I tell you, there is such a thing as creative hate!
—Willa Cather, 1915Quotes
People living deeply have no fear of death.
—Anaïs Nin, 1935Fame will go by and, so long, I’ve had you, fame. If it goes by, I’ve always known it was fickle. So at least it’s something I experienced, but that’s not where I live.
—Marilyn Monroe, 1962The greatest veneration one can show the law is to keep a watch on it.
—Nadine Gordimer, 1971Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.
—James Baldwin, 1961One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.
—Oscar Wilde, 1894The brain is an unreliable organ, it is monstrously great, monstrously developed. Swollen, like a goiter.
—Aleksandr Blok, c. 1920To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.
—Quentin Crisp, 1968The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.
—Vladimir Nabokov, 1941The unknown is the largest need of the intellect.
—Emily Dickinson, 1876The human body is the best picture of the human soul.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein, c. 1947Our allotted time is the passing of a shadow.
—Book of Wisdom, c. 100 BCThe world is dying of machinery; that is the great disease, that is the plague that will sweep away and destroy civilization; man will have to rise against it sooner or later.
—George Moore, 1888