65 quotes found
“When the past is forgotten, the present is unforgettable”
“Suicide is the night train, speeding your way to darkness.”
“Fiction is the only way to redeem the formlessness of life”
“Love is an abstract noun, something nebulous. And yet love turns out to be the only part of us that is solid, as the world turns upside down and the screen goes black.”
“Life is made of fear. Some people eat fear soup three times a day. Some people eat fear soup all the meals there are. I eat it sometimes. When they bring me fear soup to eat, I try not to eat it, I...”
“And meanwhile time goes about its immemorial work of making everyone look and feel like shit.”
“The universe is a million billion light-years wide, and every inch of it would kill you if you went there. This is the position of the universe with regards to human life.”
“It is straightforwardand never mind, for now, about plagues and famines: if God existed, and if he cared for humankind, he would never have given us religion.”
“He awoke at six, as usual. He needed no alarm clock. He was already comprehensively alarmed.”
“Impartially, shrewdly, I considered suicide, though not in my worst moments. The bottle of pills. The note: 'No hard feelings, everyone, but I've thought about it and it's just not on, is it? It's ...”
“Why couldn't Rachel be a little more specific about the type of person she was? Goodness knew; if she were a hippie I'd talk to her about her drug experiences, the zodiac, tarot cards. If she were ...”
“The deal with multiculturalism is that the only culture you're allowed to disapprove of is your own.”
“My life looked good on paper - where, in fact, almost all of it was being lived.”
“Religious belief is without reason and without dignity, and its record is near-universally dreadful.”
“Belief is otiose reality is sufficiently awesome as it stands. ”
“I think: you deserve to be what you are if you could bare to get that way. You must have seen it coming. And now there's nothing for you here. No one will protect you, and people won't see any reas...”
“This remains the great deficiency of literature: its imitation of nature cannot prepare you for the main events. For the main events, only experience will answer.”
“Only in art will the lion lie down with the lamb, and the rose grow without thorn.”
“How astonishingly intimate the business of fiction is, more intimate than anything that issues from the psychiatrists couch or even the lovers bed. You see the soul, pinned and wriggling on the wall.”
“Marriage is always something of a compromise, as I'm sure you're now aware. Any long-term relationship is - and one does have to see it in the long term, Charles. No, I expect your mother and mysel...”
“Only parents and torturers and the janitors of holocausts are asked to stand the sound of so much human grief.”
