Author Quotes

This is terrible, when a writer is bored by his own work, but it was a real bomb and had reached the point where I couldn't even stand to look at it any more.

The unfortunate thing about working for yourself is that you have the worst boss in the world. I work every day of the year except at Christmas, when I work a half day.

Reed College required a thesis for a Bachelor's degree. Normally a Bachelor's is sort of like being stamped 'Prime US Beef.' They just walk you through, hand out the diplomas and you fill in your name later on.

I've fallen back on this periodically, although I must say that getting out of the grocery business ranked right up there with getting out of the army as one of the happier experiences of my life.

I wrote a novel for my degree, and I'm very happy I didn't submit that to a publisher. I sympathize with my professors who had to read it.

I taught in a small teacher's college for three or four years, at which point all the administrators got a pay raise and the teaching faculty didn't.

I get up at an unholy hour in the morning my work day is completed by the time the sun rises. I have a slightly bad back which has made an enormous contribution to American literature.

Call it my little gesture toward social conscience, but I like to think I'm teaching a certain number of people to read. Now that sounds pretentious!

All social workers want is to get everyone involved in a programme. Because a programme provides full employment for three generations of social workers. And they mess up.

If the general opinion is pessimistic, fantasy is going to hold its own.

I hesitate to predict whether this theory is true. But if the general opinion of Mankind is optimistic then we're in for a period of extreme popularity for science fiction.

Through meditation and by giving full attention to one thing at a time, we can learn to direct attention where we choose.

It takes a lot of experience of life to see why some relationships last and others do not. But we do not have to wait for a crisis to get an idea of the future of a particular relationship. Our behavior in little every incidents tells us a great deal.

Patience can't be acquired overnight. It is just like building up a muscle. Every day you need to work on it.

The defining function of the artist is to cherish consciousness.

Robert Benchley has a style that is weak and lies down frequently to rest.

Laughter is, after speech, the chief thing that holds society together.

It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.

I don't know why it is we are in such a hurry to get up when we fall down. You might think we would lie there and rest for a while.

Emotion is the surest arbiter of a poetic choice, and it is the priest of all supreme unions in the mind.

Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.

A poet in history is divine, but a poet in the next room is a joke.

A liberal mind is a mind that is able to imagine itself believing anything.

It is the ability to take a joke, not make one, that proves you have a sense of humor.

People who demand neutrality in any situation are usually not neutral but in favor of the status quo.

The worst enemy of human hope is not brute facts, but men of brains who will not face them.

Humor is the instinct for taking pain playfully.

A smile is the universal welcome.

Dogs laugh, but they laugh with their tails.

A joke is not a thing but a process, a trick you play on the listener's mind. You start him off toward a plausible goal, and then by a sudden twist you land him nowhere at all or just where he didn't expect to go.