It To Quotes & Sayings

If literature has engaged me as a project, first as a reader, then as a writer, it is as an extension of my sympathies to other selves, other domains, other dreams, other territories. — Susan Sontag

It's a good thing we don't know when we start out that when we arrive we haven't gone anyplace."
"What's wrong with success?" Kelly asked, exasperated. "You just walked out on the biggest hit show on Broadway, something you'd always wanted. Why did you leave?"
"Because, Kelly," I said slowly, "nothing, but nothing is half as good as you expect it to be. — Dean Jones

You don't need to be seeing someone to be in love with her. You can have lost touch with her, she can have hurt you, even inexplicably. If you ever felt that you really knew her and that it was what you knew that you loved, and if you remember what it was you once knew, why is it so crazy to retain that love still? — Elliot Perlman

You build your mind, so make it into something you want to live with. — Marilynne Robinson

Bad writing is not easier than good writing. It's just as hard to make a toilet seat as it is a castle window. Only the view is different. — Ben Hecht

It's just as idiotic to say there is no life after death as it is to say there is one. — Jeanne Moreau

For the first time since Ben died, I look like a widow. For the first time since I lost him, I feel like I recognize the person in the mirror. There I am, grief-stricken and un-whole. Widowed. It's such a relief to see myself this way. I have felt so insecure in my widowness that seeing myself look like a widow comforts me. — Taylor Jenkins Reid

It is better to be a fool than to be dead. It is better to emit a scream in the shape of a theory than to be entirely insensible to the jars and incongruities of life and take everything as it comes in a forlorn stupidity. Some people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the world, like smiling images pushed from behind. For God's sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself! — Robert Louis Stevenson

On the movie side of things, the difficulties come with so few movies being made, and when they are, it seems that it's a marketing game. Story sometimes takes a backseat to that one grand marketing idea. — Jim Rash

Hatred is always a sin, my mother told me. Remember that. One drop of hatred in your soul will spread and discolor everything like a drop of black ink in white milk. I was struck by that and meant to try it, but knew I shouldn't waste the milk. — Alice Munro

It seems to me that actual democracy is where all of us get to participate and it's not just a sort of a blunt little dry hump in a ballot box, but an actual penetrative process. — Russell Brand

No matter how much you know, no matter how much you think, no matter how much you plot and you connive and you plan, you're not superior to sex. It's a very risky game. A man wouldn't have two-thirds of the problems he has if he didn't venture off to get fucked. It's sex that disorders our normally ordered lives. — Philip Roth

I would like to be where Diana Rigg or Judi Dench is, but I expect it is as good as it is going to get. — Kate O'Mara

It is not altogether wrong to say that there is no such thing as a bad photograph - only less interesting, less relevant, less mysterious ones. — Susan Sontag

Nathan was something that happened to us, as devastating in its way as the burning roof that fell on the family Mwanza; with our fate scarred by hell and brimstone we still had to track our course. And it happened finally by the grace of hell and brimstone that I had to keep moving. I moved, and he stood still. — Barbara Kingsolver

It's impossible by micro-mutation to form any new species. — Richard Goldschmidt

One second, we are surrounded by angels holding their swords. The next second, one of their arms drops and his sword thunks to the grass like a lead weight. The angel stares at his blade uncomprehendingly.
Another sword drops.
Then another.
Then a whole bunch, until all the other unsheathed swords fall, thudding on the grass like subjects bowing down to their queen.
The angels stare at the swords at their feet in utter shock.
Then everyone looks at me. Actually, it's probably more accurate to say they're looking at my sword.
"Whoa." That's about the most intelligent thing I can say right now. Did Raffe say something about an archangel sword intimidating other angel swords if she could gain their respect?
I swivel my eyes to look at the blade in my hands. Was that you, Pooky Bear? — Susan Ee

The goal was never dependent on the route that took me there. It was always dependent on the heart that got me through whatever route opened itself up to my efforts. — Daniel Pearce

But my point, you see is that death is misunderstood. The loss of one's life is not the greatest loss. It is no loss at all. To others, perhaps, but not to oneself. — Tom Rachman

