No matter our talent, we all know in the midnight of our souls that 90 percent of what we do is less than our best.
Stories are full of people who find that, in extreme situations, they’re capable of so much more than they imagined they were. Real life is full of people who find that they’re capable of so much less.
The stories people tell you about themselves seem to retain the possibility of being false. But what you discover about them by yourself seems to be the truth.
In those days I learned that nothing is more frightening than a hero who lives to tell his story, to tell what all those who fell at his side will never be able to tell.
What I learn today I shall know forever. Whether or not I remember that I know it is a different story.
If my mom told one more story about how cute I looked in the bathtub when I was three years old I was going to burrow into the snow and freeze myself to death.
The mind that thought of light, heavy, grey, yellow, still, swift, also conceived of magic that would make heavy things light and be able to fly, turn grey lead into yellow gold, and the still rock into a swift water.
You couldn't relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. You had to accept it as a whole--like the world, or the person you loved.
You see?" The Father whispered as the boy passed without meeting their eyes. "You shouldn't feel ashamed of your problem. Your life experiences oftentimes is the same as someone else's.
Antonia José Bolivar préférait ne plus penser, laissant béantes les profondeurs de sa mémoire pour les remplir de bonheur et de tourments d'amour plus éternels que le temps.
Adán fell asleep to these stories and slept like the dead until the sun struck him in the eyes and the whole long, wonderful summer day started again with the smell of fresh tortillas, manchaca, chorizo, and fat, sweet oranges.
God has given every man an opportunity and a chance to re-write his or her story; it is up to you to use a blunt pen or a ball point . I have chosen a ball point and this is just the beginning.
I discovered ... that a novel has nothing to do with words in the first instance. Writing a novel is a cosmological matter, like the story told by Genesis (we all have to choose our role models, as Woody Allen puts it).
It is a subliminal thing. It is the tick of a clock that has ticked so long one no longer notices. Something is in a room when a man lives in it. Something is not in the room when a man is dead in it.
I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.
I'm in the back of a limousine with Charlie Chaplin and it’s 1928. Charlie is beautiful; his body language seems to skip, and reel and rhyme, heartbreaking and witty at the same time. It seems to promise a better world.
And then what did you do, Lord Oliver?" Karl's eight-year-old daughter gazed up at him in awe, as though this were the best story she had ever heard.
In life, we all have a cross to bear and a unique story to tell. We just hope that someone will take the time to listen.
But it is always easy to put together stories about a past which nobody any longer remembers, like those about journeys to countries where nobody has ever been.
And that, ...is the story of our country, one invasion after another...Macedonians. Saddanians. Arabs. Mongols. Now the Soviets. But we're like those walls up there. Battered, and nothing pretty to look at, but still standing.
I wonder: instead of retreating and hiding, instead of pining for the way it was, what if I accept the way it is? This strikes me as both the most obvious thing in the world and the most profound.
