anne Lamott