Tavish could tell he was being sized up. And by the narrowing of Joseph's eyes, he recognized Tavish's intent as well. They stood, eyeing one another for several long and silent moments. Tavish had not intended to pursue Katie in the least. Now, it seemed, he had a rival. Joseph Archer was infuriatingly difficult to read. Was it confidence that kept him so at ease? Joseph did have the advantage. Katie lived in his house. He could see her, talk to her every day. Joseph was wealthy, with the air of class and money about him. Tavish had none of those things. And though Katie had warmed to him a bit, he didn't yet feel she'd entirely shed her wariness of him. — Sarah M. Eden

I well remember it being said to me by an occultist of great experience that two things are necessary for safety in occultism, right motives and right associates. — Dion Fortune

I'm just wondering if I'll feel it when it happens. Will I get really full? Like, is there room in me for that? Your cock is ginormous. I don't know how cum will fit, too. I should cum on your cock first to see what that feels like. Cumming on your fingers was spectacular. — Alexa Riley

I say to Israel, the Lord will never permit me or any other man who stands as president of this Church to lead you astray. It is not in the program. It is not in the mind of God. If I were to attempt that the Lord would remove me out of my place, and so He will any other man who attempts to lead the children of men astray from the oracles of God and from their duty. — Wilford Woodruff

The idea of gas engines was by no means new, but this was the first time that a really serious effort had been made to put them on the market. They were received with interest rather than enthusiasm and I do not recall any one who thought that the internal combustion engine could ever have more than a limited use. All the wise people demonstrated conclusively that the engine could not compete with steam. They never thought that it might carve out a career for itself. That is the way with wise people
they are so wise and practical that they always know to a dot just why something cannot be done; they always know the limitations. That is why I never employ an expert in full bloom. If ever I wanted to kill opposition by unfair means I would endow the opposition with experts. They would have so much good advice that I could be sure they would do little work. — Henry Ford

If we cut open the bud of a beautiful rose in order to see how it is 'packed' and what it is going to look like, what sort of a bloom will we get? — Ian Gardner

You get to bring your own sound system when you play an arena, all the lights and visual stuff, which I think is really cool. There's something about those old arenas, where it feels larger than life. — Dan Auerbach

To protect ourselves against the storms of passion, marriage with a woman is a harbor in the tempest; but with a bad woman it is a tempest in the harbor. — Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

I was going to get smart, and I was going to change the world. I was audacious enough to believe it, too. Fortunately it takes that kind of audacity to accomplish anything significant. — Jamie Sedgwick

His prime resource is the leaky vessel of is own memory. At times he views it thus, quite literally- as some old pail with holes and rusted seams. Alternatively, he imagines an extensive manuscript of which there survive only a handful of charred fragments; it is like trying to piece together the Gospels from the Dead Sea Scrolls ... — Penelope Lively

Desire is the outcome of sensation - the outcome with all the images that thought has built. And this desire not only breeds discontent but a sense of hopelessness.
Never suppress it, never discipline it but probe into the nature of it - what is the origin, the purpose, the intricacies of it? To delve deep into it is not another desire, for it has no motive; it is like understanding the beauty of a flower, to sit down beside it and look at it. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

If your teachers suggest that your poems are sentimental, that is only half of it. Your poems probably need to be even more sentimental. Don't be less of a flower, but could you be more of a stone at the same time? — Mary Ruefle

In fact history does not belong to us; but we belong to it. — Hans-Georg Gadamer

God language can tie people into knots, of course. In part, that is because 'God' is not God's name. Referring to the highest power we can imagine, 'God' is our name for that which is greater than all and yet present in each. For some the highest imaginable power will be a petty and angry tribal baron ensconced high above the clouds on a golden throne, visiting punishment on all who don't believe in him. But for others, the highest power is love, goodness, justice, or the spirit of life itself. Each of us projects our limited experience on a cosmic screen in letters as big as our minds can fashion. For those whose vision is constricted (illiberal, narrow-minded people), this can have horrific consequences. But others respond to the munificence of creation with broad imagination and sympathy. Answering to the highest and best within and beyond themselves, they draw lessons and fathom meaning so redemptive that surely it touches the divine. — Forrest Church

