Mary Lee Quotes

#1. The bright bite in Mary Lee Kortes' voice [has] the high-mountain sunshine of Dolly Parton, with a sweet-iron undercoat of Chrissie Hynde.

David Fricke

#2. There's something I want to say in this space, but it's an emptiness where there's usually a hug. - Colin Morton to Mary Lee Bragg, 1972

David Eso

#3. Don't people know that it's the hardest work in the world? Joseph Conrad said that he had loaded hundredweights of coal all day long on a ship in Amsterdam in the wintertime, and that is was nothing to the energy demanded for a day's work writing.

Mary Lee Settle

#4. Having watched herself in the speckled mirror ... she was already shocked beyond surprise at what the flat hand of age could do.

Mary Lee Settle

#5. Thinking is the highest form of leverage.

Mark Victor Hansen

#6. She laughed, I love it when she laughs, although the truth is I am not in love with her.

Jonathan Safran Foer

#7. He looked at her for a moment, amazed. "How did you know that? How can a servant girl like you understand so much?"
Because self-absorbed man-children are common as weeds, thought Mary. But she said, "I don't know, sir. I only guessed.

Y.S. Lee

#8. Mary Webster was on the blower. Her advance agents saw Hank and me swimming in the middle of the river last night with no clothes on.
H'rm, said Atticus. He touched his glasses. I hope you weren't doing the backstroke.

Harper Lee

#9. Questions are an under-used piece of communication in our culture.

Mary Lee LaBay

#10. When I'm working on a serious and solid book ... I read about a detective novel a day. It's the best legal dope in the world. It makes you feel good until the next morning you can work again.

Mary Lee Settle

#11. When the tides of life turn against you
And the current upsets your boat,
Don't waste those tears on what might have been,
Just lie on your back and float.

Edward Norton

#12. Recorded history is wrong. It's wrong because the voiceless have no voice in it.

Mary Lee Settle

#13. My first idea of movement, of the dance, certainly came from the rhythm of the wave.

Isadora Duncan

#14. For Mary Jackson, life was a long process of raising one's expectations.

Margot Lee Shetterly

#15. The first time you are reconciled to the terrible unfairness of disappointment, you are getting old.

Mary Lee Settle

#16. The tragedy of human history is decreasing happiness in the midst of increasing comforts.

Chinmayananda Saraswati

#17. Stop shining your lantern in my face."
"It's such a lovely face.

Y.S. Lee

#18. A refrigerator is the opposite of a drug addict, because a refrigerator starts in a box and then moves to a house.

Demetri Martin

#19. For several moments, Mary couldn't hear anything over the violent pounding of her pulse.

Y.S. Lee

#20. Neither of us is willing to give up what we love for each other.

Krista Ritchie

#21. Somerset Maugham said that it took at least six human beings to make one fictional character. That is true of landscape as well, I think. We have to make our landscapes, change streets, create new turnings, rebuild or tear down, change time, and even nature, if need be.

Mary Lee Settle

#22. In school in Lebanon, we were not allowed to speak Arabic during breaks - it had to be French or English.

Rabih Alameddine

#23. I love writers all across the board, but one who influenced me very directly at the beginning was Mary Renault.

Tanith Lee

#24. We ought not give ourselves the benefit of the doubt if we plan on doubting everything else.

G.K. Chesterton

#25. The thing with thoughts is that they die, like everything else. But almost everything else leaves a trace behind, even if it's a tiny carcass, some proof that it existed. Unless thoughts are spoken or written or sung or acted upon, there's no evidence that they were ever there.

Adi Alsaid

#26. [The inspiration that comes to authors of fiction] is not an act of intelligence.

Mary Lee Settle

#27. You know what a miracle is. Not what Bakunin said. But another world's intrusion into this one. Most of the time we coexist peacefully, but when we do touch there's cataclysm.

Thomas Pynchon

#28. I had decided that if I was going to be a singer, I had to earn it. I had to learn how to play an instrument.

Madonna Ciccone

#29. Anyone who has a choice and doesn't choose to write is a fool. The work is hard, the perks are few, the pay is terrible, and the product, when it's finally finished, is pure joy.

Mary Lee Settle