Alison E. > Alison's Quotes

“Recipe For Greatness - To bear up under loss; To fight the bitterness of defeat and the weakness of grief; To be victor over anger; To smile when tears are close; To resist disease and evil men and base instincts; To hate hate and to love love; To go on when it would seen good to die; To look up with unquenchable faith in something ever more about to be. That is what any man can do, and be great.”
― Zane Grey

“So that's troublin' you? I reckon it needn't. You see it was this way. I come round the house an' seen that fat party an' heard him talkin' loud. Then he seen me, an' very impolite goes straight for his gun. He oughtn't have tried to throw a gun on me - whatever his reason was. For that's meetin' me on my own grounds. I've seen runnin' molasses that was quicker'n him. Now I didn't know who he was, visitor or friend or relation of yours, though I seen he was a Mormon all over, an' I couldn't get serious about shootin'. So I winged him - put a bullet through his arm as he was pullin' at his gun. An' he droppped the gun there, an' a little blood. I told him he'd introduced himself sufficient, an' to please move out of my vicinity. An' went" - Lassiter”
― Zane Grey, Riders of the Purple Sage

“The trail is the thing, not the end of the trail. Travel too fast,
and you miss all you are traveling for.”
― Louis L'Amour

“One day I was speeding along at the typewriter, and my daughter - who was a child at the time - asked me, "Daddy, why are you writing so fast?" And I replied, "Because I want to see how the story turns out!”
― Louis L'Amour

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”
― Louis L'Amour

“I wonder why it is the man who pleads for mercy never gives it.”
― Louis L'Amour, The Quick and the Dead

“It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars.”
― Garrison Keillor

“I've seen the truth, and it makes no sense.”
― Garrison Keillor

“I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it. ”
― Garrison Keillor

“If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.”
― Emily Dickinson

“‎"Today's dirty hands are tomorrow's muddy water”
― Danielle Hylton-Outland

“I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.”
― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on”
― Louis L'Amour

“Love is a moment of stillness that sometimes a word can shatter to pieces. Or love can be a thing that endures, a rich, deep current flowing unending through the years.”
― Louis L'Amour

“If you want the law to leave you alone, keep your hair trimmed and your boots shined.”
― Louis L'Amour, The Man Called Noon

“Coffee is a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your older self.”
― Terry Pratchett, Thud!

“Who shall I shoot? You choose. Now, listen very carefully: where's your coffee? You've got coffee, haven't you? C'mon, everyone's got coffee! Spill the beans!”
― Terry Pratchett, Monstrous Regiment

“Grandma was wearing a blond Marilyn Monroe wig, a hot pink tank top, black Pilates pants, and black kitten heels. She looked like the senior version of an inflatable sex toy doll that needed more air.”
― Janet Evanovich, Notorious Nineteen

“If I let her in I'm doomed. It's like inviting a vampire into your house. Once you've invite them in, that's it, you're good as dead!”
― Janet Evanovich

“Ranger is an unusual name," she managed. "Is it a nickname?"
It's a street name," Ranger said. "I was a Ranger in the army."
I heard about them Rangers on TV," Grandma said. "I heard they get dogs pregnant."
My father's mouth dropped open and a piece of ham fell out.
My mother froze, her fork poised in midair.
That's sort of a joke," I told Grandma. "Rangers don't get dogs pregnant in real life."
I looked at Ranger for corroboration and got another smile.”
― Janet Evanovich, Three to Get Deadly

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“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

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

“Life is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal.”
― Neil Gaiman

“Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it's always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins.”
― Neil Gaiman

“It is not the strength of the body that counts, but the strength of the spirit.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“I ain't afraid to love a man. I ain't afraid to shoot him either.”
― Annie Oakley

“Mr. Edwards admired the well-built, pleasant house and heartily enjoyed the good dinner. But he said he was going on West with the train when it pulled out. Pa could not persuade him to stay longer.
"I'm aiming to go far West in the spring," he said. "This here, country, it's too settled up for me. The politicians are a-swarming in already, and ma'am if'n there's any worse pest than grasshoppers it surely is politicians. Why, they'll tax the lining out'n a man's pockets to keep up these here county-seat towns..."
"Feller come along and taxed me last summer. Told me I got to put in every last thing I had. So I put in Tom and Jerry, my horses, at fifty dollars apiece, and my oxen yoke, Buck and Bright, I put in at fifty, and my cow at thirty five.
'Is that all you got?' he says. Well I told him I'd put in five children I reckoned was worth a dollar apiece.
'Is that all?' he says. 'How about your wife?' he says.
'By Mighty!' I says to him. 'She says I don't own her and I don't aim to pay no taxes on her,' I says. And I didn't.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter

“That's okay," I said. "We're writers. We make things up.”
― John Irving, In One Person

“[Comedies], in the ancient world, were regarded as of a higher rank than tragedy, of a deeper truth, of a more difficult realization, of a sounder structure, and of a revelation more complete. The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man.... Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachments to the forms; comedy, the wild and careless, inexhaustible joy of life invincible.”
― Joseph Campbell