Famous Quotes & Sayings

Charles Dickens

If her eyes had no expression, it was probably because they had nothing to express. If she had few wrinkles, it was because her mind had never traced its name or any other inscription on her face.

Charles Dickens

"My comfort is," said Susan, looking back at Mr. Dombey, "that I have told a piece of truth this day which ought to have been told long before and can't be told too often or too plain..."

Charles Dickens

"You are a boy," said Mr. Dombey, suddenly and almost fiercely; "and what you think of, or affect to think of, is of little consequence. You have done well, Sir. Don't undo it."

Charles Caleb Colton

Living authors, therefore, are usually, bad companions. If they have not gained character, they seek to do so by methods often ridiculous, always disgusting; and if they have established a character, they are silent for fear of losing by their tongue what they have acquired by their pen--for many authors converse much more foolishly than Goldsmith, who have never written half so well.

Charles Caleb Colton

When certain persons abuse us, let us ask ourselves what description of characters it is that they admire; we shall often find this a very consolatory question.

Charles Caleb Colton

We should not be too niggardly in our praise, for men will do more to support a character than to raise one.

Charles Caleb Colton

Very great personages are not likely to form very just estimates either of others or of themselves; their knowledge of themselves is obscured by the flattery of others; their knowledge of others is equally clouded by circumstances peculiar to themselves. For in the presence of the great, the modest are sure to suffer from too much diffidence, and the confident from too much display.

Charles Caleb Colton

Words are in this respect like water, that they often take their taste, flavour, and character, from the mouth out of which they proceed, as the water from the channel through which it flows.

Charles Caleb Colton

Short as life is, some find it long enough to outlive their characters, their constitutions and their estates.

Tom Bissell

My fiction-writing DNA shows in how I think about prose, how I think about the page, how I think nonfiction stories should work. And every piece of nonfiction I write, I want it to have fictional texture.

Christian McKay

It's more difficult playing a real-life person than a fictional character - you can go easy on yourself with a fictional character.

Cary Fukunaga

I began writing fictional stories and little screenplays when I was in fifth grade.

Allan Gurganus

When I grew up, there were locked cabinets in public libraries. You needed parental permission if you were under eighteen. I was let down by the overblown reputations of some hardcore fictional works.

Mark Billingham

More than 100 years after he first appeared, Holmes remains the template for the fictional detective.

Annie Baker

I'm really trying to stop setting my plays in this one fictional town in Vermont.

David Guterson

I was totally absorbed in the real world, the politics, the history, the news, and I just couldn't find my way into the fictional world... When I finally could return to writing the novel, it was in fits and starts.

Bob Woods

The story could be set in some fictional place, but it wasn't. They made it personal. They plopped it down in a specific place. People in a small town take a lot of pride in who they are, and that's not who they are. This isn't New York. And then set it in 1963, right? In 1963, they'd make fun of a man if he wore shorts.

Julia Glass

I'm a fictional monogamist - I can only work on one thing at a time - but each novel starts growing in my head when I'm about midway through the previous novel.

Kevin Hallinan

The person knew where he was sitting and positioned himself perfectly.

Leander Paes

Director of any film is very important, and an actor has to leave himself in his hands to mould.

Mark Ruffalo

What makes Hulk afraid? It's himself. It's a version of himself that's weak. It's a version of himself that's vulnerable. It's a child inside of him.

Robert Walzel

When you think of Mozart's piano concertos, you think of them as masterpieces. He invested so much in them, since he wrote these for himself to play.

Jonathan Meyers

Tom runs a very tight ship. You do not turn up late and you don't muck around - he's strict with himself and everyone he works with.

Dick Cheney

Tom Ridge is not a candidate, because he took himself out, ... Wolf Blitzer Reports.

Robert Taggart

We know who the shooter is, ... It would be better for him to turn himself in before we have to find him.

Italo Calvino

The writer is someone who tears himself to pieces in order to liberate his neighbor.

Granth Sahib

O Nanak, the Lord Himself is the Appraiser, who distinguishes the counterfeit from the genuine.

Gretchen Rubin

I love finding - or inventing - ways to categorize people.

Jules Verne

In consequence of inventing machines, men will be devoured by them.

Thomas Heatherwick

I'm wary of the word 'inventing,' because in the British psyche the word 'inventor' is immediately linked with 'mad'. For me, inventing is problem-solving.

Woody Norris

I'm the laziest inventor you ever met. My inventing is in my head - I don't have to be in the lab working and sweating.

Julia Glass

As a writer of fiction, I spend my days inventing real lives for make-believe people; what I create can only seem real.

Anthony Kiedis

Changing and inventing new things is great. That's what we like to do.

Alan Alda

I used to be an amateur inventor when I was a kid; I'm always inventing something.

Chick Hearn

You can't please everybody all the time, but you can please a majority.

Luc Ferrari

When the Domaine Musical started up, I wasn't part of it. They were the major players in contemporary music at that time, braodcasting old and new composers' work. And I wasn't one of them.

