Frances > Frances's Quotes

“The difference between the truth and a lie is that both of them can hurt, but only one will take the time to heal you afterward.”
― Mira Grant, Feed

“Writers are liars my dear, surely you know that by now?”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country

“Miraculously, smoke curled out of his own mouth, his nose, his ears, his eyes, as if his soul had been extinguished within his lungs at the very moment the sweet pumpkin gave up its incensed ghost.”
― Ray Bradbury, The Halloween Tree

“Résumé
Razors pain you,
Rivers are damp,
Acids stain you,
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful,
Nooses give,
Gas smells awful.
You might as well live.”
― Dorothy Parker, Enough Rope

“Come now, my child, if we were planning to harm you, do you think we'd be lurking here beside the path in the very darkest part of the forest?”
― Kenneth Patchen

“For these beings, fall is ever the normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth....Such are the autumn people.”
― Ray Bradbury

“What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks ‘the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat,’.... And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll come.”
― Maya Angelou

“[On writing:] "There's a great quote by Julius Irving that went, 'Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing them.'"

(One On 1, interview with Budd Mishkin; NY1, March 25, 2007.)”
― David Halberstam, Everything They Had: Sports Writing

“Latro, California: "Terrible diarrhea, Doctor, and I feel so weak!" "Take these pills and come back in three days if you're not better."
Parkington, Texas: "Terrible diarrhea..." "Take these pills..."
Hainesport, Louisiana: "Terrible..." "Take..."
Baker Bay, Florida...
Washington, DC...
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania...
New York, New York...
Boston, Massachusetts...
Chicago, Illinois: "Doctor, I know it's Sunday, but the kid's in such a terrible state - you've got to help me!" "Give him some junior aspirin and bring him to my office tomorrow. Goodbye."

EVERYWHERE, USA: a sudden upswing in orders for very small coffins, the right size to take a baby dead from acute infantile enteritis.”
― John Brunner, The Sheep Look Up

“Just as there are broken people, there are broken places on this earth. Some have always been broken. All cities have such neighborhoods at their edges, and this city is all edges … block after block of bleakly hopeless outskirts. People don’t bury dead cities. They abandon them. They abandon them to the poorest of the poor, to the lost and the doomed.”
― Robert Dunbar, The Streets

“It doesn't matter. I have books, new books, and I can bear anything as long as there are books.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“The reality is that there's no such thing as political correctness; it's a rhetorical device to depersonalize oppression. Being cognizant of and careful with historic trauma of others is what "political correctness" means. It means that the powerful should never attack the disempowered--not because it "offends" them or hurts their "feelings" but because it perpetuates toxic, oppressive systems.”
― Lindy West, The Witches Are Coming

“There's a type of person who thinks he's getting away with something by not believing in anything. But not believing in anything IS believing in something. It's active, not passive. To believe in nothing is to change nothing. It means you're endorsing the present, and the present is a horror[...] Irreverence is the ultimate luxury item.”
― Lindy West, The Witches Are Coming