Films are wonderful but they do fix an identity. I can't read 'Pride and Prejudice' anymore, for instance, without imaging Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy.
I couldn't resist hiding some historical details and a few clues relevant to the plot and characters of 'A Discovery of Witches' throughout the pages of the novel.
People are so helpful. People will stop what they're doing to show you something, to walk with you through a section of the town, or explain how a suspension bridge really works.
In an exhibition wherein paintings of nudes were commonplace, that of Madame Gautreau in her black evening dress was considered scandalously erotic. -from The Greater Journey
Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard." (Interview with NEH chairman Bruce Cole, , July/Aug. 2002, Vol. 23/No. 4)
The text-book is rare that stimulates its reader to ask, Why is this so? Or, How does this connect with what has been read elsewhere?
If you put your politicians up for sale, as the US does (alone in this among industrialized democracies), then someone will buy them--and it won’t be you; you can’t afford them.
A Protestant has seldom any mercy shown him, and a Jew, who turns Christian, is far from being secure.
If the house is to be set in order, one cannot begin with the present; he must begin with the past.
George W. Bush has much to evaluate: he has presided over the most sweeping redesign of U.S. grand strategy since the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Nothing like that warm and fuzzy Soviet architecture ... Pretty much as close to the Klingon home world as you're gonna get.
Revolution as an ideal concept always preserves the essential content of the original thought: sudden and lasting betterment.
The revival of Islam dates from the early years of the 20th century. It was brought about by their humiliation, by their sense of how low they'd fallen compared with the West.
Few American presidents have been unhappier or lonelier in office than Woodrow Wilson.
A problem with a president who leads by stirring the moral sentiments of voters is that he has got to keep stirring them.
Secrecy is what is known, but not to everyone. Privacy is what allows us to keep what we know to ourselves.
Epidemics follow patterns because diseases follow patterns. Viruses spread; they reproduce; they die.
Germ theory, which secularized infectious disease, had a side effect: it sacralized epidemiology.
Damning taxes is a piece of cake. It's defending them that's hard.
I always just wanted to be a writer, not necessarily a particular kind of writer.
Since childhood, I wrote a lot of fiction, a lot of stories, but I most loved writing essays.
