Unforbidden City Quotes & Sayings

All the information I have about myself is from forged documents. — Vladimir Nabokov

Happiness is a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

These early decisions can foreclose many opportunities to reshape the patterns of development in a community so as to make it better and safer by reducing vulnerability to future disasters. — Jim Schwab

In memoir, you have to be particularly careful not to alienate the reader by making the material seem too lived-in. It mustn't have too much of the smell of yourself, otherwise the reader will be unable to make it her own. — Rachel Cusk

I have learnt that we expect honesty and genuineness from others, while not being honest and genuine with our own self. — Aisha Mirza

There is no tomorrow. There is only a planet turning on its axis, and a creature given to optimistic fancies. — Robert Breault

I think the hardest thing about my life is that I've met so many people all over the world who I love, but they're not friends with each other. — Cat Power

Artists are interpreters for us of richness and meaning. Artists can reinforce a healthy sense of God's grandeur and nearness. — Sandra Bowden

Augustus came from a miraculous conception by the divine and human conjunction of Apollo and Atia. How does the historian respond to that story? Are there any who take it literally or even bracket its transcendental claims as beyond historical judgment or empirical test? Classical historians, no matter how religious, do not usually do so. That divergence raises an ethical problem for me. Either all such divine conceptions, from Alexander to Augustus and from the Christ to the Buddha, should be accepted literally and miraculously or all of them should be accepted metaphorically and theologically. It is not morally acceptable to say directly and openly that our story is truth but yours is myth; ours is history but yours is lie. It is even less morally acceptable to say that indirectly and covertly by manufacturing defensive or protective strategies that apply only to one's own story. This, then, — John Dominic Crossan

Ah yes, you like to cook, don't you?
well, i used to. you need real dedication. fresh ingredients, a discerning palate, an eye for presentation. it's not a modern art. good cooking has hardly evolved since the nineteenth century. — Haruki Murakami

I had a dream I named my boat after you. I love to raise your mast. — Amanda Mosher

It's hard to win a war with a front at your back. — Gregory S. Close

What do you do when you discover your adult life is a sham? — Nathan Hill

Actors endow the villain in fiction with a warmth and quality that makes them memorable. I think we like fictional villains because they're the Mr. Hyde of our own dreams. I've met a few real villains in my time, and they weren't the least bit sympathetic. — John Rhys-Davies