Image: Robert C. Clark Photo, CC BY-SA 4.0
42 quotes
American novelist (1945-2016)
“I was born in the age of "alas".”
"The most powerful words in English are, "Tell me a story."
on Writing
"There were far worse strategies in life than to try to make each aspect of one's existence a minor work of art."
on Art
"Happiness is an accident of nature, a beautiful and flawless aberration."
on Happiness
"I can forgive almost any crime if a great story is left in its wake."
on Wisdom
"I wanted to be curious and smart and unappeasable until I got a sentence to mean exactly what I ordered it to mean."
"Honor is the presence of God in man."
on Spirituality
"Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself."
"I lived with the terrible knowledge that one day I would be an old man still waiting for my real life to start. Already, I pitied that old man."
on Life
"Without music life is a journey through a desert."
on Music
"Without music, life is a journey through a desert."
"But even her demons she invested with inordinate beauty, consecrated them with the dignity of her attention."
on Philosophy
"Evil would always come to me disguised in systems and dignified by law."
on Corruption
"I’ve never had anyone’s approval, so I’ve learned to live without it."
on Self Awareness
"Fantasy is one of the soul's brighter porcelains."
on Creativity
"The only way I could endure being a coward was if I was the only one who knew it."
on Courage
"He was ruled by the tyranny of instinct, by passion and the instant legislation of a simple heart."
on Emotion
"When mom and dad went to war the only prisoners they took were the children"
on Childhood
"Read the great books, gentlemen,” Mr. Monte said one day. “Just the great ones. Ignore the others. There’s not enough time."
"There is no teacher more discriminating or transforming than loss."
"He was one of those rare men who are capable of being fully in love only once in their lives."
on Love
