Ali > Ali's Quotes

“Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 6: Fables & Reflections

“It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.”
― Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.”
― Terry Pratchett

“A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.”
― Terry Pratchett

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
― Mark Twain

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
― H. Jackson Brown Jr., P.S. I Love You

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”
― Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain: A Book of Quotations

“Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.”
― Mark Twain

“There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.”
― Mark Twain

“The most interesting information come from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.”
― Mark Twain

“The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in heaven.”
― Mark Twain

“If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
― Stephen King

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”
― Robert Frost

“Always be a poet, even in prose.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“Don't say it was delightful; make us say delightful when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers Please will you do the job for me.”
― C.S. Lewis

“If you have come to these pages for laughter, may you find it.
If you are here to be offended, may your ire rise and your blood boil.
If you seek an adventure, may this song sing you away to blissful escape.
If you need to test or confirm your beliefs, may you reach comfortable conclusions.
All books reveal perfection, by what they are or what they are not.
May you find that which you seek, in these pages or outside them.
May you find perfection, and know it by name.”
― Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal

“Oh, I get it," I said. "It's a parable. Cute. Let's go eat.”
― Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal

“If you can't change your fate, change your attitude.”
― Amy Tan

“Chance is the first step you take, luck is what comes afterward.”
― Amy Tan, The Kitchen God's Wife

“Everyone must dream. We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming - well, that's like saying you can never change your fate. Isn't that true?”
― Amy Tan, The Hundred Secret Senses

“I have loved works of fiction precisely for their illusions, for the author's sleight-of-hand in showing me the magic, what appeared in the right hand but not in the left...”
― Amy Tan, Saving Fish from Drowning

“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.”
― Virginia Woolf

“But then anyone who's worth anything reads just what he likes, as the mood takes him, and with extravagant enthusiasm.”
― Virginia Woolf

“Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title.”
― Virginia Woolf

“Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“They say that 'Guns don't kill people, people kill people.' Well I think the gun helps. If you just stood there and yelled BANG, I don't think you'd kill too many people.”
― Eddie Izzard

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.”
― Carl Sagan