Quotes by Writers - Page 76

Out here we speak Malspeak, a mangle of English and old languages like Spanish, Mandarin, and Russian. Dialects from a time when the land was defined by many borders. Now there’s only one that matters. And I am on the wrong side of it.
Georgia Clark
I'd do anything for you, Tessa. I know you don't realize that now, but you will.
Aileen Erin
There was really way too much hotness going on back there.
Aileen Erin
Dastien ran his fingertips along my jawline "Je suis desole, mon amour.
Aileen Erin
It was more important for me to try, than to not have the chance at all.
Rebecca Donovan
The most important thing is not to let fundraising get you down. Startups live or die on morale. If you let the difficulty of raising money destroy your morale, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Paul Graham
I only need 1 thing: Everything" - Sengoku Nadeko
NisiOisiN
Diligence and Application have their due Encouragement, even in the remotest Parts of the World, and that no Case can be so low, so despicable, or so empty of Prospect, but that an unwearied Industry will go a great way to deliver us from it, will in time raise the meanest Creature to appear again in the World, and give him a new Case for his Life.
Daniel Defoe
A man bumps me on his busy way without so much as an apology. But that is all right. I forgive you, busy man about town with the sharp elbows. Hail and farewell to you! For I, Gemma Doyle, am to have a splendid Christmas in London town. All shall be well.God rest us merry gentlemen. And gentlewomen.
Libba Bray
Being strong-willed is not enough, however. You also have to be hard on yourself. Someone who was strong-willed but self-indulgent would not be called determined. Determination implies your willfulness is balanced by discipline.
Paul Graham
Dogs will give you unconditional love until the day they die. Cats will make you pay for every mistake you've ever made since the day you were born.
Oliver Gaspirtz
Real-life duties eat valuable writing time.
Rayne Hall
Why is joy not considered a fit subject for an artist?
Eugene Manlove Rhodes
I AM NOT about making movies that would be forgotten. I want to make ONLY timeless classics. I don't care if it takes me ten years
Sahndra Fon Dufe
You don't wish me well when you tell me the sky is my limit. You bind me within its realm. I prefer to hear that I am my limit, not the sky, because beyond our sky lays the moon, the sun, the milky way, other universes and the possibilities are limitless.
Sahndra Fon Dufe
The headlines are never in the news! And so, what I am saying is the news is never on the headlines
Sahndra Fon Dufe
A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.
Samuel Johnson
Where did the stereotypical image of the reclusive author in a bathrobe and slippers, indulging in vices and spending hours before a typewriter, even come from? I don't know about you, but most writers don't have the luxury of doing any of this. Otherwise we'd have no life experience and nothing to write about, anyway.
Rebecca McNutt
Yes, I felt very small. The typewriter seemed larger than a piano, I was less than a molecule. What could I do? I drank more.-pg 237
Albert Sánchez Piñol
Belief in God, without belief in the Prophet (SAWW), would still be unbelief.
Wasif Ali Wasif
[Islam] is the dynamic conviction that a person's spiritual and worldly responsibilities are one and the same, that an individuals duty to the community is indistinguishable from his or her duty to God.
Reza Aslan
The Islamic Reformation is already here. We are all living in it.
Reza Aslan
One of the most interesting histories of what comes of rejecting science we may see in Islam, which in the beginning received, accepted, and even developed the classical legacy. For some five or six rich centuries there is an impressive Islamic record of scientific thought, experiment, and research, particularly in medicine. But then, alas! the authority of the general community, the Sunna, the consensus—which Mohammed the Prophet had declared would always be right—cracked down. The Word of God in the Koran was the only source and vehicle of truth. Scientific thought led to 'loss of belief in the origin of the world and in the Creator.' And so it was that, just when the light of Greek learning was beginning to be carried from Islam to Europe—from circa 1100 onward—Islamic science and medicine came to a standstill and went dead....
Joseph Campbell
It is but knowledge, putting it into practice, circumspection, fear of God, and sincerity with Him, August and Majestic is He.
