Famous Quotes & Sayings

Charles Dickens

Prowling about the rooms, sitting down, getting up, stirring the fire, looking out the window, teasing my hair, sitting down to write, writing nothing, writing something and tearing it up...

Charles Caleb Colton

Genius, in one respect, is like gold; numbers of persons are constantly writing about both, who have neither.

Charles Caleb Colton

It is curious that some learned dunces, because they can write nonsense in languages that are dead, should despise those that talk sense in languages that are living.

Charles Caleb Colton

He that knows himself, knows others; and he that is ignorant of himself, could not write a very profound lecture on other men's heads.

Charles Caleb Colton

The society of dead authors has this advantage over that of the living: they never flatter us to our faces, nor slander us behind our backs, nor intrude upon our privacy, nor quit their shelves until we take them down.

Charles Caleb Colton

There are three difficulties in authorship: to write anything worth publishing, to find honest men to publish it, and to find sensible men to read it.

Charles Caleb Colton

We should have a glorious conflagration, if all who cannot put fire into their works would only consent to put their works into the fire.

Charles Caleb Colton

The awkwardness and embarrassment which all feel on beginning to write, when they themselves are the theme, ought to serve as a hint to author's that self is a subject they ought very rarely to descant upon.

Charles Caleb Colton

When I meet with any persons who write obscurely or converse confusedly, I am apt to suspect two things; first, that such persons do not understand themselves; and secondly, that they are not worthy of being understood by others.

David Selby

I did a lot of personal appearances because I was under contract to ABC.

Luke Pasqualino

I like a girl that takes pride in her appearance - looks are important to me, but it's also important she gets on with my friends and family. If my parents don't like a girl, then she's instantly a no-go.

E. B. White

The other players did not testify before this committee, ... We are asking for these results in the context of Palmeiro's appearance before the Government Reform Committee.

Marisa Miller

I'm definitely aware that the physical appearance is a very temporary gift. I'm very thankful for the opportunities that I've been able to experience, but I keep it all in check and don't let it consume me.

Gerald Schwartzbach

Was there anything about his appearance or demeanor that evening that struck you as unusual?

Baltasar Gracian

Things do not pass for what they are, but for what they seem. Most things are judged by their jackets.

Atharva Veda

Man is but the Image of God. Even Nature is but an appearance of God; the reality is He alone.

Juvenal

There is no reliance to be placed on appearance.

Juvenal

Trust not to outward show. [Lat., Fronti nulla fides.]

Charles Dickens

Novelties please less than they impress.

David Shields

My medium is prose, not the novel.

David Mitchell

For me, novels coalesce into being, rather than arrive fully formed.

David Mitchell

I'm a novelist, that's how I make my livelihood, and I concentrate on the novels.

David Quammen

I used to read only fiction. Now I don't read much, only occasionally, such as a Cormac McCarthy or a Jim Harrison novel.

Edmond de Goncourt

History is a novel that has been lived, a novel is history that could have been.

David Hume

Such is the nature of novelty that where anything pleases it becomes doubly agreeable if new; but if it displeases, it is doubly displeasing on that very account.

Audrey Tautou

When you decide to adapt some Russian novel, it's like everyone knows about it but nobody has read it.

Carol Shields

This is why I read novels: so I can escape my own unrelenting monologue.