I tell you this because books for young readers are so often written about that very moment: the moment of the fork. The moment the old man cannot return to.
Occasionally if I look back at something I've written I'll find one of those that I don't understand, but that's a bad thing - the unconscious has dealt me a bad hand.
(I) only write it now because I have grown to believe that there is no dangerous idea, which does not become less dangerous when written out in sincere and careful English. ("The Adoration of The Magi")
I think I felt compelled in a way because if I hadn't written the part, I never would have been offered the part. There are at least 10 guys who would have been offered the part before me.
Wagner's philosophy had absolutely nothing to do with Bruckner. Bruckner hadn't written a single word against Jews. Wagner's book on the Jews was one of the most infamous books of the 19th century.
I've written books for awhile, but always on a pretty small scale and always pretty self-indulgent. I chose projects that I thought would be really fun to work on and found friends to work on them with me, and it was all about the process.
You've got to put interesting people around you; you've got to work with people who are gonna inspire you to take the songs you've written into a completely different direction, because there's nothing more boring than going to the studio and predict...
In my first 15 or 20 years of authorship, I was almost never asked to give a speech or an interview. The written work was supposed to speak for itself, and to sell itself, sometimes even without the author's photograph on the back flap.
I'd want to read the stories that I'd written, I'd want to show the drawings that I made. That was just purely natural. So I knew I wanted to go into the arts in some way and that I'd want to show that work in some way.
It is probably true that I would not have had as many children or mothers in my books without being a mother with children. It is definitely true that I would not have written about the Civil War without having a little guy who was obsessed with it.
How can I ever make you understand Cassie and me? I would have to take you there, walk you down every path of our secret shared geography. The truism says it’s against all odds for a straight man and woman to be real friends, platonic friends; we r...
Beware the man who lavishes too much praise on you, he will later run you down.
Every man goes down to his death bearing in his hands only that which he has given away.
Death is a black camel that lies down at every door. Sooner or later you must ride the camel.
Raven briefly pondered the phrase, "staring down the barrel of a gun". It wasn't really that accurate, he decided. After all, it was too dark to see any features down a barrel, only a black circle at the end of it.
It snowed last year too: I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea.
It's always the same with lost people; you start out looking for them, and you end up losing yourself.
A blanket could be used to lay down the law. Lay it down over there, on top of the bed, and I’ll come over and enforce it.
There is such a thing as the poetry of a mistake, and when you say, "Mistakes were made," you deprive an action of its poetry, and you sound like a weasel.
Riley knelt down, clasping the fur at the back of her neck. “You’re fucking bruised all down your back. Why the hell didn’t you tell me it hurt?”
A brick could be dropped at the feet of your enemy, as a gift, as an insult, as a way of saying “I’ll tear down the wall between us—and tear down the walls of your life.” Then you might try offering him a cheese sandwich.
