Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Only in death will we have our own names since only in death are we no longer part of the effort. In death we become heroes.
Every time I write something, I think, this is the most offensive thing I will ever write. But no. I always surprise myself.
You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else.
Portland is quickly becoming one of those lovely, lush Third World countries where kinda-rich people retire with their money.
A short story is something that you can hold in your mind. You can really analyze how the entire thing works, like a machine.
You have to give up! you have to give up! You have to realize that someday you will die, Until you know that, you are useless!
When I was little, my grandma used to get romance novels, and she would get hundreds of these, and she'd read a dozen a month.
Do you know why most survivors of the Holocaust are vegan? It's because they know what it's like to be treated like an animal.
I suppose it’s comfort, perhaps a sense of self-control, doing worse things to yourself than the world will ever dare inflict.
If your body is a temple, you can pile up too much deferred maintenance. If your body is a temple, mine was a real fixer-upper.
People had been working for so many years to make the world a safe organized place. Nobody realized how boring it would become.
Some little part of themselves for someone in the future to discover. Maybe a thought. We were here. We built this. A reminder.
You're safe because you're so trapped inside your culture. Anything you can conceive of is fine because you can conceive of it.
Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on.
And if you can find any way out of our culture, then that's a trap too. Just wanting to get out of the trap reinforces the trap.
We’d turn our lives into a terrible adventure. A true-life horror story with a happy ending. A trial we’d survive to talk about.
Everybody looks a little crazy if you're looking close enough and if you can't look that close, then you don't really love them.
Me with nothing left to lose, plotting my big revenge in the spotlight. Give me violent revenge fantasies as a coping mechanism.
What I did was pour out about a gallon of Chanel Number Five and put a burning wedding invitation to it, and boom, I'm recycling.
I see so many tattoos of my stuff on people - tattoos of my book covers, tattoos of quotes . . . it's kind of daunting sometimes.
So if you think this is going to save you...If you think anything is going to save you...Please consider this your final warning.
My favorite books to give or get are short story collections. And always paperbacks because they are easy to carry as you travel.
For six months I couldn't sleep. With insomnia, nothing's real. Everything is far away. Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy.
That's why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. You can't control life, at least you can control your version.
Women are already born so far ahead ability-wise. The day men can give birth, that's when we can start talking about equal rights.
No matter how many luxuries you get, something will be missing. No matter how carefully you choose, you'll never be totally happy.
I can become someone else, not out of pressure and desperation, but merely because a new life sounds fun or interesting or joyful.
I usually write in my kitchen, which is a large, octagonal room that looks into woods - three big windows look out into the trees.
I write compulsively. I've got so many ideas, and I love to do it so much, I can't not do it. I write the way some people do drugs.
The avant-garde in every field consists of the lonely, the friendless, the uninvited. All progress is the product of the unpopular.
Most novels, I find, are three times longer than they need to be. Very little happens, and I don't want to waste my time with them.
I never think I'm making fun of my culture. In fact I'm making fun of myself, because I catch myself doing some very stupid things.
It seems that so much writing is being done in the nineteenth-century model, where every connection has to be thoroughly explained.
The girl is infectious human waste, and she's confused and afraid to commit to the wrong thing and so she won't commit to anything.
It's pathetic how we can't live with the things we can't understand. How we need everything labeled and explained and deconstructed.
The only biodiversity we're going to have left is Coke versus Pepsi. We're landscaping the whole world one stupid mistake at a time.
Most of the laugh tracks on television were recorded in the early 1950’s. These days, most of the people you hear laughing are dead.
Her mom and dad are both doctors and want her to follow her dream, not turn out the way they have, no matter how much it costs them.
To see how boring you really are, write a book about soap and cults, and the profits you make will be your only means of subsistence.
I'm living the life I love, I tell myself, and loving the life I live. I tell myself: I deserved this. This is exactly what I wanted.
I have a lot of fans who are in the prison system, where ramen noodles are a kind of staple. Prisoners are always sending me recipes.
That's how a good story works. It changes how you feel. It brings you to a greater appreciation, a greater joy, of your own existence.
Regret, Daisy knew, was the only confirmation of a well-lived life. If you didn't occasionally go too far, you weren't going anywhere.
What do you do when your entire identity is destroyed in an instant? How do you cope when your whole life story turns out to bw wrong?
If it comes down to a choice between being unloved and being vulnerable and sensitive and emotional, then you can just keep your love.
The only thing I shy away from is non-consensual violence. I can't write a story where someone is a simple victim because it's boring.
For sure, even the worst blow job is better than, say, sniffing the best rose ... watching the greatest sunset. Hearing children laugh.
If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character, would you slow down? Or speed up?
Because nothing is as good as you can imagine it. No one is as beautiful as she is in your head. Nothing is as exciting as your fantasy.
Demon or angel or evil spirit, I just need something to show itself. Ghoulie or ghosty or long-legged beastie, I just want my hand held.