If there's anything I've learned it's that love is an unstoppable human drive, fierce and universal, and that sex is the physical manifestation of love. And that sex without love is missing the whole damn point. Sex brings us home to love. — Sarah Katherine Lewis

All of that will be gone by morning. Instead, they will dissect this last evening for years to come. What had they missed that they should have seen? What small gesture, forgotten, might have changed everything? They will pick it down to the bones, wondering how this had all gone so wrong, and they will never be sure. — Celeste Ng

I believe that there are people who think as I do, who have thought as I do, who will think as I do. There are those who will live, unconscious of me, but continuing my attitude, so to speak, as I continue, unknowingly, the similar attitude of those before me. I could write and write. All it takes is a motion of the hand in response to a brain impulse, trained from childhood to record in our own American brand of hieroglyphics the translations of external stimuli. How much of my brain is wilfully my own? How much is not a rubber stamp of what I have read and heard and lived? Sure, I make a sort of synthesis of what I come across, but that is all that differentiates me from another person? - - - That I have banged into and assimilated various things? That my environment and a chance combination of genes got me where I am? — Sylvia Plath

It's not like the original movie where you thought it was the mother committing the murders, but it was actually the son. I don't think it's possible to create the kind of shock today that we created in 1959. And I don't even want to try. — Joseph Stefano

I became very interested in the Islamic question, and thought I would try to understand it from the roots, ask very simple questions and somehow make a narrative of that discovery. — V.S. Naipaul

Scheele, it was said, never forgot anything if it had to do with chemistry. He never forgot the look, the feel, the smell of a substance, or the way it was transformed in chemical reactions, never forgot anything he read, or was told, about the phenomena of chemistry. He seemed indifferent, or inattentive, to most things else, being wholly dedicated to his single passion, chemistry. It was this pure and passionate absorption in phenomena-noticing everything, forgetting nothing-that constituted Scheele's special strength. — Oliver Sacks

It takes more time and effort and delicacy to learn the silence of a people than to learn its sounds. Some people have a special gift for this. Perhaps this explains why some missionaries, notwithstanding their efforts, never come to speak properly, to communicate delicately through silences. Although they 'speak with the accent of natives' they remain forever thousands of miles away. The learning of the grammar of silence is an art much more difficult to learn than the grammar of sounds. — Ivan Illich

One hears a lot of talk about the hostility between scientists and engineers. I don't believe in any such thing. In fact I am quite certain it is untrue ... There cannot possibly be anything in it because neither side has anything to do with the other. — David Hilbert

I'm not a fan of 3D. But I am a huge fan of digital imagery. Because it allows a filmmaker much more latitude to appreciate their own visions and dreams. — William Friedkin

It is vital that you do not change the path before you. I have told you, many times, that certain events must happen in a person's life for a reason, always for a reason. The events that will unfold before you ... they must happen, Heather. They have to. — Elizabeth Morgan

The design of the Mac wasn't what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it's all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. — Steve Jobs

But I see no reason why a woman should not grow and develop in all those outlets which are suited to her nature, it matters not at all what they may be. — Agnes Smedley

The good news is that I believe every woman who wants to can find a great partner. You're just going to need to get rid of the idea that marriage will make you happy. It won't. Once the initial high wears off, you'll just be you, except with twice as much laundry.
Because ultimately, marriage is not about getting something
it's about giving it. Strangely, men understand this more than we do. Probably because for them marriage involves sacrificing their most treasured possession
a free-agent penis
and for us, it's the culmination of a princess fantasy so universal, it built Disneyland. — Tracy McMillan

Crying is all right in its way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do. — C.S. Lewis

In the meantime, it is best to grab what wonderful moments you find lying around. — Lemony Snicket

Hey," I say back. It's a Hey of Almost Forgiveness. "I've got something I want to show you. Will you come somewhere with me?" Oh, all right. As long as it's anywhere. "Okay. — Deb Caletti

i really like when someone reads my book and then review and rate it. this is very important to me because it shows me where i stand as an author and where i can improve as a writer. — Robert Trouble Johnson

I'm thankful I grew up the way I did. It made me a hard worker and insightful to other people's lives. — Rachel Roy