Ahmad ibn Zayn al-Habashi
I lived in my head most of the time— a lonely and messed up place —and suddenly there was a higher force called Allah I could lean on. A companion, who'd travel with me this road less trodden... My life. Islam means surrendering yourself to God.
Fadia Faqir
All these schools of though gradually transformed into legal institutions, the diversity of ideas and freedom of opinion that characterized their early development gave way to rigid formalism, strict adherence to precedent, and an almost complete stultification of independent though
Reza Aslan
Certainly the shahadah contained an important theological innovation, but that innovation was not monotheism. With this simple profession of faith, Muhammad was declaring to Mecca that the God of the heavens and the earth required no intermediate whatsoever, but could be accessed by anyone.
Reza Aslan
No one speaks for God - not even the prophets (who speak about God)
Reza Aslan
From Aus B. Shurahbil" He heard Allah Messenger say: "One who strives to strengthen an oppressor and knows he is an oppressor has already left Islam. Baihaqi
Ahmad Von Denffer
Repentance and yearning, and yearning and repentance: this is the total harvest of life.
Khurram Murad
There should be no difficulty in understanding this love. Each one of you knows what love is. You know how restless one is to get close to whomsoever one loves; what pleasure one feels even in taking the name of the beloved and in taking that name again and again; the earnest zest with which one strives to win over one's beloved, and the extent to which one dreads the displeasure of the beloved. Just keep examining to what extent you have attained this love. Peep into your heart and see what is the place of Allah therein. The same shall be your place to Him.
Khurram Murad
They say that Caliph Omar, when consulted about what had to be done with the library of Alexandria, answered as follows: 'If the books of this library contain matters opposed to the Koran, they are bad and must be burned. If they contain only the doctrine of the Koran, burn them anyway, for they are superfluous.' Our learned men have cited this reasoning as the height of absurdity. However, suppose Gregory the Great was there instead of Omar and the Gospel instead of the Koran. The library would still have been burned, and that might well have been the finest moment in the life of this illustrious pontiff.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
...Turn our thoughts, in the next place, to the characters of learned men. The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning. Read over again all the accounts we have of Hindoos, Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, Teutons, we shall find that priests had all the knowledge, and really governed all mankind. Examine Mahometanism, trace Christianity from its first promulgation; knowledge has been almost exclusively confined to the clergy. And, even since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate a free inquiry? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your legs and hands, and fly into your face and
John Adams
If you are feeling stressed out, stop and take 10 deep breaths...it really does help! Then focus your mind on one thing and one thing only; things are only overwhelming when you look at them all at once.
B. Dave Walters
When the bullseye becomes as big as an elephant in your mind, you won’t be able to miss it.
Alejandro Jodorowsky
You might think that you're ruined. You might think you're defeated. If you love what you're doing you've already succeeded.
George Watsky
A novel is just a story that hasn't yet discovered a way to be brief.
George Saunders
If the US is a human melting pot, then Eastern Europe is a scrap yard.
Péter Zilahy
The Americans have perfected weather forecasts: a model presents a model of the Earth, a map, and jabs at it with her pointer – here and here, this is going to happen. Voodoo.
Péter Zilahy
We are in the Dark to one another's Purposes and Intendments, and there are a thousand Intrigues in our little Matters, which will not presently confess their Design, even to sagacious Inquisitors...
Joseph Glanville
And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. (“How to Write with Style”. Essay, 1985)
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
I've never yet run out of ideas what to write about... only out of time to write it in.
Rayne Hall
When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
But apart from these lazinesses of logic, what makes the story so tired is the failure of the writer to reach for anything but the nearest cliche'. "Shouldered his way," "only to be met," "crashing into his face," "waging a lonely war," "corruption that is rife," "sending shock waves," "New York's finest," - these dreary phrases constitute writing at its most banal. We know just what to expect. No surprise awaits us in the form of an unusual word, an oblique look. We are in the hands of a hack, and we know it right away, We stop reading.
