Quote collection
697 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Charley is a mind-reading dog. There have been many trips in his lifetime, and often he has to be left at home. He knows we are going long before the suitcase has come out, and he paces and worries and whines and goes into a state of mild hysteria."
"It is not good to want a thing too much. It sometimes drives the luck away. You must want it just enough, and you must be very tactful with Gods or the gods."
"Pictures... are also opinions... [they] set down what the camera operator sees and he sees what he wants to see and what he loves and hates and pities and is proud of."
"To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth."
"The design of a book is the pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of a writer."
"Intentions, good or bad, are not enough. There's luck or fate or something else that takes over."
"It was deeply a part of Lee's kindness and understanding that man's right to kill himself is inviolable, but sometimes a friend can make it unnecessary"
"Why, Tom - us people will go on livin' when all them people is gone. Why, Tom, we're the people that live. They ain't gonna wipe us out. Why, we're the people - we go on.' 'We take a beatin' all the time.' 'I know.' Ma chuckled. 'Maybe that makes us tough. Rich fellas come up an' they die, an' their kids ain't no good, an' they die out. But, Tom, we keep a-comin'. Don' you fret none, Tom. A different time's comin'."
"It occurs to me that just as the Carthaginians hired mercenaries to do their fighting for them, we Americans being in mercenaries to do our hard and humble work. I hope we may not be overwhelmed one day by peoples not too proud or too lazy or too soft to bend to the earth and pick up the things we eat."
"What do I want in a doctor? Perhaps more than anything else-a friend with special knowledge."
"For every man in the world functions to the best of his ability, and no one does less than his best, no matter what he may think about it."
"Luck or tragedy, some people get runs. Then of course there are those who divide it even, good and bad, but we never hear of them. Such a life doesn't demand attention. Only the people who get the good or bad runs."
"The ways of sin are curious . . . I guess if a man had to shuck off everything he had, inside and out, he'd manage to hide a few little sins somewhere for his own discomfort. They're the last things we'll give up."
"There's something desirable about anything you're used to as opposed to something you're not."
"Not only do the brave get killed, but the brave have a better chance of it."
"A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool."
"It is the nature of a man as he grows older, a small bridge intime, toprotest againstchange, particularlychangefor the better."