Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
One effect that the Nobel Prize seems to have had is that more Arabic literary works have been translated into other languages.
And never, ever, no matter what else you do in your whole life, never sleep with anyone whose troubles are worse than your own.
That's the duty of the old, to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.
There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction; they can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book.
I don't thrive on misery myself. I mean, I've obviously created during a time of misery, but I also create from a place of joy.
She liked the life she had. She loved habits. She craved a day with nothing in it, a long, quiet stretch of hours in the studio.
What other people think of me is not really my major concern in life. What other people think of what I write is another matter.
If I were planning to be stranded on a desert island, I wouldn't take Freud's books with me, because I've already read them all.
A cause may be inconvenient, but it's magnificent. It's like champagne or high heels, and one must be prepared to suffer for it.
You can only acquire really useful general ideas by first acquiring particular ideas . . . You cannot make bricks without straw.
The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That's why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system.
Whether we are based on carbon or on silicon makes no fundamental difference we should each be treated with appropriate respect.
A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lillies of the swamp.
librarianship is one of the few callings in the world for which is it still possible to feel unqualified admiration and respect.
I meet people on the street or at book signings and they tend to treat me as if they know me, as if we're connected. It's great.
When I was a girl, we all wanted to have fun. That's all we thought about. It didn't occur to us to get married and have babies.
Filmmaking is a thousand choices a day and it's important to just let those choices potentially be informed by something deeper.
And below the heimongmong, all along the ground, were weeds already spilling out over the edges, running wild in every direction.
I was shocked, and I ended up contacting three academics to find out if it could possibly be that my grandmother was a courtesan.
Particularly beautiful people were like particularly funny-looking people, though. Once you know them you mostly forgot about it.
Some men are heroes by nature in that they will give all that is in them without regard to the effort or to the personal returns.
Psych yourself up until you're confident that the world will be interested in what happens to your characters. Confidence is key.
My first novel, 'You Must be Sisters,' was started in Pakistan. I've wrote several novels and a TV drama set or partly-set there.
I thought I had a great opportunity when I started doing my comic book in 1972. I thought there was so much territory to work in.
Friendship is also about liking a person for their failings, their weakness. It's also about mutual help, not about exploitation.
One of the pleasures of reading is seeing this alteration on the pages, and the way, by reading it, you have made the book yours.
A foreign swear-word is practically inoffensive except to the person who has learnt it early in life and knows its social limits.
The people of Hong Kong are criticized for only being interested in business, but it's the only thing they've been allowed to do.
I can't help slightly falling in love with every character I write about. And I quite like writing about people who are vilified.
One handy piece of equipment, which I recommend to any writer of fiction, is a set of Myriorama cards. I consult them frequently.
Filmmaking is a thousand choices a day, and it's important to just let those choices potentially be informed by something deeper.
It's not the child's responsibility to teach the parent who they are. It's the parent's responsibility to learn who the child is.
I definitely still like writing one-liners, but I also think that I've changed a lot in that I've allowed myself freedom to grow.
I used to think that my mother got into arguments with people because they didn't understand her English, because she was Chinese.
She used to cry roughly three times a year. Now she seemed to cry three times before breakfast. Could that be considered progress?
When you finally understand the universe, it will not only be stranger than you imagine, it will be stranger than you can imagine.
Maybe if the right person floats into your life, you have to jump in with both feet and try to make it work before the tide turns.
You keep your past by having sisters. As you get older, they're the only ones who don't get bored if you talk about your memories.
Novels, in my experience, are slow in coming, and once I've begun them I know I have years rather than months of work ahead of me.
For me, the romantic comedies I love are the ones that pay homage to the genre, but also find their ways to twist it and tweak it.
How Cable survived Second Coming and what his responsibility is to his daughter, Hope, may have something to do with the Avengers.
Its all about your determination, I think, as much as anything. There are a lot of people with talent, but its that determination.
some changes happen deep down inside of you. And the truth is, only you know about them. Maybe that's the way it's supposed to be.
After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working.
The clever men of Oxford, know all that there is to be knowed but they none of them know one half as much as intelligent Mr. Toad.
I have to re-write a lot. I couldn't tell you how many drafts I write, but I know I've done at least twenty rewrites on each book.
All stories are lies, but good stories are lies made of light and fire. They lift our hearts out of the dust and out of the grave.
The greatest justification for travel is not self-improvement but rather performing a vanishing act, disappearing without a trace.
The minute you become a leader of a country, you go into a very small club. You join that sort of pantheon of other world leaders.
In some shape or form, we do have an emotional connection to our head of state, even if, for the most part, they seem very remote.