William Zinsser
It wont do to say that the reader is too dumb or too lazy to keep pace with the train of thought. If the reader is lost, it's usually because the writer hasn't been careful enough
William Zinsser
Beware, then, of the long word that's no better than the short word: "assistance" (help), "numerous" (many), "facilitate" (ease), "Individual" (man or woman), "remainder" (rest), "initial" (first), "implement" (do), "sufficient" (enough), "attempt" (try), "referred to as" (called), and hundreds more. Beware of all the slippery new fad words: paradigm and parameter, prioritize and potentialize. They are all weeds that will smother what you write. Don't dialogue with someone you can talk to. Don't interface with anybody.
William Zinsser
But on the question of who you're writing for, don't be eager to please.
William Zinsser
Learn to enjoy this tidying process. I don't like to write; I like to have written. But I love to rewrite. I especially like to cut: to press the DELETE key and see an unnecessary word or phrase or sentence vanish into the electricity. I like to replace a humdrum word with one that has more precision or color. I like to strengthen the transition between one sentence and another. I like to rephrase a drab sentence to give it a more pleasing rhythm or a more graceful musical line. With every small refinement I feel that I'm coming nearer to where I would like to arrive, and when I finally get there I know it was the rewriting, not the writing, that wont the game.
William Zinsser
Leave me to die a lonely death. An artist’s death. A writer’s playground. A painter’s background. A philosopher’s bread and butter.An endeavor that we all face. I just hope that I’m not the only one there.
A.P. Sweet
I see the game now. You can't write with ink, and you can't write with your own heart's blood, but you can write with the heart's blood of some one else. You have to be a cad before you can be an artist. O’Henry 'The Plutonian Fire' (1905)
o.henry
A professional man of letters, especially if he is much at war with unscrupulous enenemies, is naturally jealous of his privacy... so it was, I think, with Dryden.
Walter Raleigh
The stories that unfold in the space of a writer's study, the objects chosen to watch over a desk, the books selected to sit on the shelves, all weave a web of echoes and reflections of meanings and affections, that lend a visitor the illusion that something of the owner of this space lives on between these walls, even if the owner is no more.
Alberto Manguel
A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.
Karl Kraus
Let the water flow beneath the bridge; let men be men, that is to say, weak, vain, inconstant, unjust, false, and presumptuous; let the world be the world still; you cannot prevent it. Let every one follow his own inclination and habits; you cannot recast them, and the best course is, to let them be as they are and bear with them. Do not think it strange when you witness unreasonableness and injustice; rest in peace in the bosom of God; He sees it all more clearly than you do, and yet permits it. Be content to do quietly and gently what it becomes you to do, and let everything else be to you as though it were not.
François Fénelon
What America is, to me, is a guy doesn't want to buy, you let him not buy, you respect his not buying. A guy has a crazy notion different from your crazy notion, you pat him on the back and say, Hey pal, nice crazy notion, let's go have a beer. America, to me, should be shouting all the time, a bunch of shouting voices, most of them wrong, some of them nuts, but please, not just one droning glamorous reasonable voice.
George Saunders
I feel like there are fifty ways it's my fault. I fantasized. I took the big pill and the small pill, stuffed myself with substances to make being out in the world with people my own age a little easier. To lessen the space between me and everyone else. I was hungry to be seen. But I also know that at no moment did I consent to being handled that way.
Lena Dunham
Tell me about love when you've been with someone for years, cared for them when they're ill, put up with them when they're miserable or grumpy, taken the sharp side of their tongue and still come back. Tell me about love when you've acted quite appallingly, and the other person has still accepted you.
Mark Chadbourn
Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves - regret for the past and fear of the future.
Fulton Oursler
But in some great souls, who consider themselves as citizens of the world, and forcing the imaginary barriers that separate people from people...
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Well, I must endure the presence of two or three caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies. It seems that they are very beautiful.And if not the butterflies– and the caterpillars– who will call upon me? You will be far away. . . as for the large animals– I am not at all afraid of any of them. I have my claws.”And, navely, she showed her four thorns. Then she added:“Don’t linger like this. You have decided to go away. Now go!”For she did not want him to see her crying. She was such a proud flower. . .
Antoine De Saint Exupery