Sunny > Sunny's Quotes

“Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.”
― Stephen Fry

“Novels are written—as life is lived—One Day At A Time.”
― Lawrence Block, Writing the Novel: From Plot to Print

“The best time for planning a book is while you're doing the dishes. ”
― Agatha Christie

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

“From here on in I rag nobody.”
― Mark Harris, Bang the Drum Slowly

“The dearest ones of time, the strongest friends of the soul--BOOKS.”
― Emily Dickinson

“You have some queer friends, Dorothy,' she said.

The queerness doesn't matter, so long as they're friends,' was the answer”
― L. Frank Baum, The Road to Oz

“If we walk far enough," says Dorothy, "we shall sometime come to someplace.”
― L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
― Robert Frost

“If you want to write fiction, the best thing you can do is take two aspirins, lie down in a dark room, and wait for the feeling to pass.”
― Lawrence Block, Writing the Novel: From Plot to Print

“There are eight million stories in the naked city," he intoned. "You remember that program? Used to be on television some years back."
"I remember."
"They had that line at the end of every show. ‘There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.’ "
"I remember it."
"Eight million stories," he said. "You know what you got in this city, this fucked-up toilet of a naked fucking city? You know what you got? You got eight million ways to die.”
― Lawrence Block, Eight Million Ways to Die

“I thought, My name is Matt and I'm an alcoholic. A woman I know got killed last night. She hired me to keep her from getting killed and I wound up assuring her that she was safe and she believed me. And her killer conned me and I believed him, and she's dead now, and there's nothing I can do about it. And it eats at me and I don't know what to do about that, and there's a bar on every corner and a liquor store on every block, and drinking won't bring her back to life but neither will staying sober, and why the hell do I have to go through this? Why?”
― Lawrence Block, Eight Million Ways to Die

“Everybody tells me what a timesaver the Internet is, and how they can't believe they ever got along without it. And I know what they mean, but every time I use it I wind up wondering what people did with their spare time before computers came along to suck it all up.”
― Lawrence Block, All the Flowers Are Dying

“One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I’m going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I’ll have lost nothing—writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.”
― Lawrence Block

“I thought I'd go home and reread Sue Grafton. It's been a while since I last read the one about the topless dancer who gets poison injected into one of her implants."
"'D' Is For Cup."
"Right. Bern, you know what I wish? I wish she didn't have to stop at twenty-six. When the alphabet's used up, what happens to Kinsey?"
"Are you kidding? She goes straight into doublé letters. 'AA' Is For drunks, 'BB' Is For Gun, 'CC' Is For Rider. There was a whole list in Publishers Weekly a few months back. 'PP' Is For Golden Showers, 'ZZ' Is For Topp- I can't remember them all, but it looks as though she can go on forever."
"Bern, that's wonderful news."
"You'll be reading about Kinsey fifty years from now," I told her. "'AAA' Is for Motorists, 'MMM' Is for Scotch Tape. You'll never have to stop.”
― Lawrence Block, The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams

“As a friend of mine, herself a writer, says, “People who spend the most meaningful hours of their lives in the exclusive company of imaginary people are apt to be a little strange.”
― Lawrence Block, Telling Lies for Fun & Profit

“Fiction writing starts off by requiring the towering arrogance that enables one to sit down at the typewriter in the belief that someone somewhere will actually be eager to read the productions of our own private imaginations. But that arrogance must be buffered by the humility that leads us to learn our craft and strive to make our work comprehensible and inviting and accessible to the reader.”
― Lawrence Block, The Liar's Bible: A Handbook for Fiction Writers

“Martin Greer Galton had ceased troubling his fellow man in 1964, when a cerebral aneurysm achieved what most of his acquaintances and business associates would have dearly loved to have had a hand in.”
― Lawrence Block, The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons

“fiction works because a part of the mind forgets that it’s fiction while we’re reading it.”
― Lawrence Block, The Liar's Bible: A Handbook for Fiction Writers

“Life, I'd heard someone say, is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel. It seemed to me that it was both at once, even for those of us who don't do much of either.”
― Lawrence Block, A Ticket to the Boneyard

“Tomorrow’s always there, just over the horizon. Until the tomorrows run out.”
― Lawrence Block, A Drop of the Hard Stuff

“People in the real world always say, when something terrible happens, that the sadness and loss and aching pain of the heart will “lessen as time passes,” but it isn’t true. Sorrow and loss are constant, but if we all had to go through our whole lives carrying them the whole time, we wouldn’t be able to stand it. The sadness would paralyze us. So in the end we just pack it into bags and find somewhere to leave it.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Having a grandmother is like having an army. This is a grandchild’s ultimate privilege: knowing that someone is on your side, always, whatever the details.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“I want someone to remember I existed. I want someone to know I was here.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Having a grandmother is like having an army. This is a grandchild's ultimate privilege: knowing that someone is on your side, always, whatever the details. Even when you are wrong. Especially then, in fact. A grandmother is both a sword and a shield.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“One day at a time. One dream at a time. And one could say it’s right and one could say it’s wrong. And probably both would be right. Because life is both complicated and simple. Which is why there are cookies.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Because if a sufficient number of people are different, no one has to be normal.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Forgiving the Day. Even the youngest child could do this; all it required was looking back over the day and dismissing the day’s pains as a thing that were past while choosing to remember as gains lessons learned or moments of insight.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“Life is not a race to restore a past situation. Nor does one have to hurry to meet the future. Seeing how things change is what makes life interesting.”
― Robin Hobb