Amylyn > Amylyn's Quotes

“Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters.”
― Neil Gaiman

“There is no greater impotence in all the world like knowing you are right and that the wave of the world is wrong, yet the wave crashes upon you.”
― Norman Mailer

“This is true happiness: to have no ambition and to work like a horse as if you had every ambition. To live far from men, not to need them and yet to love them. To have the stars above, the land to your left and the sea to your right and to realize of a sudden that in your heart, life has accomplished its final miracle: it has become a fairy tale.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek

“Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis

“Free yourself from one passion to be dominated by another and nobler one. But is not that, too, a form of slavery? To sacrifice oneself to an idea, to a race, to God? Or does it mean that the higher the model the longer the longer the tether of our slavery?”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek

“When everyone drowns and I'm the only one to escape, God is protecting me. When everyone else is saved and I'm the only one to drown, God is protecting me then too.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ

“I say one thing, you write another, and those who read you understand still something else! I say: cross, death, kingdom of heaven, God...and what do you understand? Each of you attaches his own suffering, interests and desires to each of these sacred words, and my words disappear, my soul is lost. I can't stand it any longer!”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ

“All those who actually live the mysteries of life haven't the time to write, and all those who have the time don't live them! D'you see?”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very;' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”
― Mark Twain

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
― Toni Morrison

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”
― Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain: A Book of Quotations

“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.”
― Saul Bellow

“Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.”
― Virginia Woolf

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”
― Anais Nin

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”
― Stephen King

“Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.”
― Stephen King

“A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”
― Mark Twain

“If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character...Would you slow down? Or speed up?”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

“People living deeply have no fear of death.”
― Anaïs Nin

“So wise so young, they say, do never live long.”
― William Shakespeare, Richard III

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”
― Elie Wiesel

“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
― Anaïs Nin

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
― Anne Frank, Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings

“We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.”
― May Sarton

“You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

“It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Complete Prose Works Of Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
― Anonymous, Holy Bible: New International Version