Long Quotes - Page 671

Fifteen years was a long time to be stranded anywhere, particularly somewhere as mind-boggingly dull as Earth.

It takes a long time before we really get to grips with this [Darwin's 'On the Origin of Species'] and begin to understand it, because not only does it seem incredible and thoroughly demeaning to us, but it's yet another shock to our system to discover that not only are we not the centre of the Universe and we're not made by anything, but we started out as some kind of slime and got to where we are via being a monkey. It just doesn't read well.

In the center lay the exploded carcass of a lonely sperm whale that hadn't lived long enough to be disappointed with its lot.

And the most interesting natural structure? A giant, two-thousand-mile-long fish in orbit around Jupiter, according to a reliable report in the Weekly World News. The photograph was very convincing, and I'm only surprised that more-reputable journals like New Scientist, or even just The Sun, haven't followed up with more details. We should be told.

Old people always tell you: 'When you've been around as long I have, then you can argue.' As soon as they're ripped off, it's a different story.

Smoking pot makes people talk for long periods of time, for instance, so people who advocate pot won't shut the hell up about it.

It will all go on as long as women are stupid enough to go on bringing men into the world. . .

I never trusted any man not to find someone else; to stay with me if he had another option. to not find something in me that would have him heading for the hills. that was the other reason for not thinking long-term- when someone walked out, as they invairiably did, it wasn't too big a shock. a disappointment but nothing, I hadn't been expecting.

I'd spent so long trying to fit in,trying to be someone i wasn't,that i had no idea who i was any more.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning could write a poem two pages long. Could she have brought it to a music publisher?

the most elementary experience of life proves that the effects of compulsion last exactly as long as the physical or moral club can be applied.

I have kept diaries, of course, but they can't be read for quite a long time. I'm always curious about people who are fascinated by writers' lives. It seems to me that we're always in our books, quite nakedly. I wonder, too, does the private life really matter? Who cares what is known about you and what isn't? Even when you make public something that's been private, most people don't get it - not unless they're the same generation and have gone through more or less the same experiences. So, in a sense, we're all private, by definition.

I often feel like a dinosaur. I don't get the technology thing at all. I was on the Internet not long ago for Barnes and Noble, and people were ringing up from all over the world - Australia, Canada, France. I experienced it as an informal chat, which was pleasant, but I couldn't quite take it in. It had a strong element of unreality. I can't be bothered to switch to a computer at my age, though I might get along with e-mail, which sounds appealing.

So a war begins. Into a peace-time life, comes an announcement, a threat. A bomb drops somewhere, potential traitors are whisked off quietly to prison. And for some time, days, months, a year perhaps, life has a peace-time quality, into which war-like events intrude. But when a war has been going on for a long time, life is all war, every event has the quality of war, nothing of peace remains.

The current publishing scene is extremely good for the big, popular books. They sell them brilliantly, market them and all that. It is not good for the little books. And really valuable books have been allowed to go out of print. In the old days, the publishers knew that these difficult books, the books that appeal only to a minority, were very productive in the long run. Because they're probably the books that will be read in the next generation.

Little Tamar, forget the long ago. We are here and we are now, and that is all. We are making a new start.

The human community is evolving... . We can survive anything you care to mention. We are supremely equipped to survive, to adapt and even in the long run to start thinking.

My recurring nightmare is that someday I will be faced with a panel: Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson all of whom will be telling me everything I got wrong about them. I know that Johnson's out there saying, 'Why is it that what you wrote about the Kennedys is twice as long as the book you wrote about me?

We were determined by public opinions of us. Would we think we existed without outside confirmation? And how long would we live apart from others before we began to doubt our existence?

The real enemy is not fat but us. We are the misusers; we are the greedy ones. If we have no better sense than to purposefully destroy ourselves, it is no wonder that nature punishes us with vile diseases and calls in our maker long before their time. Nature remembers every extra bite of cherry pie, T-bone steak, fried chicken, pizza.

You're never going to get rid of the injuries. The injuries are going to happen as long as there's football, especially the way it's always been played. So that's something that won't go away. But I guess they're trying to do the best they can to reduce those injuries and really take guys out of harm's way as much as they can.

As long as you have those brilliant songs, it didn't matter how bad you played, or how bad he sang on 'em sometimes. It was one of those magical things that really worked, and I don't think could ever happen again.

John Paul to give me a shot, I'll never forget as long as I live.

Actually, I enjoy the process of writing a big long novel.

In order for a long piece of work to engage a novelist over an extended period of time, it has to deal with questions that you find very important, that you're trying to work out.