Once I began doing stand-up, I didn't get a kick out of the applause or being the centre of attention; but I did get a kick out of the jigsaw puzzle aspect of it, searching for the right bit, adding another few pieces each night until the bigger picture appears. That's the appeal: the challenge of it. ~Stephen Merchant
#quotes #stephen-merchant #comedy #attention

Whoever digs a pit for his neighbor should dig it his own size. ~Kurdish Proverb
#proverbs #kurdish-proverbs

A drowning man is not troubled by rain. ~Persian Proverb
#proverbs #persian-proverbs #hardship

Any fool can write a novel but it takes real genius to sell it. ~J. G. Ballard
#quotes #j-g-ballard #writing #selling

As a writer, I demand the right to write any character in the world that I want to write. I demand the right to be them, I demand the right to think them and I demand the right to tell the truth as I see they are. ~Quentin Tarantino
#quotes #quentin-tarantino #writing #character

In independent film you tend to have stories that involve more of a community, and the smaller characters are important to the story. ~David Morse
#quotes #david-morse #stories #film

You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother. ~Proverb
#proverbs #grandparents

Visits always give pleasure, if not the arrival, the departure. ~Portuguese Proverb
#proverbs #portuguese-proverbs #guests

People count up the faults of those who keep them waiting. ~French Proverb
#proverbs #french-proverbs #manners #wait

In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find, if it's a good novel, that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have changed a little. But it's very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed. ~Ursula K. Le Guin
#quotes #ursula-k-le-guin #reading #novels

A man should live if only to satisfy his curiosity. ~Yiddish Proverb
#proverbs #yiddish-proverbs #curiosity

Grade school was perilous. I can see how I must have worried them. I was the kind of kid who, for no apparent reason, wept piteously or threw up on myself. On an especially scary day, I sometimes did both. ~Sue Grafton
#quotes #sue-grafton #children #schooling

I have no pity! I have no pity! The more worms writhe, the more I yearn to crush out their entrails! It is a moral teething, and I grind with greater energy, in proportion to the increase of pain. ~Emily Bronte
#quotes #emily-bronte #morality #hardship

The cat was created when the lion sneezed. ~Arabic Proverb
#proverbs #arabic-proverbs #cat

Tantric Zen is for the individual who is in love with both the finite and the infinite, who gets a kick out of this weird transitory world and at the same time, wants to step beyond it. ~Frederick Lenz
#quotes #frederick-lenz #buddhism

Normal is such a hard word to use, because everyone's idea of normal is different. Real is what the word is. I think you either live a real life or you live a weird celebrity pseudolife. I think I lead a really real life. ~Sarah Michelle Gellar
#quotes #sarah-michelle-gellar #life #ideas

Book of Ecclesiastes, God is saying. Write a good story, take somebody with you and let me help ~Donald Miller
#quotes #donald-miller #christianity

From our ancestors come our names, but from our virtues our honors. ~Proverb
#proverbs #name #honor

He who is not ashamed does whatever he likes. ~Arabic Proverb
#proverbs #arabic-proverbs #shame

The style developed over decades, really, but I started out writing pretty traditional stories, then became impatient. It was a writer named Russell Edson who showed me that one could write in any way at all. ~Lydia Davis
#quotes #lydia-davis #russell-edson #style #writing #stories

It is the end of art to inoculate men with the love of nature. ~Henry Ward Beecher
#quotes #henry-ward-beecher #art #nature

Nakata is empty inside. Do you know what it means to be completely empty? Being empty is like a vacant house. An unlocked, vacant house. Anybody can come in, anytime they want. That is what scares me the most. ~Haruki Murakami
#quotes #haruki-murakami #emptiness

Man, that did his ego good. Matter of fact, she hit him with anything like that again, he was going to feel like he could bench-press a city bus. With a jet plane on its roof. ~J.R. Ward
#quotes #j-r-ward #ego

I think because both of my parents were essentially salespeople, and Italian-Americans, I always seemed to get along with people; I had a knack of finding something to talk about. ~Bob Colacello
#quotes #bob-colacello #italian

Also, of course, for most of this time most Americans thought of America as a white country with, at best, only a very segregated and subordinate role for blacks. ~Samuel P. Huntington
#quotes #samuel-p-huntington #united-states #black