Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The past is what you take with you.
It was a long time ago now. And it was yesterday.
Become such as you are, having learned what that is.
Life wasn't about becoming, was it? It was about being.
Sometimes,' Sylvie said, 'one can mistake gratitude for love.
You can step in the same river but the water will always be new.
Sometimes it was harder to change the past than it was the future.
If you don't have a unique voice, then you're not really a writer.
Love was the hardest thing. Don't let anyone ever tell you different.
Oh, God. What was happening to her, she was turning into a normal person.
If they would all sleep all the time she wouldn't mind being their mother.
The great thing about writing compared to life is getting to tie things up.
It's been said that the men in my books have been absent, or weak, or creepy.
I am mad, I think. I am mad therefore I think. I am mad therefore I think I am.
Probably not needing to be published would give me more time to think about a book.
Men had no purpose on earth whereas women were gods walking unrecognized among them.
The beginning is the word and the end is silence. And in between are all the stories.
Most people muddled through events and only in retrospect realized their significance.
If people believed in eternal damnation they might not be seizing the day quite so much.
Hindsight's a wonderful thing. If we all had it there would be no history to write about.
(although anyone with half a brain must surely be mired in existential gloom all the time)
I feel as if I’m waiting for something dreadful to happen, and then I realize it already has.
She doesn't believe in dogs," Bridget said. "Dogs are hardly an article of faith," Sylvie said.
The past is a cupboard full of light and all you have to do is find the key that opens the door.
In the end, it is my belief, words are the only things that can construct a world that makes sense.
Ursula craved solitude but she hated loneliness, a conundrum that she couldn’t even begin to solve.
Alternate history fascinates me, as it fascinates all novelists, because 'What if?' is the big thing.
I spent four years doing a doctorate in postmodern American literature. I can recognize it when I see it.
She was a terrible mother, there was no doubt about it, but she didn't even have the strength to feel guilty.
Not being published would be great. When I say that to other writers they look at me as if I'm totally insane.
Whatever happens to you, embrace it, the good and the bad equally. Death is just one more thing to be embraced.
What if we had a chance to do it again and again, until we finally did get it right? Wouldn't that be wonderful?
I have been to the world's end and back and now I know what I would put in my bottom drawer .I would put my sisters.
Ethics are not necessarily to do with being law-abiding. I am very interested in the moral path, doing the right thing.
Certainly I had a really terrible time with 'Emotionally Weird.' When I finished it, I thought, 'I can't write any more.
Feminism is such an incredibly awkward word for us these days, isnt it? Not to be feminist would be bizarre, wouldnt it?
Certainly I had a really terrible time with 'Emotionally Weird.' When I finished it, I thought, 'I can't write any more.'
'Feminism' is such an incredibly awkward word for us these days, isn't it? Not to be feminist would be bizarre, wouldn't it?
You must never believe everything they say about a person. Generally speaking, most of it will be lies, half-truths at best.
He was born a politician. No, Ursula thought, he was born a baby, like everyone else. And this is what he has chosen to become.
I did feel when my mother died if anyone was going to haunt me it would be her. And she hasn't, so I think it is possibly the end.
Perhaps we are on an insula ex machina, an artificial place not in the real world at all -- a backdrop for the stories we must tell.
Time was a thief, he stole your life away from you and the only way you could get it back was to outwit him and snatch it right back.
I've always loved mysteries, the something there that you didn't know, and with 'Case Histories' I just decide to make that more up-front.
It wasn't that [he] believed in religion, or a God, or an afterlife. He just knew it was impossible to feel this much love and for it to end.
The cult of the individual is killing us. I think Twitter signals the death of western civilisation, but people have been saying that since Demosthenes.
Writing for me is quite a plastic form, a kind of mental sculpture, although that sounds weird. It acquires its character and its depth as it goes along.
Sylvie's knowledge, like Izzie's, was random yet far-ranging, 'The sign that one has acquired one's learning from reading novels rather than an education.
Without siblings you get quite a skewed vision of yourself and of the world. I always felt I didn't understand how it worked. I remember feeling quite lonely.
No point in thinking, you just have to get on with life. We only have one after all, we should try and do our best. We can never get it right, but we must try.