I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession.~ John Steinbeck
In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.
~ John Steinbeck
It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.
~ John Steinbeck
The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.
~ John Steinbeck
I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.~ Jack London
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
~ Jack London
Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.
~ Gene Fowler, author of Border Radio : Quacks, Yodelers, Pitchmen, Psychics, and Other Amazing Broadcasters of the American Airwaves
Get yourself in that intense state of being next to madness. Keep yourself in, not necessarily a frenzied state, but in a state of great intensity. The kind of state you would be in before going to bed with your partner. That heightened state when you're in a carnal embrace: time stops and nothing else matters. You should always write with an erection. Even if you're a woman.
~ Tom Robbins, author of Still Life with a Woodpecker and Even Cowgirls Get The Blues
“I made some studies, and reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it. I can take it in small doses, but as a lifestyle, I found it too confining. It was just too needful; it expected me to be there for it all the time, and with all I have to do--I had to let something go.”
~ Trudy the Bag Lady from Jane Wagner's The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe
"When the power of love overcomes the love of power... the world will know peace"~ Jimi Hendrix
"Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens."
~ Jimi Hendrix
"Mountains it is then. We'll rent a cabin with a hot tub, get naked, unwind, and shock the squirrels."
~Dane Hollister to Marlie Keen, Dream Man by Linda Howard, 1994
"When I'm there, I'm not here...I can't talk about my singing; I'm inside it. How can you describe
something you're inside of?"~Janis Joplin
“Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers. You can fill your life up with ideas and still go home lonely. All you really have that really matters are feelings. That’s what music is to me.”
~Janis Joplin
"Wait a minute. Nice boys don't kiss like that." (Bridget Jones)
"Oh, yes, they fucking do." (Mark Darcy)
~ Bridget Jones' Diary
"Dying is easy for men like us. It's living that's hard."~ Clint Eastwood as the Outlaw Josey Wales, 1976
“When a man lies, he murders some part of the world.”
~ Merlin, Excalibur, 1999
“I have walked my way since the beginning of time. Sometimes I give, sometimes I take, it is mine to know which and when!”
~ Merlin, Excalibur, 1999
"We romanticise... We shifted the balance because someone’s got to be the good guy against the bad guy; that’s the way stories are told."~ Mel Gibson on William Wallace, 26 Oct 2009
"Write with passion in your heart; edit with ice in your veins."
~ Dermont Bolger, Irish novelist
"I've done the right thing before. Now I want to try the wrong thing and see how that goes."
~ line from Greys Anatomy
"Every new book is like climbing a mountain, one freakin' word at a time."
~ Cat Grant, erotic romance author
"If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything."
~ Marty McFly, Back to the Future
"I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without expectations of rewards or punishments after I am dead."~ Kurt Vonnegut, in a letter to American Humanist Association members
"It is weird to submit a story you've written to a publisher to look at. Once it leaves my harddrive, it's no longer mine; it belongs to everyone who reads it. This is as close as I'll come to having children. I guess it's like hoping your kid makes the little league team, or the cheer-leading squad. Worried as much about them being accepted as being rejected."
~ Marc Ferris, my buddy!
"You, sir, do not fight like a gentleman."
"Guess we're even because you sure don't kiss like a lady."
~ Mia Marlow, Touch Of A Thief
"It’s funny the way a kiss stays with you. How it lingers. How you can feel it long after it ends. I understand what amputees mean when they speak of phantom limbs. It’s there, but it isn’t. You know it isn’t. But you feel it’s still with you."
~ David Robinson, Who Murdered Garson Talmadge
"If you write 300,000 words a year, there's s good chance you might be able to sift out a good 90,000 that aren't absolute crap."
~ Michael Hiebert, author of Alvin, Alabama Series
"We fear death because we're both knowing only life."
~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
"It has nothing to do with the credibility of the truth. It has to do with the popularity of the idea."
~ Ricky Gervais
“For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountaintop,then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shal claim your limbs,then shall you truly dance.”
"Bravery is doing something you gotta do, even though you're scared to death."
― Elliot Stabler, Law & Order: Criminal Intent
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.”
― Ambrose Redmoon
"Якщо боїшся вовка, не ходи в ліс."
"If you're afraid of the wolf, don't go into the forest."
― Ukrainian proverb
We all have two lives. The second one begins when we realize we really only have one.
― Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities, ep 7: The Viewing