And no other attempt made at secrecy than Mrs. Norris's talking of it everywhere as a matter not to be talked of at present. — Jane Austen

In real life, Snow White stays dead and Rapunzel grows old, alone in her tower. In real life, you gotta have enough sense to stay away from ugly bitches offering you shiny apples and have enough balls to cut off your own hair and use it as a ladder if needs be. In real life, you gotta save yourself and the only happy endings are the ones paid for in massage parlors. — Amy Sumida

J. R. R. Tolkien, the near-universally-hailed father of modern epic fantasy, crafted his magnum opus The Lord of the Rings to explore the forces of creation as he saw them: God and country, race and class, journeying to war and returning home. I've heard it said that he was trying to create some kind of original British mythology using the structure of other cultures' myths, and maybe that was true. I don't know. What I see, when I read his work, is a man trying desperately to dream.
Dreaming is impossible without myths. If we don't have enough myths of our own, we'll latch onto those of others - even if those myths make us believe terrible or false things about ourselves. Tolkien understood this, I think because it's human nature. Call it the superego, call it common sense, call it pragmatism, call it learned helplessness, but the mind craves boundaries. Depending on the myths we believe in, those boundaries can be magnificently vast, or crushingly tight. — N.K. Jemisin

Vicky had once told her that she should not be ashamed of her pubic hair. Pubic hair was what men expected to see on women. Vicky said that there was a young prostitute at the Centre who had no pubic hair & many customers were known to shy off her because they thought that she was diseased. So Phyllis was resigned to displaying her pubic hair to all who wanted to see it.[MMT] — Nicholas Chong

When faced with a problem, we have two options: solve it or wish for it to go away. If you don't solve it, it will never go away. — Vinita Kinra

Golf is the only game where the worst player gets the best of it. He obtains more out of it as regards both exercise and enjoyment, for the good player gets worried over the slightest mistake, whereas the poor player makes too many mistakes to worry about them. — David Lloyd George

Some people, when they have a holiday, just want to go to salt coats, twenty-five miles along the coast from Glasgow. Some people don't even want to that. They are happy to stay at home or watch the birds and the ducks float by in the park. And some want to go to the moon. It's all about people's AMBITIONS. — Alex Ferguson

I wasn't sure what I'd done to deserve such a wonderful gift, and I wasn't sure if it was insolent, but I thanked God for fallen angels. — Jamie McGuire

They're definitely going to declare war tomorrow. In the morning. It's probably timed so that the nation can get down on its collective knees in church and pray for deliverance.' 'Oh, yes, war is always so Christian, isn't it? — Kate Atkinson

All the geography, trigonometry, and arithmetic in the world are useless unless you learn to think for yourself. No school teaches you that. It's not on the curriculum. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Not everyone can feel things as deeply as you. Most people, their feelings are ... bland, tasteless. They'll never understand what it's like to read a poem and feel almost like they're flying, or to see a bleeding fish and feel grief that shatters their heart. It's not a weakness, Grey. It's what I love about you most. — Juliann Garey

Democracy is a hegemonic tool of the West and contrary to Islam. Why do you act as though the entire world needs democracy? And when it comes to homosexuality, the issue is clearly dealt with by the Koran. It says it is forbidden and should be punished. — Abdul Sattar Abu Risha

Daniel is asleep. A care assistant, a different one today is swishingaroundthe room with a mop that smells of pine cleaner.

Elisabeth wonders what's doing to happen to all the care assistants. She realizes she hasn't so far encountered a single care assistant here who isn't from somewhere else in the world. That morning on the radio she;d heard a spokesperson say, but it's not just that we;ve been rhetorically and practically encouraging the opposite of integration for immigrants to this country. It's that we've been rhetorically and practically encouraging ourselves not to integrate. We've been doing this as a matter of self-policing since Thatcher taught us to be selfish and not just to think but to believe that there's no such thing as society.

