Valerie Martin Quotes
-
How, given the canine teeth and close-set eyes that declare the human animal to be a predator, had we come up with the notion that oat bran is more natural to eat than chicken?
-
Most people never experience such a passion, that I had been incredibly, divinely fortunate to have found, in a world where most souls dig there own graves with the sharp edge of their bitter loneliness...
-
It was as though she practiced some shameful art: black magic, voodoo, or poetry.
-
And it seemed to me that longing was everything, longing is all we are.
-
Self-inflicted pain has a calming effect; it clears the head, diminishes one's fascination with the ego, and most important, gives one the sense of having taken some real action against the everyday foolishness of the body and of the vagrant, willful, heedless imagination.
-
One feels relieved these days when a play is not like television.
-
Everyone else felt the need to assure me that Mother's death was part of God's plan. Exactly, I wanted to shout after reading this sentiment half a dozen times--- his plan is to kill us all, and if an innocent child dies in agony and a wicked man breathes his last at an advanced age in his sleep, who are we to call it injustice?
-
The air was still. It was that hour before evening when the sun sheds great horizontal beams just above the horizon and the air itself reveals levels of dust and insect life previously unthought of.
-
Actors are superstitious about beggars, perhaps because we're largely in the same line.
-
I've caused you pain, and I'm sorry for it,' she said. 'But perhaps that pain will keep you from forgetting me.
-
As everyone knows, in my profession we go around screwing each other as much as possible, mostly to see ourselves do it. Narcissists are always making love to number one.
-
What was the good at having an ideal if everyone is trying to beat everyone else at admitting how impossible it is to achieve it.
-
A trip to the attic is an excursion into history, and...all over the world the present unravels beneath the stored detritus of the past; that's what attics are for.
-
To fear an inner life, she thought, was the greatest foolishness. It was like fearing a breath of air. Why did people find it harder to admit to a universe within than without? Why trust, for a moment, one's own absurd measurement of either?
-
But you said you no longer care for the world's opinion," I said to him, "nor will I.
-
(M)uch as we might imagine we can leave the past behind, it has a nasty way of pressing its hoary old face against the window just as we were sitting down to the feast.
-
So happy ending all round, more or less. I know you’re relieved. But much as we might imagine we can leave the past behind, it has a nasty way of pressing its hoary old face against the window just as we are sitting down to the feast.
-
The natural beauty of the earth made hard for me to consider the pathetic struggle of humans on the face of it. The great release of death, I thought, was not from the bondage to our lovely planet- who could ever wish to leave this extraordinary place?- but from one another.
-
I was thinking about … how disarming is the ability to make people laugh. It’s a gift, mimicry, but it’s not acting; in a way it’s the opposite of acting, which is why comedians are seldom good actors. There’s an element of exaggeration in the imposture; the copy is the original painted with a broad brush and it can be grotesque, even cruel. But no one is offended. People are drawn to the funnyman who can imitate a politician or a famous actor or an ethnic type, especially his own ethnic type.
-
Don't be a chicken, be a cat!" said Cecil. "Be adventurous"
-
That's my problem. I'm constantly wary. I can't trust anyone.
-
I see I have this patience to wait it out, and the truth is no matter how dark I feel I would never take my own life, because when the darkness is over, then what a blessing is the feeblest ray of light!
-
Sex can be estranging; it can drive two otherwise compatible people apart.
-
We long for a life we never had but of which we seem to have a clear memory; a life in wich there is no longing.