Walter Spence > Walter's Quotes

“In each of us there is another whom we do not know.”
― C.G. Jung, Civilization in Transition

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“Few people repent at leisure after taking the high road.”
― Walter Spence

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

“Books. Cats. Life is Good.”
― Edward Gorey

“If there is one thing that marks families with money over the long term it is this: delayed gratification.”
― Bill Bonner, Family Fortunes: How to Build Family Wealth and Hold on to It for 100 Years

“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”
― Dorothy Parker

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
― Groucho Marx

“I had always wondered what Reverend Lovoy meant when he talked about "grace." I understood it now. It was being able to give up something that it broke your heart to lose, and be happy about it.”
― Robert McCammon (Author), Boy's Life

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview - nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty.”
― Stephen Jay Gould

“The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.”
― Katherine Mansfield

“Money can't buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you're being miserable.”
― Clare Boothe Luce

“Some people are like Slinkies. They aren't really good for anything, but they still bring a smile to my face when I push them down a flight of stairs.”
― Patricia Briggs, Iron Kissed

“Ye gods and fishes, lad, every town has its resident witch. Every town hides some old Greek pagan priest, some Roman worshipper of tiny gods who ran up the roads, hid in culverts, sank in caves to escape the Christians! In every tiny village, boy, in every scrubby farm the old religions hide out . . . all the little lollygaggin' cults, all flavors and types, scramble to survive. See how they run, boys!”
― Ray Bradbury

“Why can't people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?”
― David Baldacci, The Camel Club

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

“Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't "try" to do things. You simply "must" do things.”
― Ray Bradbury

“The greatest danger to our future is apathy.”
― Jane Goodall

“I think the act of reading imbues the reader with a sensitivity toward the outside world that people who don't read can sometimes lack. I know it seems like a contradiction in terms; after all reading is such a solitary, internalizing act that it appears to represent a disengagement from day-to-day life. But reading, and particularly the reading of fiction, encourages us to view the world in new and challenging ways...It allows us to inhabit the consciousness of another which is a precursor to empathy, and empathy is, for me, one of the marks of a decent human being.”
― John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things

“Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“We lie best when we lie to ourselves.”
― Stephen King, It

“I think the worst way a writer can self-betray is by not being true to his or her experience of being alive. It’s my belief, for what it’s worth, that a lot of writers consign to the page what they think will meet with the approval, especially in the moral realm, of what their society has preached to them since they were children, almost all of which is utter bull####.”
― Thomas Ligotti

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
― Toni Morrison

“If your writing doesn't keep you up at night, it won't keep anyone else up either”
― James M. Cain

“FEAR stands for fuck everything and run.”
― Stephen King, Doctor Sleep

“Men who fear demons see demons everywhere.”
― Brom, The Child Thief

“In the planning stage of a book, don't plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it.”
― Rose Tremain