Just Quotes (page 570)
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In my lifetime I was to write only one book, this would be the one. Just as the past Lingers in the present, all my writings after night, including those that deal with biblical, Talmudic, or Hasidic themes, profoundly bear it's stamp, and cannot be understood if one has not read this very first of my works. Why did I write it? Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of the madness, the immense, terrifying madness that had erupted in...
Elie Wiesel
I was never like the rest of you, making plans about the great things I'd do, I never saw myself as anything much, just shy, stupid little Beth, who's only use was at home. Why does everyone want to go away? I love being home, but I don't like being left behind. Now I'm the one going ahead, No one can stop God if He wants me, But I'm afraid I shall be homesick for you... even in heaven.
Louisa May Alcott
An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.
Martin Luther King jr.
F. Scott Fitzgerald believed inserting exclamation points was the literary equivalent of an author laughing at his own jokes, but that's not the case in the modern age; now, the exclamation point signifies creative confusion. All it illustrates is that even the writer can't tell if what they're creating is supposed to be meaningful, frivolous, or cruel. It's an attempt to insert humor where none exists, on the off chance that a potential reader will only be pleased if they suspect they're...
Chuck Klosterman
I was just rather fascinated by certain what seemed to me insoluble paradoxes about reflection, about what it was like to look in one direction and see in another. I was struck by the strange capability we have to look through the front window of a motor car and at the same time look through the driving mirror and not to confuse the view that one saw inside one frame with the view that surrounded it in another frame.
Jonathan Miller
I think about the reader. I care about the reader. Not “audience.” Not “readership.” Just the reader. That one person, alone in a room, whose time I’m asking for. I want my books to be worth the reader’s time, and that’s why I don’t publish the books I’ve written that don’t meet this criterion, and why I don’t publish the books I do until they’re ready. The novels I love are novels I live for. They make me feel smarter, more alive, more tender toward the world. I hope, with my own books, to...
Jeffrey Eugenides
A man does not need to be a wizard to know truth from falsehood, not if he has eyes. You need only learn to read a face. Look at the eyes. The mouth. The muscles here, at the corner of the jaw, and here, where the neck joins the shoulders. Some liars blink. Some stare. Some look away. Some lick their lips. Many cover their mouths just before they tell a lie, as if to hide their deceit. Other signs may be more subtle, but they are always there. A false smile and a true may look alike. But they...
George R. R. Martin