Then the other spokesperson in the dialogue said, well, you would say that. Get over it. Grow up. Your time's over. Democracy. You lost. — Ali Smith

Death does determine life. Once life is finished it acquires a sense; up to that point it has not got a sense; its sense is suspended and therefore ambiguous. However, to be sincere I must add that for me death is important only if it is not justified and rationalized by reason. For me death is the maximum of epicness and death. — Pier Paolo Pasolini

Cole, who had kissed me. Cole, who had refused to discuss it afterwards. Okay, fine. I had refused. Cole, who was driving me flipping crazy. — Gena Showalter

I played eight years without really being hurt seriously and hadn't had to deal with that part of the game. So, to get hurt and to have to miss games, that part of it was very hard. And so when I came back and somebody else had my job and I couldn't get it back. You know that was hard. — Drew Bledsoe

It's a matter of choosing what is most important to you and putting that first. Once you have recognized your true purpose in life, this becomes much easier. — Clarence Clemons

Lion emits a low whistle as he spots Bo entering his fifth-period Journalism class. 'What happened to your face?'
Bo touches it tenderly and smiles. 'Nothing ...
'This wasn't your Dad.'
Bo smiles again. 'No. My dad leaves bruises on the inside. — Chris Crutcher

It takes a long time to get to be a diva. I mean, you gotta work at it. — Diana Ross

The power and magic of music lie in its intangibility and its limitlessness. It suggests images, but leaves us free to choose them and to accommodate them to our pleasure. — Wanda Landowska

Trades are happening, and I have two players that if they don't get their crap together I'm going to castrate them."

He took in a sharp breath. "Don't castrate my teammates, sweetheart, it will affect how they play. — Toni Aleo

It's a lot easier to lose your head than to keep it. — Suzanne Collins

When I create works of art, I do it because it is part of me and I must create. But afterward, when the work is done, I hope that it'll speak to people, that it'll open up their hearts or their minds. That cannot happen if the art is buried for safekeeping. — Nalini Singh

We could sit around and talk if you'd like."
"Okay." She crossed her arms and tried to look casual. "So what's up?"
"Considering what you're wearing beneath that sheet, and what we just heard in the hallway, you might want to rephrase that particular statement. — Jill Shalvis

The dot was introduced as a symbol for multiplication by Leibniz. On July 29, 1698, he wrote in a letter to Johann Bernoulli: I do not like X as a symbol for multiplication, as it is easily confounded with x ... — Gottfried Leibniz

My parents wanted us to be pool-safe, so I had lessons when I was 18 months old. I would like to share with all the parents out there that I was that kid who cried during every one of my lessons. But it wasn't an option for my parents; we had a backyard pool, so I needed to learn how to swim. — Summer Sanders

You don't have to place your hand on Mary's heart to get strength and consolation and rescue, and all the other things we need to get through life. You can place it right here on your own heart. Your own heart. — Sue Monk Kidd

So when he touched me, it was deeper and slower than the wildfire, like the flow of molten rock far beneath the surface of the earth. Too deep to feel the heat of it, but it moved inexorably, changing the very foundations of the world with its advance. — Stephenie Meyer

Brands no longer own their message. They can try to control it, but they do not own it. Today, consumers own the message. What they say about a brand carries more weight than what the brand says about itself. — Kim Garst

The sorrow of war inside a soldier's heart was in a strange way similar to the sorrow of love. It was a kind of nostalgia, like the immense sadness of a world at dusk. It was a daness, a missing, a pain which could send one soaring back into the past. The sorrow of the battlefield could not normally be pinpointed to one particular event, or even one person. If you focused on any one event it would soon become a tearing pain. — Bao Ninh

I always feel funny when I don't reveal things, especially to you [the press], who have supported us so much and are really the big reason we're here. But, we hold back information about the plot because we want to reward the fans for sticking with us, and that's so much fun. That's the funnest part of it. — Mitchell Hurwitz

Unarmed hand-to-hand fighting does not change through the ages; only the name changes, and it has only one rule: do it first, do it fast, do it dirtiest. — Robert A. Heinlein

