Where women are, the better things are implied if not spoken.
No democracy is born perfect, and none ever gets to be perfect. Yet democracy is superior to authoritarian and totalitarian regimes because, unlike them, democracy is perfectible.
Men do not live by truth alone; they also need lies: those that they invent freely, not those that are imposed on them; those that appear as they are, not smuggled in beneath the clothes of history. Fiction enriches their existence, completes them and, fleetingly, compensates them for this tragic condition which is our lot: always to desire and dream more than we can actually achieve.
I have been always fascinated and seduced by history, which I think is very close, very close to literature.
I have a chest full of all the insults, villainies, and infamies a man is capable of withstanding. . . . If you become famous, you will have to go through that.
In general, I think my freedom of invention is not limited when I use historical characters.
I always write a draft version of the novel in which I try to develop, not the story, not the plot, but the possibilities of the plot. I write without thinking much, trying to overcome all kinds of self-criticism, without stopping, without giving any consideration to the style or structure of the novel, only putting down on paper everything that can be used as raw material, very crude material for later development in the story.
I was merely endeavoring to indicate that if we do not grab events by the collar they will have us by the throat. -Lord Vetinari
Oklahoma is very beautiful, and Eric loves beauty, but he already has that in you.
He had even read Pride and Prejudice--although he had thought that many of the heroine's problems would have been solved if someone had simply strangled her mother.
It cuts like a knife, but it feels so right.