Literarily Quotes & Sayings

Nirvikalpa samadhi is a state of no mind, beyond the ten thousand states of mind, where there is nothing but perfection, where the self no longer exists ... the ego dissolves into immortality. — Frederick Lenz

The novel had reached its apogee with the marriage plot and had never recovered from its disappearance. In the days when success in life had depended on marriage, and marriage had depended on money, novelists had had a subject to write about. The great epics sang of war, the novel of marriage. Sexual equality, good for women, had been bad for the novel. And divorce had undone it completely. What would it matter whom Emma married if she could file for separation later? How would Isabel Archer's marriage to Gilbert Osmond have been affected by the existence of a prenup? As far as Saunders was concerned, marriage didn't mean much anymore, and neither did the novel. Where could you find the marriage plot nowadays? You couldn't. You had to read historical fiction. You had to read non-Western novels involving traditional societies. Afghani novels, Indian novels. You had to go, literarily speaking, back in time. — Jeffrey Eugenides

Science fiction - and the correct shortcut is 'sf' - uses actual scientific facts or theories for the source ideas or framework of the story. It has some scientific content, however speculative. If it breaks a law of physics, it knows it's doing so and follows up the consequences. If it invents a society of aliens, it does so with some respect for and knowledge of the social sciences and what you might call social probabilities. And some of it is literarily self-aware enough to treat its metaphors as metaphors. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Either offer me something I really like, or stop trying to tempt me. — Mason Cooley

The best memoirs - like This Boy's Life, or Crazy Brave [by Joy Harjo], for instance - bring you through a private river of storytelling that joins a major ocean of human struggle and joy. The act of enunciation - the forms and strategies of storytelling - are every bit as literarily serious as they are in poetry or other prose forms. — Lidia Yuknavitch

And how is your head? Better?" he asked.
"Very much. Sometimes it hurts." Right now it was throbbing. "But every day I am much improved."
"Where did you hit it? Are you bruised?"
I put a hand to the back of my head, a little to the left, where I had landed with such jarring force. "Here," I said. "It's still a little tender."
And leaning forward, he touched my hair right where I had just laid my hand. Such was he glamour that attended him that I expected the ache to instantly melt away, healed by his royal caress. But in fact, I felt a sudden leap in my heart that made the pain briefly more intense. — Sharon Shinn

Learning to let go of expectations is a ticket to peace. It allows us to ride over every crisis - small or large, brother-in-law or end-of-quarter office lockdown - like a beach ball on water. The next time a problem arises in your life, take a deep breath, let out a sigh, and replace the thought Oh no! with the thought Okay. — Martha N. Beck

To have a film in America means precisely nothing if you don't have a distributor who stands behind it. — Arthur Cohn

The only difference between an extraordinary life and an ordinary one is the extraordinary pleasures you find in ordinary things. — Veronique Vienne

The big deal is that if employees aren't engaged, your company will suffer. — Susan Scott

God's demand: 'be righteous'; God's diagnosis: 'no one is righteous'; God's deliverance: 'Jesus is our righteousness. — Tullian Tchividjian

If I decide to be an idiot, then I'll be an idiot on my own accord. — Johann Sebastian Bach

But from an early age she would have known literarily what she at twenty-one discovered empirically: there were days you felt like waging war, and days when you just needed to go home. — Stacy Schiff

Love's easy to learn. It's like taking a risk. You set your mind on it and refuse to be afraid, and in no time you feel terrifically exhilarated and all your inhibitions fly out of the window. — Dick Francis

I have no objection to well-written romance, but I'd read enough of it to know that that's not what I had written. I also knew that if it was sold as romance I'd never be reviewed by the 'New York Times' or any other literarily respectable newspaper - which is basically true, although the 'Washington Post' did get round to me eventually. — Diana Gabaldon

I used to be more paranoid and stressed, constantly worrying about my Plan B. But the truth is I don't have one. — Uma Thurman

1. Everything is a consequence of Something. The element of coincidence doesn't exist. We only think it exists because we cannot keep up with all processes that happen around us. — Ruben Papian

The Homebrew Computer Club was the highlight of my life. I was too shy to ever talk in the club meeting, but the way that I could communicate sometimes was by doing good designs. I was very skilled at a certain type of circuit design. — Steve Wozniak

It is important to stress that, in America at least, no matter how small and how badly off a particular stigmatized category is, the viewpoint of its members is likely to be given public presentation of some kind. It can thus be said that Americans who are stigmatized tend to live in a literarily-defined world, however uncultured they might be. If they don't read books on the situation of persons like themselves, they at least read magazines and see movies; and where they don't do these, then they listen to local, vocal associates. An intellectually worked-up version of their point of view is thus available to most stigmatized persons. A comment is here required about those who come to serve as representatives of a stigmatized category. Starting out as someone who is a little more vocal, a little better known, or a little better connected than his fellow-sufferers, a stigmatized person may find that the "movement" has absorbed his whole day, and that he has become a professional. — Erving Goffman

Generosity is not a free pass for people to take advantage of us, treat us unfairly, or be purposefully disrespectful and mean. — Brene Brown