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"'It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,' he used to say. 'You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.'"
"It's a dangerous business going out your front door."
"It's a job that's never started that takes the longest to finish."
"Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy."
"Cooking is an art form, and the eating of the meal in an atmosphere of rest and relaxation is the only way to savor the artist's handiwork."
"There are two kinds of people in the world: those who think people can be subdivided into as few as two categories, and those who know better."
"I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road."
"It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth. impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility. plunder into philanthropy. thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required NO CHARACTER"
"It is not the Strongest nor most Intelligent species that survives, but the one most adaptable to change."
"Here’s a comforting thought for you…However long you may live, the world will never lose its ability to surprise you with its beauty."
"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one."
"There are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth. And no one is lying. Memories shared serve each differently."
"Space may be the final frontier. But it’s made in a Hollywood basement."
"Listen and you will teach yourself."
"I am a flag-waving believer in truth, justice and the American way, and I don’t understand how so many people who call themselves patriots can support efforts to undermine our democracy and our Constitution. It is alarming."
"There's no past and there's no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now."
"I love cats because I enjoy my home; And little by little, they become its visible soul."
"Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor."
"And all I ask is a tall ship, And a star to steer her by."
"You should be especially nice to a librarian today, or tomorrow. Sometime this week, anyway. Probably the librarians would like tea. Or chocolates. Or a reliable source of funding."
"Books permit us to interrogate the past with high accuracy; to tap the wisdom of our species; to understand the point of view of others, and to contemplate with the greatest minds that ever were. Books are Key to understanding the world and participating in a democratic society."
"But stars change and universes do, too / Write on!"
"Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present, controls the past."
"To that extent, I think that science fiction, even the corniest of it, even the most outlandish of it, no matter how badly it's written, has a distint therapeutic value because all of it has as its primary postulate that the world does change. I cannot overemphasize the importance of that idea. Unless you believe that, unless you are prepared for it—as I know all of you are—you can't retain your sanity these days."
"It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power."
"My uncle says the architects got rid of the front porches because they didn't look well. But my uncle says that was merely rationalizing it; the real reason, hidden underneath, might be they didn't want people sitting like that, doing nothing, rocking, talking; that was the wrong kind of social life. People talked too much. And they had time to think. So they ran off with the porches. And the gardens, too. Not many gardens any more to sit around in. And look at the furniture. No rocking chairs any more. They're too comfortable. Get people up and running around."
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
"The finest of pleasures are always the unexpected ones."
"An insult is like a drink; it affects one only if accepted."
"Self-esteem comes from what you think of you, not what other people think of you."
"Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed."
"The lost cannot be recovered; but let us save what remains: not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use, in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident."
"People move away, grow older, die, and the bright belief that there will be another marvelous thing around each corner fades. It is now or never; we must snatch at happiness as it flies."
"What was beautiful in the painting was not like words, it was like paint — silent, direct, and concrete, resisting translation even into thought. As such, my response to the picture was trapped inside me, a bird fluttering in my chest. And I didn’t know what to make of that."
"We are all stardust and stories."