Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Perfect love may cast our fear, but fear is remarkably potent in casting out love.
There comes a time when every scientist, even God, has to write off an experiment.
When I heard, Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, I thought, Did he fall or was he pushed?
When I was three, I wanted to be four. When I was four, I wanted to be prime minister.
All fiction is largely autobiographical and much autobiography is, of course, fiction.
No literary form is more revealing, more spontaneous or more individual than a letter.
There are few couples as unhappy as those who are too proud to admit their unhappiness.
Write what you need to write, not what is currently popular or what you think will sell.
Ambition, if it were to be savored, let alone achieved, had to be rooted in possibility.
If from infancy you treat children as gods, they are liable in adulthood to act as devils.
The worst moment of any campaign is waiting for the sun to rise on the morning of the battle
For me, the dead remain dead. If I couldn't believe that, I don't think I could go on living.
While there may not be a book in every one of us, there is so often a damned good short story.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
I'm passionate again about writing. This is important to me; it's got to be the comeback book.
Murder is the unique crime, the only one for which we can never make reparation to the victim.
Actually, Sydney is my second favourite city on earth, I love Sydney, but this is the greatest.
Feel, he told himself, feel, feel, feel. Even if what you feel is pain, only let yourself feel.
Daniel supposed he had a secret life. Most people did; it was hardly possible to live without one.
It is often spur-of-the-moment decisions, sometimes made by others, that can change our whole lives.
It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.
It's easy to get a reputation for wisdom. It's only necessary to live long, speak little and do less.
Human kindness is like a defective tap, the first gush may be impressive but the stream soon dries up.
Books of quotations ... afford me one of the most undemanding but satisfying forms of reading pleasure.
We English are good at forgiving our enemies; it releases us from the obligation of liking our friends.
But the thing I felt most strongly about, and put at the end of one of the prison diaries, was education.
At the end of my trial, I was rather hoping the judge would send me to Australia for the rest of my life.
Man is diminished if he lives without knowledge of his past; without hope of a future he becomes a beast.
It is always easy to question the judgement of others in matters of which we may be imperfectly informed.
I don't want anyone to look to me, not for protection, not for happiness, not for love, not for anything.
The world is changed not by the self-regarding, but by men and women prepared to make fools of themselves.
When a book comes out I wonder if one person will buy it. It's agony. Of course it's stupid, but it's agony.
I'm not taking any interest in politics. I'm not involved in politics in any way. My life is in writing now.
I was allowed to ring the bell for five minutes until everyone was in assembly. It was the beginning of power.
Don't just plan to write - write. It is only by writing, not dreaming about it, that we develop our own style.
Of all the things that human beings did together, the sexual act was the one with the most various of reasons.
We who write in English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in the world. Respect it.
A regime which combines perpetual surveillance with total indulgence is hardly conducive to healthy development.
I learned early and at that kitchen table that there are ways of avoiding, without guilt, the commitments of love.
If all power corrupts, then a doctor, who literally holds life and death in his hands, must be at particular risk.
Well I certainly have learned and I hope I'm moving on and certainly two years of prison was a terrible punishment.
It shows considerable wisdom to know what you want in life and then to direct all your energies towards getting it.
The tragedy of loss is not that we grieve, but that we cease to grieve, and then perhaps the dead are dead at last.
Absolute nakedness was intrusive, confusing to the senses. Paradoxically, it both revealed and diminished identity.
First-class travel, provided one hasn't to pay for it oneself, is the most insidiously addictive of life's luxuries.
Metaphysical speculation is about as pointless as a discussion on the meaning of one's lungs. They're for breathing.
Death ... obliterates family resemblance as it does personality: there is no affinity between the living and the dead.
Suicide is the most private and mysterious of acts, inexplicable because the chief actor is never there to explain it.
you'd like the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That must be the most futile oath anyone ever swears.
We live in a society which salves its conscience more by helping the interestingly unfortunate than the dull deserving.