I want to write a novel so profound that it would suffocate a fly.
One of the extraordinary things about human events is that the unthinkable becomes thinkable.
Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.
Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, to rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.
The only people who see the whole picture,' he murmured, 'are the ones who step out of the frame.
Perhaps the story you finish is never the one you begin.
I reluctantly concluded that there was no way for me to help bring into being the Muslim culture I'd dreamed of, the progressive, irreverent, skeptical, argumentative, playful and unafraid culture which is what I've always understood as freedom. . . . Actually Existing Islam. . . which makes literalism a weapon and redescription a crime, will never let the likes of me in.
Every new development, highway, railroad, steamship line, building operation, whether it be a drainage project in old Greece or a new water system in Peru, means an added use of the automobile.
He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is detestable. And it has a fascination, too, which goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination--you know.
That might be nice, an extra pair of arms," Jace said. "Handy in a fight. " "Not if they're growing out of your. . . " Dorothea paused and smiled, not without malice. "Neck.
While a good leader sustains momentum, a great leader increases it.