Famous Quotes & Sayings

Goldwin Smith

I heard Thackeray thank Heaven for the purity of Dickens. I thanked Heaven for the purity of a greater than Dickens - Thackeray himself.

Douglas Adams

One of the most blissful joys of the English language is the fact that one of its greatest practitioners ever, one of the guys on the very top table of all, was a jokesmith. Though maybe it shouldn't be that big a surprise. Who else would be up there? Austen, of course, Dickens and Chaucer. The only one who couldn't make a joke to save his life would be Shakespeare.

Simon Schama

My father read Dickens out loud. My mother would say 'We're going to the workhouse'. This to me was real. I was headed for the gruel.

George Saintsbury

Between Scott on the earlier side and Dickens and Thackeray on the other, there was an immense production of novels, illustrated by not a few names which should rank high in the second class, while some would promote more than one of them to the first.

Ronald Frame

The gift of a writer as good as Dickens is not to explain everything; that way, the reader has, in terms of their imagination, somewhere to go.

Randy Lambert

Bo just shot the dickens out of it.

Claire Tomalin

As a young man, Dickens worked as a reporter in the House of Commons and hated it. He felt that all politicians spoke with the same voice.

Claire Tomalin

After Shakespeare, Dickens is the great creator of characters, multiple characters.

Claire Tomalin

Dickens had more energy than anyone in the world, and he expected his sons to be like him, and they couldn't be.

Ludivine Sagnier

It's impossible to explain to people who you are in a five-minute interview on TV.

Tom Fitzgerald

We've all had explained as to what is going to be called. Players were on the rules committee, so we all have to adjust.

Karen Hughes

We're in a war on terror. We are still at war. And to succeed in this war, we must effectively explain our policies and fundamental values to people around the world,

Nayvadius Cash

I feel like guitar explains a lot. You can just listen to a guitar without any lyrics over it; you can just feel what kind of track it is. If it's pain... you can feel it. It sets the mood.

Sarah West

Years at sea probably explains why I'm single. But every person in the military makes sacrifices.

Kristy Curry

We explained to all of them they were going to have to get their feet set, square their shoulders, be fundamental and knock three's down.

Brad Richards

We're just fragile right now. Wish I could explain why.

Lawrence M. Krauss

To the extent that we even understand string theory, it may imply a massive number of possible different universes with different laws of physics in each universe, and there may be no way of distinguishing between them or saying why the laws of physics are the way they are. And if I can predict anything, then I haven't explained anything.

Kevin McDonald

I can't explain it, but spiritually it makes sense - though I don't understand how it does make sense.

Charles Dickens

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.

Charles Dickens

Try not to associate bodily defect with mental, my good friend, except for a solid reason

Charles Caleb Colton

Of two evils, it is perhaps less injurious to society, that good doctrine should be accompanied by a bad life, than that a good life should lend its support to a bad doctrine.

Charles Dickens

A good thing can't be cruel.

Charles Simmons

Promptitude is not only a duty, but is also a part of good manners; it is favorable to fortune, reputation, influence, and usefulness; a little attention and energy will form the habit, so as to make it easy and delightful.

Alan Moore

If you give me a typewriter and I'm having a good day, I can write a scene that will astonish its readers. That will perhaps make them laugh, perhaps make them cry - that will have some emotional clout to it. It doesn't cost much to do that.

Alan Alda

The best things said come last. People will talk for hours saying nothing much and then linger at the door with words that come with a rush from the heart.

Akira Kurosawa

A truly good movie is enjoyable too. There’s nothing complicated about it.

Brian Nicola

We want them all to go on, and realistically they all have a shot. They all want to be state-placers and they're all looking to be pretty tough. I just want them all to have a good time.

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.

David Duchovny

Fame does lead to money, which I don't have a close relationship with. I'm the kind of guy who never sees the money - it all goes somewhere else. I don't understand it, I don't like to deal with it. I have a fear of not having it, because I grew up without it.

Dido Armstrong

It's great to just disappear, grab a suitcase, switch the answering machine on and just go somewhere else.

Charlotte Bronte

I have a strange feeling with regard to you. As if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly knotted to a similar string in you. And if you were to leave I'm afraid that cord of communion would snap. And I have a notion that I'd take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, you'd forget me.

Charles M. Schwab

You can never really get away - - you can only take yourself somewhere else.

Beth Orton

Norfolk is not on the way to anywhere, you don't stop off on the way somewhere else - it's an end in itself. You have to want to go there; it's an effort.

Bodhidharma

As long as you look for a Buddha somewhere else, you'll never see that your own mind is the Buddha

Brian Jacques

I will not stand here to be insulted by you, hedgepig," Mangiz fumed. "Then stand somewhere else and I'll insult you there, featherbag!!

Blaise Pascal

Look somewhere else for someone who can follow you in your researches about numbers. For my part, I confess that they are far beyond me, and I am competent only to admire them.

Barbara Kingsolver

It's one thing to carry your life wherever you go. Another thing to always go looking for it somewhere else.

Steve Squyres

We're not going to take any risks. It's a big crater in terms of diameter, but really shallow. It's nothing like Endurance.

Willis Reed

We would still have been here if we could have come to terms with the union.

Robert Kazinsky

There are always things you wish you could've done better, and there are always things that you wish would've turned out a different way in terms of storyline, which you're not in charge of.

Lars Larsen

I never think in terms of gold, currency, diamonds. I'm not clever enough for that.

Steven Patrick Morrissey

For me to think in terms of employing security seems ostentatious.

H. L. Mencken

For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.

Craig Venter

Traditional ways of distinguishing populations are irrelevant in terms of genetic code.

Hallie Ephron

Everyone thinks when they start writing that they can't do it. I was lucky. My sister Delia was the most important person in terms of encouraging me.

Al Pacino

Explain to me what Italian-American culture is. We've been here 100 years. Isn't Italian-American culture American culture? That's because we're so diverse, in terms of intermarriage.