Lists Quotes - Page 2

As women, we're nurturers by nature. We want to make sure everyone is happy. That's a good thing, but we also have to put ourselves on that happiness list.

Novels are fictions and therefore they tell lies, but through those lies every novelist attempts to tell the truth about the world.

In all, dozens upon dozens of groups and organizations have prioritized stopping the killing in Darfur before there is no one left to be killed. It is high time that we, the U.S. Congress, join our name to that list.

It would be wrong to refuse to face the fact that everything is fundamentally sick and sad.

Work is against human nature. The proof is that it makes us tired.

Words are one thing, deeds are quite another.

It is at least worth arguing that there is a modicum of the creative novelist in all of us, and that this absorption with how men get out of difficulties, single-handedly and alone if possible, is the stuff of which we weave the warp and woof of our own better dramatic imaginings.

As a novelist, I have a somewhat higher soapbox to stand on than most people do when it comes to talking back to the merchants of fear.

It is increasingly clear that the fate of the universe will come to depend more and more on individuals as the bungling of bureaucracy permeates every corner of our existence.

When I'm dating someone, I have a list called my 'Oh No Nos.' If a woman commits a Oh No No, it can end the relationship. Not loving '90s R&B music is #3 on the Oh No Nos list. Girl don't even know who Ginuwine is.

Things which do not grow and change are dead things.

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure you - it would make life easier. But discretion is, unfortunately, not for novelists.

Some people bring out the worst in you, others bring out the best, and then there are those remarkably rare, addictive ones who just bring out the most. Of everything.

Who, last time I'd checked, was still on our official archenemy list. (Yes, we have to keep a list. It's kind of sad.)

The List is Life.

Northwestern's alumni list is truly impressive. This university has graduated best-selling authors, Olympians, presidential candidates, Grammy winners, Peabody winners, Emmy winners, and that's just me!

Most writers are not quick-witted when they talk. Novelists, in particular, drag themselves around in society like gut-shot bears.

A whim, a passing mood, readily induces the novelist to move hearth and home elsewhere. He can always plead work as an excuse to get him out of the clutches of bothersome hosts.

One of the cruelest things you can do to another person is pretend you care about them more than you really do.

Of all the things a leader should fear, complacency heads the list.

Wear what you feel comfortable with. People say nasty things about what I wear in the street. I'm always in worst dressed lists, but you just have to dress for yourself and ­nobody else.

This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.

A playwright must be his own audience. A novelist may lose his readers for a few pages; a playwright never dares lose his audience for a minute.

A lot of us think we're invincible... but we have to start putting ourselves on the to-do list.