Richard Ellmann Quotes

#1. Nora Barnacle is not a very interesting person." So said Richard Ellmann, author of the definitive James Joyce biography, to Brenda Maddox, author of the only Nora Barnacle biography, who quoted him to me.

Jessa Crispin

#2. If something you did causes failure, shouldn't the exact opposite of what you did bring success?

Jessica Brody

#3. Running an airline is like having a baby: fun to conceive, but hell to deliver.

Collett E. Woolman

#4. California is a great place to live if you're an orange.

Fred Allen

#5. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is in fact the gestation of a soul.

Richard Ellmann

#6. I keep falling off the edge of the stage because I can't see it. I can't see my wrinkles in the mirror either, though.

John Lydon

#7. Historians of literature like to regard a century as a series of ten faces, each grimacing in a different way.

Richard Ellmann

#8. Vice is punished, but virtue is not rewarded

George Orwell

#9. The writer of these lines has nothing whatsoever to teach anyone; his words are just his contribution to our common discussion of what must inevitably be for us the most important subject which could be discussed by sentient beings.

Wei Wu Wei

#10. I rather like the smell of absurdity in the morning.

Tom Robbins

#11. Drift beautifully on the surface, and you will die unbeautifully in the depths.

Richard Ellmann

#12. I have a theory that movies operate on the level of dreams, where you dream yourself.

Meryl Streep

#13. Tell me the truth about death. I don't know what it is. We have them, then they are gone but they stay in our minds. Their stories are part of us as long as we live and as long as we tell them or write them down.

Ellen Gilchrist

#14. Don't call me Alessandro, or this could get ugly. Oh, then may I call you Alice?

E. Lockhart

#15. Do not be afraid to help one another. The devil is looking for rivalry, division, gangs. Keep working to make progress ... I have seen how pain does not stifle the hope deep within the human heart and how life goes on, finding new strength even in the midst of difficulties.

Pope Francis

#16. Fulfillment in life is loving a good woman and killing a bad man.

Robert A. Heinlein

#17. Beauty is no local deity, like the Greek and Roman gods, but omnipresent.

C. A. Bartol