Bruce Myers > Bruce's Quotes

“I just can't listen to any more Wagner, you know...I'm starting to get the urge to conquer Poland.”
― Woody Allen

“Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.”
― Isaac Asimov

“I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.”
― Mark Twain

“The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes.”
― Nikolai V. Gogol

“..the best of life is life lived quietly, where nothing happens but our calm journey through the day, where change is imperceptible and the precious life is everything.”
― John McGahern, All Will Be Well: A Memoir

“Lord Peter's library was one of the most delightful bachelor rooms in London. Its scheme was black and primrose; its walls were lined with rare editions, and its chairs and Chesterfield sofa suggested the embraces of the houris. In one corner stood a black baby grand, a wood fire leaped on a wide old-fashioned hearth, and the Sèvres vases on the chimneypiece were filled with ruddy and gold chrysanthemums. To the eyes of the young man who was ushered in from the raw November fog it seemed not only rare and unattainable, but friendly and familiar, like a colourful and gilded paradise in a mediæval painting”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Whose Body?

“An important aspect of the ebbing of sex was that other things became interesting. Sex obliterates the individuality of young women more often than it does that of young men, because so much more of a woman than a man is used by sex.”
― Diana Athill, Somewhere Towards the End

“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
― Isaac Asimov

“Love - why, I'll tell you what love is: it's you at 75 and her at 71, each of you listening for the other's step in the next room, each afraid that a sudden silence, a sudden cry, could mean a lifetime's talk is over.”
― Brian Moore, The Luck of Ginger Coffey

“The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.”
― V. S. Naipaul, In a Free State

“Bedu notice everything and forget nothing. Garrulous by nature, they reminisce endlessly, whiling away with the chatter the long marching hours, and talking late into the night round their camp fires. Their life is at all times desperately hard, and they are merciless critics of those who fall short in patience, good humour, generosity, loyalty, or courage. They make no allowance for the stranger. Whoever lives with the Bedu must accept Bedu conventions, and conform to Bedu standards. Only those who have journeyed with them them can appreciate the strain of such a life.”
― Wilfred Thesiger

“I craved for the past, resented the present, and dreaded the future.”
― Wilfred Thesiger, Arabian Sands

“Other people's marriages are a perpetual source of amazement.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Commodore

“Why there you are, Stephen,' cried Jack. 'You are come home, I find.'

That is true,' said Stephen with an affectionate look: he prized statements of this kind in Jack.”
― Patrick O'Brian, H.M.S. Surprise

“Generally office and home were far apart, and home was much more important than office. I was not ashamed of valuing my private life more highly than my work; that, to my mind, is what everyone ought to do.”
― Diana Athill, Stet: An Editor's Life

“Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going.”
― Paul Theroux

“Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.”
― Anita Desai

“You are still young, free.. Do yourself a favor. Before it's too late, without thinking too much about it first, pack a pillow and a blanket and see as much of the world as you can. You will not regret it. One day it will be too late.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

“You can pretend for a long time, but one day it all falls away and you are alone. We are alone in the most beautiful place in the world...”
― Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

“The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“I sew his ears on from time to time, sure.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Post Captain

“I can and do dislike him intensely when he pins my king and a rook with his lurking knight,’ said Stephen,”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Mauritius Command

“About 90 percent of the one billion Muslims in the world today identify with the Sunni tradition. Of the remainder, most are Shiites, the largest number of whom are in Iran.”
― Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror

“Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“There is a voice that doesn't use words. Listen.”
― Rumi

“Finally, she mused that human existence is as brief as the life of autumn grass, so what was there to fear from taking chances with your life?”
― Mo Yan, Red Sorghum

“It's all in the art. You get no credit for living.”
― V.S. Pritchett

“I am not sure that digging in our past guilts is a useful occupation for the very old, given that one can do so little about them. I have reached a stage at which one hopes to be forgiven for concentrating on how to get through the present.”
― Diana Athill, Somewhere Towards the End

“Time is the coin of your life. You spend it. Do not allow others to spend it for you.”
― Carl Sandburg

“Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?”
― Henry Ward Beecherr