Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[kennyc]

"News is what people want to keep hidden, and everything else is publicity."
- Bill Moyers (born today 6/5/1934 in Hugo, Oklahoma)

[kennyc]

"The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.”
- Neil deGrasse Tyson

[covingtoncat73]

“We need enormous pockets, pockets big enough for our families, and our friends, and even the people who aren’t on our lists, people we’ve never met but still want to protect. We need pockets for boroughs and for cities, a pocket that could hold the universe.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

[kennyc]

"We have a lot of books in our house. They are our primary decorative motif-books in piles and on the coffee table, framed book covers, books sorted into stacks on every available surface, and of course books on shelves along most walls. Besides the visible books, there are books waiting in the wings, the basement books, the garage books, the storage locker books...They function as furniture, they prop up sagging fixtures and disguised by quilts function as tables...I can't imagine a home without an overflow of books. The point of books is to have way too many but to always feel you never have enough, or the right one at the right moment, but then sometimes to find you'd longed to fall asleep reading the Aspern Papers, and there it is."

― Louise Erdrich, Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country

[kennyc]

"Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one."
- Terry Pratchett

[covingtoncat73]

“So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?' Mr. Okamoto: 'That's an interesting question.' Mr. Chiba: 'The story with animals.' Mr. Okamoto: 'Yes. The story with animals is the better story.' Pi Patel: 'Thank you. And so it goes with God.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

[WT Sharpe]

Dr. Chumley, my mother used to say to me, "In this world Elwood"—she always called me Elwood—she'd say, "In this world, Elwood, you must be oh, so smart or oh, so pleasant." For years I was smart. I recommend pleasant.
— Mary Chase (1907-1981), US playwright. Harvey, act III (1944).

[covingtoncat73]

“Come, and take choice of all my library/And so beguile thy sorrow…” William Shakespeare, Titus A., Act IV Scene I

[astrangerhere]

As literature has descended into mere entertainment via a deliberate vandalism and diminishment of our once-proud language, authors also have begun leaping around between and into their characters' minds for no other reason than that they can.

Dan Simmons | The Fifth Heart

[covingtoncat73]

“We can’t hide it or fake it. We’ll never fit society’s idea for how women should look and behave, but why is that a tragedy? We’re free to live how we want. It’s liberating, if you choose to see it that way.”
― Sarai Walker, Dietland

“Sometimes the fluffy bunny of incredulity zooms around the bend so rapidly that the greyhound of language is left, agog, in the starting cage.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“That’s the difference between heaven and hell! In hell we starve! In heaven we feed each other!”
-Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“I educated myself, discovered my gift for language, learned that the larger world lay not across oceans but within the human mind and heart.”
― Greg Iles, The Quiet Game

[kennyc]

“If you don't like someone's story, write your own.”
― Chinua Achebe (author of "Things Fall Apart" a title I dearly love!)

[covingtoncat73]

Originally Posted by kennyc

“If you don't like someone's story, write your own.”
― Chinua Achebe (author of "Things Fall Apart" a title I dearly love!)

That is exactly why I wrote my first fan fiction. It was in response to someone else's fic that I didn't agree with.

It is lunchtime, people!

“He sat down in a corner and ordered half a pound of dumplings, which came in a white bowl with a blue rim. While he was eating, his memory was further revived and sharpened by the familiar taste of the stuffing, made of pork, leeks, cabbage, dried shrimp, ginger, sesame oil. Every bit of the memory became unmistakable now.”


― Ha Jin, Alive

[bfisher]

"Joyce was right about history being a nightmare - but it may be the nightmare from which no one can awaken. People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them."

James Baldwin - Notes of a Native Son

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by bfisher

"Joyce was right about history being a nightmare - but it may be the nightmare from which no one can awaken. People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them."

James Baldwin - Notes of a Native Son

Wonderful book, wonderful writer!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Baldwin

[kennyc]

"Nobody really knows or understands and nobody has ever said the secret. The secret is that it is poetry written into prose and it is the hardest of all things to do..."

- Mary Hemingway from How It Was.