Max Gordon > Max's Quotes

“My library is an archive of longings.”
― Susan Sontag, As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980

“You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation.”
― Brigham Young

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.”
― Plutarch

“[Kids] don't remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are.”
― Jim Henson, It's Not Easy Being Green: And Other Things to Consider

“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”
― Margaret Mead

“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”
― Confucius

“All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States -- and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't. ”
― Pete Seeger

“Speaking personally, you can have my gun, but you'll take my book when you pry my cold, dead fingers off of the binding.”
― Stephen King

“Her close friends have gathered.
Lord, ain't it a shame
Grieving together
Sharing the blame.
But when she was dying
Lord, we let her down.
There's no use cryin'
It can't help her now.

The party's all over
Drink up and go home.
It's too late to love her
And leave her alone.

Just say she was someone
Lord, so far from home
Whose life was so lonesome
She died all alone
Who dreamed pretty dreams
That never came true
Lord, why was she born
So black and blue?
Oh, why was she born
So black and blue?

Epitaph (Black And Blue)
Written by: Kris Kristofferson
Note: "Epitaph" is about Janis Joplin.”
― Kris Kristofferson

“The house smelled musty and damp, and a little sweet, as if it were haunted by the ghosts of long-dead cookies.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“An author knows his landscape best; he can stand around, smell the wind, get a feel for his place.”
― Tony Hillerman

“The color of the sky was like a length of white chalk turned on its side and rubbed into asphalt. Sanded--that was how the world looked, worked slowly down to no rough edges.”
― David Guterson, The Other

“I know of a cure for everything: salt water...in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea.”
― Karen Blixen

“And the rest is rust and stardust.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“So, we eat again. Well, perhaps the relationship wouldn’t go anywhere, but I would certainly put on a few pounds.”
― Max Gordon

“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple. With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.”
― Jenny Joseph, Warning: When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple

“Once I start work on a project, I don’t stop and I don’t slow down unless I absolutely have to. If I don’t write every day, the characters begin to stale off in my mind – they begin to seem like characters instead of real people. The tale’s narrative cutting edge starts to rust and I begin to lose my hold on the story’s plot and pace. Worst of all, the excitement of spinning something new begins to fade. The work starts to feel like work, and for most writers that is the smooch of death.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“When we are young, the words are scattered all around us. As they are assembled by experience, so also are we, sentence by sentence, until the story takes shape.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Plague of Doves

“The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.”
― Anna Quindlen

“I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow; but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”
― Agatha Christie

“Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world...would do this, it would change the earth.”
― William Faulkner

“It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.”
― Noël Coward, Blithe Spirit

“When strangers on a train or a plane ask what I do for a living, I say, "I kill people." This response makes for a short conversation. No eye contact and no sudden movement from my seat-mate. Only peace and quiet. Rare is the fellow passenger who asks why I do it.

I suppose I got tired hanging out in a book all day waiting for a story to begin. I write the kind of novels I want to read. And why the theme of solving murders? Violent death is larger than life and it's the great equalizer. By law, every victim is entitled to a paladin and a chase, else life would be cheapened.

And the real reason I do this? My brain is simply bent this way. There is nothing else I would rather do. This neatly chains into my theory of the writing life. If you scratch an artist, under the skin you will find a bum who cannot hold down a real job. Conversely, if you scratch a bum... but I have never done that.

The heart of my theory has puritan roots: if you love what you do, you cannot call it honest work.”
― Carol O'Connell

“Crazy is a place," said Janos. "You go, you come back.”
― Carol O'Connell, Crime School

“And the civilian yelled, "I'm from the Times!" which made him a reporter and thus a legal kill in the codebook of the NYPD.”
― Carol O'Connell, The Chalk Girl

“You know it's a dysfunctional family," said Riker, "when the one you like best is a mass murderer.”
― Carol O'Connell, Winter House

“After my first book was published, I received an envelope full of religious material from a fan who wanted to save my soul. That’s when I knew I was on to something.”
― Carol O'Connell

“Charles did not hear the door close, yet he knew that he was alone. Though he might not always see her coming, he could always tell when he had been left behind. So simple, really. He kept getting hit by the same damn train.”
― Carol O'Connell, It Happens in the Dark