Steve Anderson > Steve's Quotes

“Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.”
― Norman Mailer

“You know what I did after I wrote my first novel? I shut up and wrote twenty-three more."

("The Castle")”
― Michael Connelly

“When the rich wage war it's the poor who die.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Le diable et le bon dieu

“I always thought everyone was against war until I found out there are those who are all for it, especially those who do not have to go there.”
― Erich Maria Remarque

“Life is a bucket of shit with a barbed wire handle.”
― Jim Thompson

“We're all in this game together.”
― William Styron

“And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“Just tell 'em you're gonna soak the fat boys and forget the rest of the tax stuff...Willie, make 'em cry, make 'em laugh, make 'em mad, even mad at you. Stir them up and they'll love it and come back for more, but, for heaven's sakes, don't try to improve their minds.”
― Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men

“In the worship of security we fling ourselves beneath the wheels of routine-and before we know it our lives are gone.”
― Sterling Hayden, Wanderer

“The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked with dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed.”
― Sterling Hayden, Wanderer

“Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.”
― Doris Lessing

“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”
― Simone Weil

“Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”
― Ernest Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway: A Literary Reference

“All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.”
― John Steinbeck

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”
― Fred Rogers