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A Quotes

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All A Quotes

“Always I find when I begin to write there is one character who obstinately will not come alive. There is nothing psychologically false about him, but he sticks, he has to be pushed around, words have to be found for him, all the technical skill I have acquired through laborious years has to be employed in making him appear alive to my readers { } He never does the unexpected thing, he never surprises me, he never takes charge. Every other character helps. He only hinders [ ]. And yet I cannot do without him. I can imagine a God feeling in just the same way about us. The saints, one would suppose, in a sense create themselves. They come alive. They are capable of the surprising act or word, they stand outside the plot, unconditioned by it. But we have to be pushed around. We have the obstinancy of nonexistence. We are inextricable bound to the plot, and wearily God forces us, here and there, according to his intention, characters without poetry, without free will, whose only importance is that somewhere, at some time, we help to furnish the scene in which a living character moves and speaks, providing perhapsthe saints with the opportunities for their free will.”

“Always, I sensed the difference between others and myself in the power of my emotions, and felt ashamed that I was less calm than Mary, and less able than George to view matters with level-headedness. It was so difficult for me. I was too easily carried away and wished to hide this, for expression of feelings always drew frowns or gasps, and was generally viewed as something base and common, as well as inappropriate. I prayed often that God might make me good.”

“Always in life an idea starts small, it is only a sapling idea, but the vines will come and they will try to choke your idea so it cannot grow, and it will die and you will never know you had a big idea, an idea so big it could have grown thirty meters through the dark canopy of leaves and touched the face of the sky. The vines are people who are afraid of originality, of new thinking. Most people you encounter will be vines; when you are a young plant they are very dangerous. Always listen to yourself, Peekay. It is better to be wrong than simply to follow convention. If you are wrong, no matter, you have learned something and you grow stronger. If you are right, you have taken another step toward a fulfilling life.”

“Always in our dreams we hear the turn of the key that shall close the door of the last brothel; the clink of the last coin that pays for the body and soul of a woman; the falling of the last wall that encloses artificially the activity of woman and divides her from man; always we picture the love of the sexes, as, once a dull, slow, creeping worm; then a torpid, earthy chrysalis; at last the full-winged insect, glorious in the sunshine of the future.”