J.S. > J.S.'s Quotes

“People, I just want to say, can't we all get along? Can't we all get along?”
― Rodney King

“I am skeptical about the idea that we can learn much from history, at least in the sense that knowledge of past follies will prevent us from making similar blunders in the future... And yet it is important to know what happened before, and to try and make sense of it. For if we don't, we cannot understand our own times.”
― Ian Buruma

“Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.”
― Henry James

“In classical physics, science started from the belief – or should one say, from the illusion? – that we could describe the world, or least parts of the world, without any reference to ourselves.”
― Werner Heisenberg

“People make mistakes in life through believing too much, but they have a damned dull time if they believe too little.”
― James Hilton, Lost Horizon

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”
― Cicero

“Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he has been robbed. The fact is that most putts don’t drop, most beef is tough, most children grow up to be just like people, most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration, and most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. Life is just like an old time rail journey ... delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders, and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed. The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride.”
― Jenkin Lloyd Jones

“Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.”
― Alice Walker

“It's time to start living the life you've imagined.”
― Henry James

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”
― George Orwell, Why I Write

“Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference. They don't have to make speeches. Just believing is usually enough.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“The idea that creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time... Creative people probably do run a greater risk of alcoholism and addiction than those in other jobs, but so what? We all look pretty much the same when we're puking in the gutter.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“I always, always wanted to be the Dungeon Master because that's where the creativity lies - in thinking up places, characters and situations. If done well, a game can be a novel in itself.”
― Sharyn McCrumb

“The reason you are so sore you missed the war is because war is the best subject of all. It groups the maximum of material and speeds up the action and brings out all sorts of stuff that normally you have to wait a lifetime to get.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“How much the making of a garden, no matter how small, adds to the joy of living, only those who practice the arts and the science can know.”
― E. H. Wilson

“If you want to be a serious writer, throw away your TV. The life of a serious writer and a TV-watcher are incompatible.”
― Sophie Schiller

“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It's like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with the energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals - sounds that say listen to this, it is important.”
― Gary Provost, 100 Ways to Improve Your Writing: Proven Professional Techniques for Writing With Style and Power

“I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don’t remember what I did before that. Just loafed, I suppose.”
― P. G. Wodehouse

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“I think 'write what you know' is the single worst piece of writing advice. Instead, write what you're really interested in. Write what is going to keep you awake at night; write what you don't understand; write to figure something out. Good novels are journeys into the unknown, for their authors as well as their readers.”
― Toni Jordan

“Read to your heart's content. Though if you are a reader, the heart is never content.”
― Jenny Hubbard, Paper Covers Rock

“Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“Scattered wits take a long time in picking up.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“You may get cheated, robbed, and murdered, in London. But there are plenty of people anywhere, who'll do that for you.”
― Charles Dickens

“We spent as much money as we could and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us. We were always more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same condition. There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“If you don't know history, then you don't know anything. You are a leaf that doesn't know it is part of a tree. ”
― Michael Crichton

“His face was uniquely slapable - a nun would have ached to punch him - while his backside cried out to heaven for a well-placed kick.”
― Jonathan Stroud

“They float, ” it growled, “they float, Georgie, and when you’re down here with me, you’ll float, too—”
― Stephen King, It

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
― Mark Twain

“The habit of saying thank you is the mark of a cultivated mind.”
― Gordon B. Hinckley, Way to Be!: 9 Ways To Be Happy And Make Something Of Your Life