The claim of fine tuning is subjective. As I stated before, no measurement in physics is perfect. The amount of precision we demand can be increased or decreased at our whim. We could have an approximate measurement that has a huge margin of error and call it finely-tuned if we so desire. Theists, in particular, have a lot of such desire. They so badly want God to be an indispensable part of our universe's creation, so they see finely-tuned constants.
They also tend to sweep under the rug the following fact: the vast majority of our universe is hostile to life, and they fail to consider that another hand in the proverbial deck might yield a better universe than ours, one teaming with life on every planet throughout the cosmos. — G.M. Jackson

They just change. Their body changes. Their abilities - the things they do that make them who they are - leave, sometimes temporarily, sometimes forever. Every day they wake up with that big what if?
And nothing is scarier than a life filled with what ifs - living by day without predictability and control. Some people end up losing feeling. Some have uncontrollable spasms. Some can't function. Some end up blind or in a wheelchair. Some end up bedridden and paralyzed.
It's hard to know who "some people" will be. — Lindsey Leavitt

'An Unquiet Mind' wasn't hard to write in terms of the actual writing of it. — Kay Redfield Jamison

One by one, they went around the room, bowing and curtsying in turn. Suddenly panicked, Cinder looked at Kai. He gave her a one-shouldered shrug, suggesting that, yeah, it's weird, but you get used to it. When — Marissa Meyer

When we're alive, life consumes us. But when we die, all of the color and the motion is gone so quickly, it's as though it can no longer stand to be wasted on us. — Lauren DeStefano

I found myself speaking softly as if I were telling an old tale to a young child. And giving it a happy ending, when all know that tales never end, and the happy ending is but a moment to catch one's breath before the next disaster. — Robin Hobb

I'd gone from living alone in New York as a lowly shoe clerk to becoming a shieldmaiden with a family to come home to. It didn't get much better than that. — Amanda Carlson

It really helps if you know your subject matter immediately. I find that enormously useful because then you can concentrate on all the usual novelistic things - the character, the plot and so forth - and you don't have to spend an enormous amount of time learning another trade, essentially. — Gregory Benford

No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings. — Peter Drucker

Where are you going?" Millie whispered, although why she was whispering was a bit of a mystery since the sound of yelling, along with a lot of cursing, was flowing into the house. "I'm not just going to sit here while everyone else is fighting my battle." She made it all the way to the door, crawling on her stomach, no less, before she was forced to stop when she encountered a pair of shoes. They were nice shoes, a little dusty, and unfortunately, they belonged to none other than Bram. "You weren't trying to sneak out to help, were you?" he asked, squatting down next to her. "I might have been." "There's no need. Silas has been secured." Lucetta frowned. "He came down here on his own?" Holding out a hand, Bram helped her to her feet before he smiled. "Apparently, yes. I imagine those women he hired weren't too keen to travel the country with him. Aiding and abetting men on the run usually results in a stint behind bars, and they must have decided he wasn't worth that." "I — Jen Turano

Astronomers still can't decide what the shape of our universe is. Is it closed and finite, which is to say, is there a countable tally of all the galaxies that exist, even beyond the ones we can see? Or is it infinite? The latter possibility is still on the table. — Seth Shostak

I've been thinking that when people break up there's usually a reason, and whatever it is, it's still going to be there even if we do get back together. — Paula Stokes

Music is the most absorbing of all the arts. It absorbs the mind of the artist, whether creator or executant, to the exclusion of every other consideration outside his own immediate necessities or desires. — Baroness Orczy

It seems the older we get, the tighter our inner circle becomes. When life has you down, some of those you thought had your back run, others ... sometimes strangers surprise you and fill that empty space up. Oh, but life has a great balancing act and when that axle turns and you are right side up again ... you will definitely not be looking for any long, lost "friends" because your inner circle is battle-tested to win! — Sanjo Jendayi

Love has a way of making us stupid, Will Henry. It blinds us to certain blatant realities, in this case the spectacularly high mortality rate among monstrumologists. Rarely do we live past forty - my father and von Helrung being the exceptions. — Rick Yancey

What matters here are the works - finally without them his life would be uninteresting. What matters, that is, are the astonishing things that he left behind. If we can get the life in relation to the works, then it can take off. — Stephen Greenblatt

When others asked the truth of me, I was convinced it was not the truth they wanted, but an illusion they could bear to live with. — Anais Nin