Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Death is only a small interruption.
I am 46, and have been for some time past.
Great writers are the saints for the godless.
You can never betray the people who are dead.
The self-fulfilled woman is far from reality.
I've never got on very well with Jane Austen.
It is best to marry for purely selfish reasons.
Writing has freed me from the despair of living.
I think you always feel braver in another language.
Always let them think of you as singing and dancing.
A man of such obvious and exemplary charm must be a liar.
And without understanding, could each properly love the other?
Old men should have more care to end life well than to live long.
Time misspent in youth is sometimes all the freedom one ever has.
No blame should attach to telling the truth. But it does, it does.
Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.
Satire is dependent on strong beliefs, and on strong beliefs wounded.
Accountability in friendship is the equivalent of love without strategy.
Fiction is the great repository of the moral sense. The wicked get punished.
I suppose what one wants really is ideal company and books are ideal company.
For once a thing is known, it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten.
In real life, of course, it is the hare that wins. Every time. Look around you.
When you make a break for freedom you don't necessarily find company on the way.
To remain pure, a novel has to cast a moral puzzle. Anything else is mere negotiation.
I was brought up among the sort of self-important women who had a husband as one has an alibi.
What is interesting about self-analysis is that it leads nowhere - it is an art form in itself.
It is my contention that Aesop was writing for the tortoise market. hares have no time to read.
That sun, that light had faded, and she had faded with them. Now she was as grey as the season itself.
Like many rich men, he thought in anecdotes; like many simple women, she thought in terms of biography.
You never know what you will learn till you start writing. Then you discover truths you never knew existed.
The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.
Problems of human behavior still continue to baffle us, but at least in the Library we have them properly filed.
The essence of romantic love is that wonderful beginning, after which sadness and impossibility may become the rule.
All good fortune is a gift of the gods, and you don't win the favor of the ancient gods by being good, but by being bold.
Real love is a pilgrimage. It happens when there is no strategy, but it is very rare because most people are strategists.
Life is a pilgrimage and if you don't play by the rules you don't find the Road to Damascus, you find the Crown of Thorns.
Good women always think it is their fault when someone else is being offensive. Bad women never take the blame for anything.
It will be a pity if women in the more conventional mould are to be phased out, for there will never be anyone to go home to.
Romanticism is not just a mode; it literally eats into every life. Women will never get rid of just waiting for the right man.
Writing novels preserves you in a state of innocence - a lot passes you by - simply because your attention is otherwise diverted.
Existentialism is about being a saint without God; being your own hero, without all the sanction and support of religion or society.
I need noise and interruptions and irritation: irritation and discomfort are a great starter. The loneliness of doing it any other way would kill me.
A complete woman is probably not a very admirable creature. She is manipulative, uses other people to get her own way, and works within whatever system she is in.
There are moments when you feel free, moments when you have energy, moments when you have hope, but you can't rely on any of these things to see you through. Circumstances do that.
You have no idea how promising the world begins to look once you have decided to have it all for yourself. And how much healthier your decisions are once they become entirely selfish.
I was brought up to look after my parents. My family were Polish Jews, and we lived with my grandmother, with uncles and aunts and cousins all around, and I thought everybody lived like that.
You can never betray the people who are dead, so you go on being a public Jew; the dead can't answer slurs, but I'm here. I would love to think that Jesus wants me for a sunbeam, but he doesn't.
People say that I am always serious and depressing, but it seems to me that the English are never serious - they are flippant, complacent, ineffable, but never serious, which is sometimes maddening.
I'm not very popular, because they're bleak and they're mournful and all the rest of it and I get censorious reviews. But I'm only writing fiction. I'm not making munitions, so I think it's acceptable.
In real life, it is the hare who wins. Every time. Look around you. And in any case it is my contention that Aesop was writing for the tortoise market. Hares have no time to read. They are too busy winning the game.