Famous Quotes Ipsum

Mostly, we authors must repeat ourselves--that's the truth. we have two or three great moving experiences in our lives--experiences so great and moving that it doesn't seem at the time that anyone else has been so caught up and pounded and dazzled and astonished and beaten and broken and rescued and illuminated and rewarded and humbled in just that way ever before. writers aren't people exactly. or, if they're any good, they're a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person. it's like actors, who try so pathetically not to look in mirrors. who lean backward trying--only to see their faces in the reflecting chandeliers. have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? or perhaps you know the silence when you haven't the answer to a question you've been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause in a roomful of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're all alone in the whole house? each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful, if you listen carefully. there must be quite a few things a hot bath won't cure, but i don't know many of them. whenever i'm sad i'm going to die, or so nervous i can't sleep, or in love with somebody i won't be seeing for a week, i slump down just so far and then i say: 'i'll go take a hot bath.' if i had a formula for bypassing trouble, i wouldn't pass it around. wouldn't be doing anybody a favor. trouble creates a capacity to handle it. i don't say embrace trouble. that's as bad as treating it as an enemy. but i do say, meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it. what is to give light must endure burning..

Nothing strengthens the judgement and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility. everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. i could lay here and read all night. i am not able to fall asleep without reading. you have that time when your brain has nothing constructive to do so it rambles. i fool my brain out of that by making it read until it shuts off. i just think it's best to do something right up until you fall asleep. he had a word, too. love, he called it. but i had been used to words for a long time. i knew that that word was like the other, just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that any more than for pride or fear. truth is in the eye of the beholder. weekends don't count unless you spend them doing something completely pointless. think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself. our day-to-day life is bombarded with fortuities, or, to be more precise, with the accidental meetings of people and events we call coincidence. early in the novel that tereza clutched under her arm when she went to visit tomas, anna meets vronsky in curious circumstances: they are at the railway station when someone is run over by a train. at the end of the novel, anna throws herself under a train. this symmetrical composition - the same motif appears at the beginning and at the end - may seem quite 'novelistic' to you, and i am willing to agree, but only on condition that you refrain from reading such notions as 'fictive', 'fabricated', and 'untrue to life' into the word 'novelistic'. because human lives are composed in precisely such a fashion. when i dare to be powerful / to use my strength / in the service of my vision / then it becomes / less and less important / whether i am afraid. anyone can look for fashion in a boutique or history in a museum. the creative explorer looks for history in a hardware store and fashion in an airport. the body of b. franklin, / printer, / like the cover of an old book, / its contents torn out / and / stripped of its lettering and gilding, / lies here / food for worms, / but the work shall not be lost, / for it will, as he believed / appear once more / in a new and more elegant edition / revised and corrected / by the author. and so i choose to go with you / as if the choice were mine to make it is not upon you alone the dark patches fall. but to stand in the sun and melt into the wind? the happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions. ordinary people believe only in the possible. extraordinary people visualize not what is possible or probable, but rather what is impossible. and by visualizing the impossible, they begin to see it as possible. the whole business is built on ego, vanity, self-satisfaction, and it's total crap to pretend it's not. fame lost its appeal for me when i went into a public restroom and an autograph seeker handed me a pen and paper under the stall door. there is something very wonderful in music. words are wonderful enough; but music is even more wonderful. it speaks not to our thoughts as words do; it speaks straight to our hearts and spirits, to the very core and root of our souls. music soothes us, stirs us up; it puts noble feelings in us; it melts us to tears; we know not how - it is a language by itself, just as perfect, in its way, as speech, as words. the real voyage of discovery consists not of seeking new landscapes - but of having new eyes. i love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. the primary and most beautiful of nature's qualities is motion. i preach there are all kinds of truths, your truth and somebody else's. but behind all of them there is only one truth and that is that there's no truth. walter turned on the radio: electric violins wailing, twisted romance, the four-square beat of heart break. trite suffering, but suffering nonetheless. the entertainment business. what voyeurs we all have become. the things we forget may as well never have happened, but she had many memories, both real and illusory, and that was like living twice. she used to tell her faithful friend, the sage tao chi'en, that her memory was like the hold of the ship where they had come to know one another: vast and somber, bursting with boxes, barrels, and sacks in which all of the events of her life were jammed. awake it was difficult to find anything in that chaotic clutter, but asleep she could, just as mama fresia had taught her in the gentle nights of her childhood, when the contours of reality were as faint as a tracery of pale ink. she entered the place of her dreams along a much traveled path and returned treading very carefully in order not to shatter the tenuous visions against the harsh light of consciousness. she put as much store in that process as others put in numbers, and she so refined the art of remembering that she could see miss rose bent over the crate of marseilles soap that was her first cradle. i know that a life without love is no life at all. there i am in younger days, stargazing / painting picture perfect maps / of how my life and love would be / not counting the unmarked paths / of misdirection / my compass, faith in love's perfection / i missed ten million miles of road / i should have seen what is life? it is the flash of a firefly in the night. it is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. it is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset..

I think night-time is dark so you can imagine with less distraction. artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. the stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is. nothing strengthens the judgement and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility. love is a great beautifier. i sincerely hope a new generation will stand up that says: let's develop our brains and not just our bodies. girls that will say to a christina aguilera: you think you're a strong woman because you show your red thong? get a grip and put on some clothes. we are wise, wise women. we are giggling girls. hell has no fury like women's fury. wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been. question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there is one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blind-folded fear. it's awfully hard to be b-b-brave when you are only a very small animal. the sun is always shining. even though clouds may come along and obscure the sun for awhile, the sun is always shining. the sun never stops shining. and even though the earth turns, and the sun appears to go down, it never stops shining. they say that god is everywhere, and yet we always think of him as somewhat of a recluse. the only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible run for office? no. i've slept with too many women, i've done too many drugs, and i've been to too many parties. a bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song. i know that a life without love is no life at all. i think of love, and you, and my heart grows full and warm, and my breath stands still. doubt thou the stars are fine / doubt that the sun doth move / doubt truth be a liar / but never doubt i love. seize the day. make your lives extraordinary. are there not chapters in everybody's life that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of history? i'm at peace with the world. i'm completely serene. i've discovered my purpose in life. i know why i was put here and why everything exists... i am here so everybody can do what i want. once everybody accepts it, they'll be serene too. to look life in the face, always, to look life in the face, and to know it for what it is. at last to know it, to love it, for what it is, and then, to put it away. leonard, always the years between us, always the years, always the love, always the hours.....