“There's a marvelous peace in not publishing, there's a stillness. When you publish, the world thinks you owe something. If you don't publish, they don't know what you're doing. You can keep it for yourself.”
Quote collection
Thinking Quotes — page 877 of 4756
“I know he's dead! Don't you think I know that? I can still like him, though, can't I? Just because somebody's dead, you don't just stop liking them, for God's sake--especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that're alive and all.”
“That's the whole trouble. When you're feeling very depressed, you can't even think.”
“If you can't, or won't, think of Seymour, then you go right ahead and call in some ignorant psychoanalyst. You just do that. You just call in some analyst who's experienced in adjusting people to the joys of television, and Life magazine every Wednesday, and European travel, and the H-bomb, and Presidential elections, and the front page of the Times, and God knows what else that's gloriously normal.”
“I think that one of these days," he said, "you're going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you've got to start going there. But immediately. You can't afford to lose a minute. Not you.”
“I don’t think it would have all got me quite so down if just once in a while—just once in a while—there was at least some polite little perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn't, it's just a disgusting waste of time! But there never is! You never even hear any hints dropped on a campus that wisdom is supposed to be the goal of knowledge. You hardly ever even hear the word 'wisdom' mentioned!”
“This fall I think you're riding for—it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn't supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started.”
“Listen," he said. "If you was a fish, Mother Nature'd take care of you, wouldn't she? Right? You don't think them fish just die when it gets to be winter, do ya?" No, but--" You're goddam right they don't”
“My god, there's absolutely nothing tenth-rate about you, and yet you're up to your neck at this minute in tenth-rate thinking.”
“The poor things keep calling in those – those pumbles, I think they're called – you know, the ones who mend pipes and things – " "Plumbers?" " – exactly, yes, but of course they're flummoxed.”
“I'm not so naive that I didn't know or didn't suspect that, at some point, someone was going to say "You're writing about the occult." My wizarding world is a world of imagination. I think it is a moral world.”
“Think your little jokes'll help you on your deathbed?" she jeered. "Jokes? No,no, these are manners," replied Dumbledore.”
“I think the Harry books are actually very moral, but some people just object to witchcraft being mentioned in a children's book.”
“Death obsesses me, yes it does. I can't really understand why it doesn't obsess everyone - I think it does really, I'm just a little more out about it.”
“I don't think I am evangelical in my work.”
“I don't think about who the audience is for my books.”
“I think you're working and learning until you die.”
“Honestly, I think we should be delighted people still want to read, be it on a Kindle or a Nook or whatever the latest device is.”
“Gilderoy Lockhart is also a lot like someone I once knew, but I don't think I'd better elaborate!”
“I think I've really exhausted the magical. It was a lot of fun, but I've put it behind me for the time being.”