Isaac Babel Quotes

#1. I was always the clown in school. I had a personal put down sense of humor. I wasn't vindictive. I didn't make fun of people.

Jim Dale

#2. I'm not a parent, but it seems to me the nature of parenting is contingent, full of unexpected challenges - which is one of the wonderful and amazing things about it.

Stacey D'Erasmo

#3. A cop did better cynical and suspicious.

J.D. Robb

#4. A well-thought-out story doesn't need to resemble real life. Life itself tries with all its might to resemble a well-crafted story.

Isaac Babel

#5. A phrase is born into the world both good and bad at the same time. The secret lies in a slight, an almost invisible twist. The lever should rest in your hand, getting warm, and you can only turn it once, not twice.

Isaac Babel

#6. Unity is not something we are called to create; it's something we are called to recognize.

William Sloane Coffin

#7. I would argue that's because we had a bunch of smart people running around here. They were coming in and working very hard and many of them had left jobs in which they made significantly more money.

John Hickenlooper

#8. If the world could write itself, it would write like Tolstoy.

Isaac Babel

#9. Her sponge cakes had the aroma of crucifixion.Within them was the sap of slyness and the fragrant frenzy of the Vatican.

Isaac Babel

#10. We slept, all six of us, beneath a wooden roof that let in the stars, warming one another, our legs intermingled. I dreamed: and in my dreams saw women. But my heart, stained with bloodshed, grated and brimmed over.

Isaac Babel

#11. When a phrase is born, it is both good and bad at the same time. The secret of its success rests in a crux that is barely discernible. One's fingertips must grasp the key, gently warming it. And then the key must be turned once, not twice.

Isaac Babel

#12. The orange sun is rolling across the sky like a severed head, gentle light glimmers in the ravines among the clouds, the banners of the sunset are fluttering above our heads. The stench of yesterday's blood and slaughtered horses drips into the evening chill.

Isaac Babel

#13. There is no iron that can enter the human heart with such stupefying effect, as a period placed at just the right moment.

Isaac Babel

#14. If the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy.

Isaac Babel

#15. No iron spike can pierce a human heart as icily as a period in the right place.

Isaac Babel

#16. No iron can pierce the human heart as chillingly as a full stop placed at the right time.

Isaac Babel

#17. For me the whole world is like a gigantic theater in which I am the only spectator without opera glasses. The orchestra plays the prelude to the third act, the stage is far away as in a dream, my heart swells with delight - and you want to blind me with a pair of half-ruble spectacles?

Isaac Babel

#18. You may think that you've lost your passion, or that you can't identify it, or that you have so much of it, it threatens to overwhelm you. None of these is true. Fear saps passion. When we conquer our fears, we discover a boundless, bottomless, inexhaustible well of passion.

Steven Pressfield

#19. Too many voters are already bought
not by corporate campaign donors, but by the government itself.

Joseph Sobran

#20. She would lift her peignoir above her knees and say to her husband: 'Give baby a kiss ... '

Isaac Babel

#21. The power of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special efforts, but by his ordinary doing.

Blaise Pascal

#22. The thing about living with a death sentence for so long is you tend to miss the moment life starts to get better because you're so ready for it to get much, much worse.

John Goode

#23. No iron can stab the heart with such force as a period put just at the right place.

Isaac Babel