Our generation in the west was lucky: we had readymade gateways. We had books, paper, teachers, schools and libraries. But many in the world lack these luxuries. How do you practice without such tryout venues?
Margaret AtwoodExcessive literary production is a social offense.
George EliotThe first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.
Arthur SchopenhauerLife is an ordeal, albeit an exciting one, but I wouldn’t trade it for the good old days of poverty and obscurity.
Jim CarreyThere is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
Maya AngelouSingleness of purpose is one of the chief essentials for success in life, no matter what may be one’s aim.
John D. RockefellerIf we don’t know life, how can we know death?
ConfuciusI would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!
Taylor SwiftWe love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving.
Friedrich NietzscheIn football, it’s the job of the player to play, the coach to coach, the official to officiate. Each guy is charged with upholding his end, nothing more. In golf, the player, coach and official are rolled into one, and they overlap completely. Golf really is the best microcosm of life – or at least the way life should be.
Lou HoltzWhen ideas fail, words come in very handy.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheI woke up one day and thought: ‚I want to write a book about the history of my body.‘ I could justify talking about my mother because it was in her body that my body began.
Paul AusterFrom the dust of the earth, from the common elementary fund, the Creator has made Homo sapiens. From the same material he has made every other creature, however noxious and insignificant to us. They are earth-born companions and our fellow mortals.
John MuirSome people die at 25 and aren’t buried until 75.
Benjamin FranklinA well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.
Thomas CarlyleWe’re all going to die, all of us; what a circus! That alone should make us love each other, but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities. We are eaten up by nothing.
Charles BukowskiI’m screamingly funny, you know, I really am in the books. And that helps because I’m funnier than a lot of people, I think, and that’s appreciated by young people.
Kurt VonnegutLife is a lively process of becoming.
Douglas MacArthurThat we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.
Samuel JohnsonThere are definitely elements of experience and stuff that someone who’s my age wouldn’t have. But there are also things that I can do that other people wouldn’t necessarily be able to.
Mark ZuckerbergA creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheThe proper study of mankind is books.
Aldous HuxleyI’ve taught a lot about prayer over the years and how it is really just talking to God.
Joyce MeyerHere comes 40. I’m feeling my age and I’ve ordered the Ferrari. I’m going to get the whole mid-life crisis package.
Keanu ReevesThe pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp.
Terry PratchettI have written a book. This will come as quite a shock to some. They didn’t think I could read, much less write.
George W. BushI don’t think about who the audience is for my books.
J. K. RowlingOur life is what our thoughts make it.
Marcus AureliusYou’re not going to make Hemingway better by adding animations.
Jeff BezosLife is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly, and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor.
Benjamin DisraeliA writer of fiction is really… a congenital liar who invents from his own knowledge or that of other men.
Ernest HemingwayI was in enough to get along with people. I was never socially inarticulate. Not a loner. And that saved my life, saved my sanity. That and the writing. But to this day I distrust anybody who thought school was a good time. Anybody.
Stephen KingNo book includes the entire world. It’s limited. And so it doesn’t seem like an aesthetic compromise to have to do that. There’s so much other material to write about.
Paul AusterIn every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.
Thomas JeffersonA chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.
William JamesFear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth.
Ernest HemingwayMiracles, in the sense of phenomena we cannot explain, surround us on every hand: life itself is the miracle of miracles.
George Bernard ShawI sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient.
Christopher HitchensI never write about the road. I never write about hotels or anything like that.
Taylor SwiftMillions of people die every day. Everyone’s got to go sometime.
Christopher HitchensUnder certain circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.
Mark TwainThere are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.
Albert EinsteinI’m not resigned, but I’m realistic too. The statistics in my case are very poor. Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long. And the other wager is, the part of the wager, it’s a certainty you’ll have a terrible time and you may wish you were dying because it’s an awful process.
Christopher HitchensThe fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there’s no risk of accident for someone who’s dead.
Albert EinsteinA good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.
Friedrich NietzscheLife is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.
Samuel JohnsonSatisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.
Arthur SchopenhauerIn my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I’ve worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.
Ray BradburyLife is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.
Lou HoltzWriting is challenging work because it’s so easy to get consumed with how it’s going, what’s going to happen to it, who’s going to like or not like it. You want to get all of that stuff out of your head and just let the work flow.
Wayne DyerAt seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.
Samuel JohnsonI don’t care much for equations myself. This is partly because it is difficult for me to write them down, but mainly because I don’t have an intuitive feeling for equations.
Stephen HawkingIf we are hungry enough for God, we will find a way into His presence. We should be so hungry for the presence of God that we absolutely will not go out of our house or tackle any kind of project until we have spent some time with Him.
Joyce MeyerThe way to know life is to love many things.
Vincent Van GoghI hoped to be able to write a novel which would enable me to live on it while I wrote the next.
Harper LeeIf I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I’ll die someday, and one day, they will too.
Billie EilishSecurity is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
Helen KellerOne should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter.
Joseph AddisonI write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.
Terry PratchettI didn’t live at school, I lived where I could and studied what I enjoyed studying. I took what I wanted from that education but was making my first record at the same time. I don’t know anyone from school. I was just leading a different life. I was really interested in writing and other things.
Lana Del Rey