The Who Quotes (page 587)
If he had smiled why would he have smiled? To reflect that each one who enters imagines himself to be the first to enter whereas he is always the last term of a preceding series even if the first term of a succeeding one, each imagining himself to be first, last, only and alone whereas he is neither first nor last nor only nor alone in a series originating in and repeated to infinity.
James Joyce
Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.
Octavia Butler
I congratulate you people on being in the raging mainstream of the arts. It is commercial artists like myself who operate in the backwaters. I inhabit still, tepid waters clogged with dollar bills. I never see people. I've forgotten all about them. Guard yourself at all times. A lot of people believe that beauty is some kind of conspiracy -- along with friendly laughter and peace. Cheers --(Signed)Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
ONE MORE CHNCE. Words that my mother heard, more than once. Words that women debate. Whether you CAN forgive and whether you SHOULD trust. I think of all the judgment from society, friends, and family, the overwhelming consensus seeming to be that you should not grant someone who betrayed you a second chance. That you should do everything you can to keep the knife out of your back, and to protect your heart and pride. Cowards give second chances. Fools give second chances. And I am no coward,...
Emily Giffin
It's one of the ironies of mountaineering,' said Young, 'that grown men are happy to spend months preparing for a climb, weeks rehearsing and honing their skills, and at least a day attempting to reach the summit. And then, having achieved their goal, they spend just a few moments enjoying the experience, along with one or two equally certifiable companions who have little in common other than wanting to do it all again, but a little higher.
Jeffrey Archer
As the figure moved before him he followed the muscles as they wove beneath the skin. he was not only fighting with an assailant who was awaiting for that split second in which to strike him dead, but he was stabbing at a masterpiece -- at sculpture that leapt and heaved, at a marvel of inky shadow and silver light. A great wave of nausea surged through him and his knife felt putrid in his hand. His body went on fighting
Mervyn Peake
Because the minister's wife refused to leave the minister, and because my mother required a worshipful companion, she was forced to break up with Fern and secure herself a new mate. As luck would have it, Dr. Finch had recently begun seeing a suicidal eighteen-year-old African-American girl who had taken a leave of absence from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her name was Dorothy.
Augusten Burroughs
Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along--the same person that I am today. I never felt that I spoke childishly. I never felt that my emotions and desires were somehow less real than adult emotions and desires. And in writing _Ender's Game_, I forced the audience to experience the lives of these children from that perspective--the perspective in which their feelings and decisions are just as real and important as any adult's. ... _Ender's...
Orson Scott Card
From the girl who sat before me now...surged a fresh and physical life force. She was like a small animal that has popped into the world with the coming of spring. Her eyes moved like an independent organism with joy, laughter, anger, amazement, and despair. I hadn't seen a face so vivid and expressive in ages, and I enjoyed watching it live and move.
Haruki Murakami
She began to study with a teacher of teachers, whom they brought for that purpose from the city of Mompox, and who died unexpectedly two weeks later, and she continued for several years with the best musician at the seminary, whose gravedigger’s breath distorted her arpeggios.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
There are some good things to be said about walking. Not many, but some. Walking takes longer, for example, than any other known form of locomotion except crawling. Thus it stretches time and prolongs life. Life is already too short to waste on speed. I have a friend who's always in a hurry; he never gets anywhere. Walking makes the world much bigger and thus more interesting. You have time to observe the details. The utopian technologists foresee a future for us in which distance is...
Edward Abbey