Quote collection
626 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Yes, I, well, when I write, as often as I can, I try to write as if I'm talking to people. It doesn't always work, and one shouldn't always try it, but I try and write as if I am talking, and trying to engage the reader in conversation."
"I must have been one of the least surprised people on earth on September 11. I felt very braced for that. I knew something like that was going to come."
"I don't think the war in Afghanistan was ruthlessly enough waged."
"I could not possibly improve on the sentiment, but I don't think it ought to depend on the current austerities. Isn't Christmas a moral and aesthetic nightmare whether or not the days are prosperous?"
"The quality you most admire in a woman? Courage moral and physical: "anima"-the ability to visualize the mind and need of a man. Also a sense of the absurd."
"I do not believe any of the statistical claims that are made about public opinion. I don't see why anybody does."
"Of course, I do everything for money."
"The beauty of science hugely outranks the charms of superstition."
"Heroism breaks its heart, and idealism its back, on the intransigence of the credulous and the mediocre, manipulated by the cynical and the corrupt."
"It's normally agreed that the question 'How are you?' doesn't put you on your oath to give a full or honest answer."
"With modern American dentistry it is simply amazing to see what transformation can be wrought in a single day."
"For a lot of people, their first love is what they'll always remember. For me it's always been the first hate, and I think that hatred, though it provides often rather junky energy, is a terrific way of getting you out of bed in the morning and keeping you going."
"I was precocious enough to watch the news and read the papers, and I can remember October 1956, the simultaneous crisis in Hungary and Suez, very well. And getting a sense that the world was dangerous, a sense that the game was up, that the Empire was over."
"You can be a Polish American, or an Arab American, or a Greek American but you can't be English American. Why not?"
"I don't want them (religious followers) trying to inflict their belief on me."
"One can become quite used to the specter of the eternal Footman, like some lethal old bore lurking in the hallway at the end of the evening, hoping for the chance to have a word. And I don't so much object to his holding my coat in that marked manner, as if mutely reminding me that it's time to be on my way. No, it's the snickering that gets me down."
"It's much worse to see a woman drunk than a man: I don't know quite why this is true but it just is. Don't ever be responsible for it."
"The suicide-bombing community is not absolutely 100 percent religious, but it is pretty nearly 100 percent religious."
"Exceptional claims, require exceptional evidence."
"Chemotherapy isn't good for you. So when you feel bad, as I am feeling now, you think, 'Well that is a good thing because it's supposed to be poison. If it's making the tumor feel this queasy, then I'm OK with it.'"