“The word 'ivory' rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some corpse. By Jove! I've never seen anything so unreal in my life. And outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion.”
Quote collection
Thinking Quotes — page 1007 of 4756
“I don't think it's good to achieve too much at too early an age. What else can the future give you if you've already got all that your imagination has dreamt up for you? A writer is only discovered once in a lifetime, and if it happens very early the impossibility of matching that moment again can have a somewhat corrosive effect on his personality and indeed on the work itself.”
“Men," he began his address to the officers, measuring his pauses carefully. "You're American officers. The officers of no other army in the world can make that statement. Think about it.”
“The essence of life consists in thinking, and being conscious of one's soul.”
“Heaven is for those who think of it.”
“Think of the ills from which you are exempt.”
“I think that one of the challenges for a parent and myself as a parent is that we live in a very electronic media age. That's obvious to everyone. And I'm not opposed to time on computers or time with television or time with any other electronic media but I think that quiet, thoughtful interaction between one's self, your mind and words is an irreplacable thing.”
“There's also a lot of stuff that's not really good that gets written so I say to people who are excited about writing for the first time that if you think you have it, go for it because there are people that achieve it and don't have it.”
“At first we didn't have a lot of access to New York City, but very quickly, I think people recognized if you were on the show that was a good thing. We always saw the show as a love letter to New York City.”
“As an artist, I think you always have to take care of yourself as a person probably even more than the average person because your body is so important to your art.”
“I think Judas was a very devout religious Jewish person. He realizes that Jews had been persecuted and enslaved for thousands of years, and he wants to keep his people from going through that anymore.”
“I just wear what I think looks nice.”
“As a singer, I've always said, "Yes, I smoke weed," when I'm asked. Of course I say yes, because why wouldn't I smoke weed? There are many reasons not to, though not that many compared to the reasons to do it. I've always been open about it ... but people go, "Hippie! No, not listening to you," and I think that's a bloody shame.”
“I think that people are having to do like really crazy things to shock people now, to get people's attention and it kind of, it's this way in lots of different aspects of life. You know, people fight for attention. It's competitive. So they need to be the one that stands out.”
“Madonna's not the best singer in the world, but she was awesome with her entertainment and all of her shock tactics and stuff and that's where it began. She then inspired all sorts of other girls to do that. But I don't know, I just think music's kind of important too. So you've gotta know where that line is especially when you are good at singing.”
“The big, big record labels have so much control. I think too much control that it actually made their artists scared to not do what they were told and then the music suffers because of that dynamic and now there's the power of the download.”
“I don't think I'm morbid by nature. Serious writers have always written about serious subjects. Lighthearted material doesn't appeal to me, and I don't read it. I think I'm a realist, with a realistic sensibility of history and the tragedy of history.”
“I think it's very important for writers and artists generally to be witnesses to the world, and to be transparent. To let other people speak... to travel... to experience the world. And memorialize it.”
“I don't think that any 'ism' is higher than literature or art. So I'm a formalist. I greatly honor and respect the form of a work.”
“And so you must grant to God what is God and not try to think of what you have lost, for that way is madness.”