“Life is short; this being so, who would pursue great things and not bear with what is at hand? These are the ways of madmen and men of evil counsel, at least in my judgment.”
Thoughtful feeling
Thoughtful Quotes — page 198 of 303
“Why do we make so much of knowledge, struggle so hard to get some little skill not worth the effort?”
“That text is known to them that have the patience to read it, possibly one one-hundredth of one percent of the denizens. They forget it, all save a few Western states. I think somebody in Dakota once read it. The Constitution.”
“I swing both ways. I can see things from a kind of conservative point of view and from a more socially liberal or left-wing point of view.”
“Literature wasn't intended to be about perfect people, it was about flaws, very real and very deep human flaws.”
“You can take a picture of New York and one person looking at it will think it looks really depressing, frightening; and someone else will look at it and think of all the fun things you can do in New York. I think songs are kinda like that.”
“What I object to is the hyper-fetishized wedding day, the prioritizing of wedding over marriage. I have a real problem with couples spending far more time discussing the seating arrangement or the color of the bridesmaid's gowns than hashing out, for instance, their feelings about how they intend to handle questions of housework, child-rearing, finances and fidelity for the next four or five decades.”
“By the age of eighteen, a human has acquired enough joy and heartache to provide the food of reflection for a century.”
“The moral duty of the free writer is to begin his work at home: to be a critic of his own community, his own country, his own government, his own culture. The more freedom the writer possesses, the greater the moral obligation to play the role of critic.”
“How could anything non-controversial be of intellectual interest to grown-ups?”
“A woman, as much as a man, is responsible by the age of forty for the character of her face. But women, obeying the biological imperative, strive harder to preserve a youthful appearance (the reproductive look) and lose it sooner.”
“There comes a point, in literary objectivity, when the author's self- effacement is hard to distinguish from moral cowardice.”
“A writer must be hard to live with: when not working he is miserable, and when he is working he is obsessed.”
“Orthodoxy is a relaxation of the mind accompanied by a stiffening of the heart.”
“She gave so many reasons that I've forgotten them all.”
“Any rapidly enacted episode. . .should be seen through only one pair of eyes.”
“I feel that we should try and understand how we as women storytellers have often fallen into the mode of telling stories in the ways in which traditionally men would. I often find that my points of view are expressed by male characters.”
“Whereas I formerly believed it to be my bounden duty to call other persons to order, I now admit that I need calling to order myself.”
“I don't feel I'm qualified to be a coach outside the high school level. I think I would need to do more education to really be a good coach.”
“You can't live your life through your children.”