Heather Fowler > Heather's Quotes

“The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.”
― Albert Camus

“The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.”
― Elizabeth Drew

“There was never a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn't be. He is too many people if he's any good.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.”
― Isaac Asimov

“There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn't because the book is not there and worth being written -- it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself.”
― Mark Twain

“Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.”
― Anne Carson (Translator), Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides

“Tell me who loves, who admires you, and I will tell you who you are.”
― Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

“I feel strangely free at such times. To behave properly is to be always courteous, always clever, and subtle and elegant. But now, when I am so alone, I do not have to be any of these things.

For this moment, I am wholly myself, unshaped by the needs of others, by their dreams or expectations or sensibilities.

But I am also lonely. With no one to shape me, who stands here, watching the moon, or the stars, or the clouds?”
― Kij Johnson, The Fox Woman

“The only recognizable feature of hope is action.”
― Grace Paley

“I do not think I have any uncharitable prejudice against the rattlesnake, still, I should not like to be one.”
― Herman Melville

“Do not be afraid; our fate
Cannot be taken from us; it is a gift.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“I must be a mermaid, Rango. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living.”
― Anais Nin

“You remember too much,
my mother said to me recently.
Why hold onto all that? And I said,
Where can I put it down?”
― Anne Carson, Glass, Irony and God

“Though she be but little, she is fierce!”
― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“Desire is no light thing.”
― Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

“Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”
― T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“I am glad you have a Cat, but I do not believe it is So remarkable a cat as My Cat.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual.”
― Angela Carter

“I will tell you what Jeanne was like. She was like a piano in a country where everyone has had their hands cut off.”
― Angela Carter

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
― C.S. Lewis

“′Classic′ - a book which people praise and don't read.”
― Mark Twain