Roberta Pearce > Roberta's Quotes

“You can't blame a writer for what the characters say.”
― Truman Capote

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories

“The natural tenderness and delicacy of our constitution, added to the many dangers we are subject to from your sex, renders it almost impossible for a single lady to travel without injury to her character. And those who have a protector in a husband have, generally speaking, obstacles to prevent their roving.”
― Abigail Adams

“Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.”
― George Burns

“Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.”
― Francis Bacon

“Say what you will, ’tis better to be left than never to have been loved.”
― William Congreve

“Accept who you are. Unless you're a serial killer.”
― Ellen DeGeneres, Seriously... I'm Kidding

“You couldn't relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. You had to accept it as a whole--like the world, or the person you loved.”
― Stewart O'Nan, The Odds: A Love Story

“We are like sculptors, constantly carving out of others the image we long for, need, love or desire, often against reality, against their benefit, and always, in the end, a disappointment, because it does not fit them.”
― Anais Nin

“Speaking of which, about assuming you had a condom—I just meant that you, with your experience, would be prepared for responsible sex, even if it were on the fly. An intelligent man is prepared for spontaneity.”
― Roberta Pearce, A Bird Without Wings

“. . . I suppose one starts out, as a child, being romantic and dreaming of adventure. Poetic. Then reality comes along, and with it, a whole lot of prose.”
― Roberta Pearce, A Bird Without Wings

“My fantasy was that I was the long-lost switched-at-birth child of wealthy eccentrics. One day, they would find me and take me away from the gypsy caravan that was my life, and give me hot meals, a decent dress, and a pony.”
― Roberta Pearce, A Bird Without Wings

“Yes, he scorned his family’s decadent ways, but perhaps that wasn’t so much about the money per se, but rather the wastefulness of it; the lack of energy and drive it represented, as if the Ransomes were—like that postmodern throng of the famous-for-being-famous set—some odd collection of spoiled Emperor-brats walking a red carpet without any discernible talent to clothe them. The things the Ransomes—and their once-large fortune—could have accomplished . . . they could have changed the world, or at least impacted it in positive ways.”
― Roberta Pearce, A Bird Without Wings

“Didn’t being out in the storm scare you?”
“Try a couple of high-summer prairie storms in a trailer,” she mused. “That either makes you terrified of them or indifferent to them.”
― Roberta Pearce, A Bird Without Wings

“A bride should look chaste—not caught.”
― Roberta Pearce, For Those Who Wait

“They were ancient history. They were so ancient they made ancient history look modern.
Well, okay . . . maybe medieval.”
― Roberta Pearce, For Those Who Wait

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”
― Dr. Seuss, I Can Read with My Eyes Shut!

“Every gay man should be familiar with Bert and Ernie."

"And why is that?"

Reece rolled his eyes, smiling. "Everyone knows that they're lovers."

Ben stopped what he was doing and looked at the man incredulously. "Okay, Reece, seriously, can you hear yourself?"

"They are!" Reece said. "They live together, share a bedroom; I'm telling you the sexual tension is very palpable." Ben raised an eyebrow and said nothing. Reece cleared his throat. "You're going to break up with me now, aren't you?”
― L.A. Gilbert, Witness

“Silence—people are afraid of it—they feel the need to make small talk, anything, just to break the stillness. I don’t feel any such need. To me, silence brings about peace and certitude.”
― Henry Martin, Escaping Barcelona

“T[he rules of writing] require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others.”
― Mark Twain, Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences

“Time plays no role in the life of one man—the subtle consciousness of it floating past me is more than enough. Years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds—what does it matter? Floating by, it rubs against my skin, face, and hair—wearing me down, yet polishing me all the while. Time is like fine grains of sand in a desert storm. At first, you don’t pay any attention to it, but the more it hits you in the face, the more aware of it you become, the more annoying it gets until, one day, you find yourself suffocating. The weight of it eventually bends your spine, until you are crawling on your hands and knees, unable to stand straight. Then comes the time to crawl back into the womb, crawl inside and wait for rebirth.”
― Henry Martin, Eluding Reality

“T[he rules of writing] require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it.”
― Mark Twain, Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences

“Life without risks is like a burrito without Tabasco. Bland, but you’ll still fart.”
― Martyn V. Halm, Reprobate: A Katla Novel

“Chance favours the prepared mind.”
― Louis pasteur

“I suspect the truth is that we are waiting, all of us, against insurmountable odds, for something extraordinary to happen to us.”
― Khaled Hosseini, And the Mountains Echoed

“He smirks at me and it makes me want to slap his face. No, kiss his face. Wait...definately slap his face.”
― Sawyer Bennett, Off Limits

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“I'm torn between none of your business and kiss my ass.”
― Elle Todd, The Vanguard