Mike > Mike's Quotes

“I have always been a lover of the sun, even if, through spending a lifetime in Ireland, I have had little personal connection with it.”
― John Boyne, A History of Loneliness

“Controlling people do not like to be controlled. Controlling people do not like to have their agendas obstructed.”
― Traci Lawrence

“She looked Toby straight in the eye and said very distinctly, ‘My mother always told me there are no shortcuts to any place worth going.”
― Mike Crowl, Grimhilda! - a fantasy for children - and their parents

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“We are not all born at once, but by bits. The body first, and the spirit later... Our mothers are racked with the pains of our physical birth; we ourselves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth.”
― Mary Austin

“If you find holes in my book that you could drive a car through, do not be too sure they were not left there for that express purpose.”
― Mary Austin, The Land of Journeys' Ending

“It's not possible to advise a young writer because every young writer is so different. You might say, 'Read,' but a writer can read too much and be paralyzed. Or, 'Don't read, don't think, just write,' and the result could be a mountain of drivel. If you're going to be a writer you'll probably take a lot of wrong turns and then one day just end up writing something you have to write, then getting it better and better just because you want it to be better, and even when you get old and think 'There must be something else people do,' you won't quite be able to quit.”
― Alice Munro

“If you take a book into your hands, be it 'God's book, or any other useful good book,' rely on God to make it profitable to you. Do not waste time reading unprofitable books. When you read, do so not out of vain curiosity but with love for God's kingdom, compassion for human beings, and the intent to turn what you learn into prayers and praises.”
― Matthew Henry

“Julian Barnes' Sense of an Ending won the Man Booker in 2011. I couldn't make head nor tail of it (I understood the words, they just weren't linked up in a way that made such an accolade rational), plus it was boring. I don't need wizard schools or dragons, but shouldn't something happen in a book? Isn't that what plot means? Don't you hate worthy books that make you feel like a thickie? There is something The Emperor's New Clothes about them: 'Everyone else understands this astonishing work of fiction, except you, you low-brow gimp."

Critical reception only served to underscore my stupidity: 'Do not be misled by its brevity,' said Anna Brookner of The Telegraph, 'it's mystery is as deeply embedded as the most archaic of memories.' I don't know what that means either. Sense of an Ending is, however, being rather wee, perfect for stabilizing a wonky desk.”
― Lisa Scott

“Much have I sorrowed
Learning to my cost
That a book that's borrowed
Is a book that's lost.”
― Arthur Guiterman

“More important than our health?’ she replied. ‘Hasthma, Mr Map! That’s what being stuck in that cupboard’ll lead to: Hasthma with a capital H!”
― Mike Crowl, Grimhilda! - a fantasy for children - and their parents

“Toby looked so miserable the soldiers gathered around him for support. They sang a revised version of their company song:

Buckle for your dust, boys, no flakey diddy-bopping.
Stay tight, and fight the Grimhilda Red Alert.

The second line was adaptable to any situation: the day before it had included references to grizzly bears.”
― Mike Crowl, Grimhilda! - a fantasy for children - and their parents

“This entrance gave access to the psychiatric wards, and to the dementia unit. It was named the George MacGuffin Wing after a man who’d been famous for spending other people’s money faster than his own.”
― Mike Crowl, The Disenchanted Wizard

“One of the women leaped up from her chair. She seemed to grow taller as she stood. Her long diamond earrings not only caught the sun and blinded you, but jangled and knocked against her cheekbones with a sharp tapping sound. ‘Curse those who cursed it!’ she cried, flinging her arms wildly about her, in a way that didn’t at all suit her formal attire.”
― Mike Crowl, The Mumbersons and The Blood Secret

“These thoughts were as familiar to her, and as comforting, as the precise configuration of her knees, their matching but competing, symmetrical and reversible, look. A second thought always followed the first, one mystery bred another: Was everyone else really as alive as she was? For example, did her sister really matter to herself, was she as valuable to herself as Briony was? Was being Cecilia just as vivid an affair as being Briony? Did her sister also have a real self concealed behind a breaking wave, and did she spend time thinking about it, with a finger held up to her face? Did everybody, including her father, Betty, Hardman? If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and everyone’s thoughts striving in equal importance and everyone’s claim on life as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no one was. One could drown in irrelevance. But if the answer was no, then Briony was surrounded by machines, intelligent and pleasant enough on the outside, but lacking the bright and private inside feeling she had. This was sinister and lonely, as well as unlikely. For, though it offended her sense of order, she knew it was overwhelmingly probably that everyone else had thoughts like hers. She knew this, but only in a rather arid way; she didn’t really feel it.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement