“What a writer wants to do is not what he does.”
Thoughtful feeling
Thoughtful Quotes — page 93 of 303
“Who ever has no fixed opinions has no constant feelings.”
“It is right for you, young men, to enrich yourselves with the spoils of all pure literature; but he who would make a favorite of a bad book, simply because it contains a few beautiful passages, might as well caress the hand of an assassin because of the jewelry which sparkles on his fingers.”
“Our sense of worth, of well-being, even our sanity depends upon our remembering. But, alas, our sense of worth, our well-being, our sanity also depend upon our forgetting.”
“Honesty is a virtue, but not the only one. If you're in a courtroom you need the whole truth and nothing but the truth; in the living room, sometimes you need anything but. Often.”
“Words are the coins making up the currency of sentences, and there are always too many small coins.”
“I raised the camera, pretended to study a focus which did not include them, and waited and watched closely, sure that I would finally catch the revealing expression, one that would sum it all up, life that is rhythmed by movement but which a stiff image destroys, taking time in cross section, if we do not choose the essential imperceptible fraction of it.”
“Every duty we omit obscures some truth we should have known.”
“Every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid.”
“Had my credentials been in order I would never have become a writer. Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”
“Another thing I need to do, when I'm near the end of the book, is sleep in the same room with it...Somehow the book doesn't leave you when you're asleep right next to it.”
“It is easy to flatter; it is harder to praise.”
“Opinions mean nothing; they may be beautiful or ugly, clever or foolish, anyone can embrace or reject them.”
“What we can't speak, we say in silence.”
“For rarely are sons similar to their fathers: most are worse, and a few are better than their fathers.”
“In college, you learn how to learn. Four years is not too much time to spend at that.”
“Without willing it, I had gone from being ignorant of being ignorant to being aware of being aware. And the worst part of my awareness was that I didn't know what I was aware of. I knew I knew very little, but I was certain that the things I had yet to learn wouldn't be taught to me at George Washington High School.”
“I have a lot to say about the world, clearly. I can't put together a clear sentence about it all, but through the work I can say what I think.”
“In other characters, it's driven by insecurity, or it's driven by fear, or - there's always a driver. And all the physical manifestations, you need your way in.”
“We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.”