“One cup poured into another makes different waters; tears shed by one eye would blind if wept into another's eye. The breast we strike in joy is not the breast we strike in pain; any man's smile would be consternation on another's mouth.”
Thoughtful feeling
Thoughtful Quotes — page 205 of 303
“And must I, perchance, like careful writers, guard myself against the conclusions of my readers?”
“No one will be much or little except in someone else's mind, so be careful of the minds you get into.”
“I wanted to write a book that talked about the emotions of children, which is the rainbow. We all have moods. We talk about being blue when we're sad, and being yellow when we're cowards, and when we're mad, we're red.”
“I don't have anything to say about other people's art and their work.”
“...everyone's life is different, and everyone's journey is different.”
“Perhaps what you call conventionality, I call decency.”
“I write for myself things that I've gone through.”
“My mistakes are no worse than yours.”
“The middle years are ones in which children increasingly face conflicts on their own,... One of the truths to be faced by parentsduring this period is that they cannot do the work of living and relating for their children. They can be sounding boards and they can probe with the children the consequences of alternative actions.”
“I tend to get very suspicious of anything that thinks it's art while it's being created.”
“It's the story of my life. You see, the quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead. Now, as you look through this document you'll see that I've underlined all the major decisions I ever made to make the stand out. They're all indexed and cross-referenced. See? All I can suggest is that if you take decisions that are exactly opposite to the sort of decisions that I've taken, then maybe you won't finish up at the end of your life" --she paused, and filled her lungs for a good should--"in a smelly old cave like this!”
“Why?' is always the most difficult question to answer. You know where you are when someone asks you 'What's the time?' or 'When was the battle of 1066?' or 'How do these seatbelts work that go tight when you slam the brakes on, Daddy?' The answers are easy and are, respectively, 'Seven-thirty in the evening,' 'Ten-fifteen in the morning,' and 'Don't ask stupid questions.”
“He was a man who was charged with the work he did in life because he was not one to ask questions — not so much on account of any natural quality of discretion as because he simply could never think of any questions to ask.”
“I don't go to different countries to criticise their political system and tell them what they should be doing - what do I know?”
“You exaggerate your own reactions.”
“I'll have to look into [Washington] D.C. a bit more. I know it's given over to the administration and the bureaucracy connected to it. It's a super-organism of the American state. But there's also a parallel city in there where normal people live.”
“I always try to address where I am. I'll talk to the people and try to find out what it is about that particular place that makes it distinct from everywhere else.”
“I would never really analyse what I do. I leave that to other people - I'm not a critic. I just want to get on with whatever I have in hand, you know? Just try to make the best job of the available material.”
“In the same way, there is some creature gnawing away inside of me, urging me to do things in different ways.”