Bertolt Brecht

With drooping shoulders The majority sit hunched, their foreheads furrowed like Stony ground that has been repeatedly ploughed-up to no purpose.

Robert Johnston

We have no plans for any major shakeup at this point,

Tim Wilson

We were at a crossroads, whether we were going to have to doze it in or do some major repairs.

Lisa Bonet

The Cosby years were a major part of my life, but it is the past; I don't really concentrate on it.

Robert A. Heinlein

Was there ever a time when the majority was right? Notebooks of Lazarus Long, Robert A

Frank Villante

With the major resource stocks, the fundamentals still look very attractive.

Nykesha Sales

Yeah, I played the majority of the year, but that's just like training. You train all year round anyway, so it's the same thing.

Alan Watts

...the habitual dualist's solution to the problem of dualism: to solve the dilemma by chopping off one of the horns.

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

We have no problems with Jews and highly respect Judaism as a holy religion.

Aiden Wilson Tozer

As God is exalted to the right place in our lives, a thousand problems are solved all at once.

Aiden Wilson Tozer

Because we are the handiwork of God, it follows that all our problems and their solutions are theological.

Aiden Wilson Tozer

The big problem is not whether the Bible is true. The big problem is whether it is true in you.

Justin Davis

We want to sort of put this out there that this is an institutional problem and not just one incident.

Chip Kidd

If you can properly define the problem, then you've already defined the solution as well.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be, rather than recognising how we are.

David Seabury

Those who fume at their problems become their victims.

Lee Siegel

The Web critic relies on his or her readers for attentiveness and approval.

Kathryn Stockett

The first book you write because of the way it makes you feel. The second one you can't help but wonder how it's going to make the reader feel.

Barbara W. Tuchman

I want the reader to turn the page and keep on turning until the end.

Christina Baker Kline

I think a lot of readers are looking for a book they can talk about.

Binyavanga Wainaina

I like the idea of readers feeling a familiarity, whether it's with Africa or childhood.

Tobias Wolff

The reader really has to step up to the plate and read a short story.

Nancy Kress

As a writer, you must know what promise your story or novel makes. Your reader will know.

Khaled Hosseini

Whatever the readers feel when they're reading my books, I feel it tenfold when I'm writing it.

Sarah MacLean

There is a whole generation of romance readers and writers who suffer from what I like to think of as 'Thorn Birds' Fever.

Carolina Herrera

Work doesn't seem to interfere with my life. I have time for everything, even time to be alone.

John Sacchi

We're in a situation where we just can't stop the bleeding. We keep trying to put band-aids on the wound, but nothing seems to help.

Jim Rash

When you stop thinking about something, the idea comes to you. It seems to work.

Nicole Piggott

We're going to do what we've been doing all year. It seems to be working fine.

Arthur Conan Doyle

Anything seems commonplace, once explained.

Kate Grenville

I do feel as if... Look, I think I'm a very kind of ordinary person, and it seems to me that things that are of interest to me will probably be of interest to other people. I'm not exceptional; I don't have exceptional thoughts.

Todd Rundgren

It seems like there are two worlds out there - one that has revolved around 'Breaking Bad,' and then the one that I've been in, which just kind of observes it from afar.

Dan Ariely

There's something about [cyclically] doing something over and over and over that seems to be particularly demotivating.

Ben Stein

I have to tell you I never in my life anticipated getting this old, this fast. It seems as if I were 25 just a few days ago.

Ron Everhart

We're just waiting to see what happens. He's taking his time.

Joseph Bruno

years and years. He was not taking anything.

Lynsey Addario

The fact is that trauma and risk taking hadn't become scarier over the years; it had become more normal.

Diane Tuller

She's only going to get better. I don't like taking her off the court.

Angelo Reyes

We are concerned. We are taking the appropriate measures, but we are not panicking.

Nancy Grace

The reality is, when you're representing someone that's guilty, you're in the position of taking that position.

David Ramsey

The idea of taking what's useful and discarding the rest is something I say to myself almost on a daily basis.

Mohammed Kamal

We are taking nothing for granted. We're taking this vote seriously.

Hans Vestberg

I was taking a break from university so I could play handball full-time for a year.

Hans-Ulrich Obrist

The 21st-century curator works in a supremely globalised reality.

Cy Coleman

We're doing a workshop over the first two weeks of December, I believe, with Graciella Daniele directing it.

Ira Glass

Honestly, I am so ignorant of how dance works that I can't even imagine a story that you would want to tell through movement.

Walead Beshty

My works look to how images are produced, but specially based upon how the material reacts.

Val McDermid

Walking by water frees your creativity. I don't know how it works - there's something about it that's liberating.

Jim Hodges

My latest works are these things with light bulbs.

Frank Thomas

If I'm in a cast, I can't do it. We'll see how it works out, but I'll be around.

Kevin Hassett

I think it's the only way it works politically,

Christopher Walken

As an actor, I'm rather hit and miss; I throw a lot out there, and some of it works and some of it doesn't.