Top 100 Stead's Quotes
#1. I love to read about anger. A "feel bad" book always makes me feel good. And no other novel in the history of literature is more depressing than Christina Stead's The Man Who Loved Children.
John Waters
#2. I wish I could see what would have hapenned if I hadn't told. You told me once that every time a decision is made, the universe splits into two. So now there's a universe in which I kept my mouth shut. But I can't see what it looks like.
Rebecca Stead
#3. I am basically in awe of every family's ability to make decisions for their kids.
Rebecca Stead
#4. There are so may ways to kills yourself, they're just old-fashioned with their permanganate: do you think I'd take permanganate? I wouldn't want to burn my insides out and live to tell the tale as well: idiots! It's simple, I'd drown myself ... Why be in misery at the last?
Christina Stead
#5. Mr Heilbroner, as you certainly know, is a minor. We can use the principal's office for a few minutes so that you can brief me about whatever allegations have been made. But of course you can't speak with Mr Heilbroner himself until his parents have been notified. Would you follow me, please?
Rebecca Stead
#6. Einstein says common sense is just habit of thought. It's how we're used to thinking about things, but a lot of the time it just gets in the way.
Rebecca Stead
#7. Life is where you sleep and what you see when you wake up in the morning, and who you tell about your weird dream, and what you eat for breakfast and who you eat it with. Life isn't something that happens to you. It's something you make yourself, all the time.
Rebecca Stead
#8. But at the exact same time I got nervous about that, I also got this other feeling, which I can only describe of as love for Annemarie's elevator.
Rebecca Stead
#9. I think that my first book - I was trying to write the kind of book I would have loved as a kid. So it's sort of, like, a book inspired by my childhood reading and the passion that I felt about reading when I was a kid.
Rebecca Stead
#10. Sorrow, the heart must bear,
Sits in the home of each, conspicuous there.
Many a circumstance, at least,
Touches the very breast.
For those
Whom any sent away,
he knows:
And in the live man's stead,
Armor and ashes reach
The house of each.
Robert Browning
#11. Love is feared: it dissolves society, it's unpopular, and it's very rare.
Christina Stead
#12. Mom's always telling me to smile and hoping I'll turn into a smiley person, which, to be honest, is kind of annoying.
Rebecca Stead
#13. If one's life is so unsatisfying that an unhealthy activity brings a shred of happiness, it is nigh impossible to give it up unless something that brings greater happiness can be enjoyed in its stead. (28)
Prem Prakash
#14. The wonderful thing about writing fiction is that no one is stopping you. There's no one saying, 'You can't do that.'
Rebecca Stead
#15. I would say I am an ordinary bowler but one with a really big heart, and that's what has stood me in good stead in all these years.
Harbhajan Singh
#16. I go on the presumption that everyone's full of shit until proven otherwise, and this usually serves me in good stead.
Dennis Lehane
#17. Behind the concept of woman's strangeness is the idea that a woman may do anything: she is below society, not bound by its law, unpredictable; an attribute given to every member of the league of the unfortunate.
Christina Stead
#18. On the king's gate the moss grew gray; The king came not. They call'd him dead; And made his eldest son, one day, Slave in his father's stead.
Helen Hunt Jackson
#19. Didn't you ever have a father yourself? You don't want him for a reason. You want him because he's your father.' So I figured it's because I never had a father that I don't want one now. A person can't miss something she never had.
Rebecca Stead
#20. From.. from now on.. I will protect my brother in father's stead.
Kazue Kato
#21. There's a lot of people out there who have seen us once somewhere in a pub or heard our songs late night on radio. We'd done four years of it before we'd even released a single. It's put us in good stead.
Dan Hawkins
#22. Ain't the best prayin' jest bein' with God and talkin' a while, like He's a good friend, stead a-like he runs a store and you've come in a-hopin' to git a bargain?
Olive Ann Burns
#23. Anyone who's familiar with my writing schedule knows that there is always plenty of time between books for me!
Rebecca Stead
#24. [The witch] would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.
C.S. Lewis
#25. I know your breed; all your fine officials debauch the younger girls who are afraid to lose their jobs: that's as old as Washington.
Christina Stead
#26. Isn't that the whole idea?' I asked. 'It's supposed to stop them from being criminals!' She shook her head. 'That's not what I mean. A lot of people make bad mistakes. But being in jail can make them feel like a mistake is all they are. Like they aren't even people anymore.
Rebecca Stead
#27. It's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission.
Rebecca Stead
#28. I asked myself what it was that I wanted from writing and where my connection with books began, and the answer to that question was definitely in childhood, because that's where my connection with reading began.
Rebecca Stead
#29. Trying to forget really doesn't work. In fact, it's pretty much the same as remembering. But I tried to forget anyway, and to ignore the fact that I was remembering you all the time.
Rebecca Stead
#30. I've decided to lead in a way that takes people with me. It's the approach that I think will stand not only our party but also our state in good stead.
Jay Weatherill
#31. Christina Stead has a Chinese say, "Our old age is perhaps life's decision about us" or, worse, the decision we have made about ourselves without ever realizing we were making it.
Randall Jarrell
#32. She's called the secretary, but as far as I can tell she basically runs the school.
Rebecca Stead
#33. All the June Saturday afternoon Sam Pollit's children were on the lookout for him as they skated round the dirt sidewalks and seamed old asphalt of R Street and Reservoir Road that bounded the deep-grassed acres of Tohoga House, their home.
Christina Stead
#34. Papa, ain't it a caution that we can only eat two legs off a frog, 'stead of four."
And he said: "Rob, here's what you do. You catch a real big bullfrog and make friends with him. And teach him to jump backwards. That'll make his front legs big as the hind.
Robert Newton Peck
#35. I think I got a rock in mine, 'stead of bacon."
"Heh. Well, that's life for you. Sometimes you get bacon. Sometimes you get a rock. My advice to you, sir, is to eat what you can, spit out what you cain't.
Rob Vollmar
#36. 'Middle school' is used as shorthand for a time when things change. It's a time a lot of kids feel like they don't even have one good friend.
Rebecca Stead
#37. Peter was a superb swordsman, and parried with dazzling rapidity; ever and anon he followed up a feint with a lunge that got past his foe's defense, but his shorter reach stood him in ill stead, and he could not drive the steel home
J.M. Barrie
#38. Beneath the stars the lake lay dark and sombre," Stead wrote, "but on its shores gleamed and glowed in golden radiance the ivory city, beautiful as a poet's dream, silent as a city of the dead.
Erik Larson
#39. I had watched them trade best friends, start wars, cry, trade back, make treaties, squeal and grab each other's arms in this fake-excited way, et cetera ...
Rebecca Stead
#40. It's immoral to work to make money. There's something unlucky in it. You got to work for the work. You got to work on a farm, for the farm - then it makes money.
Christina Stead
#42. The writing process is not just putting down one page after another-it's a lot of writing and then rewriting, restructuring the story, changing the way things come together.
Rebecca Stead
#43. That's what life is. Life is where you sleep and what you see when you wake up in the morning, and who you tell about your weird dream, and what you eat for breakfast and who you eat it with. Life isn't something that happens to you. It's something you make yourself, all the time." -Celeste
Rebecca Stead
#44. Who's the real you? The person who did something awful, or the one who's horrified by the awful thing you did? Is one part of you allowed to forgive the other?
Rebecca Stead
#46. A girl had supposedly disguised herself as a man to fight in her father's stead, had become companion to a military dragon and saved the empire by winning a great battle;
Naomi Novik
#47. From age nine, my friends and I were on the streets, walking home, going to each other's houses, going to the store. I really wanted to write about that: the independence that's a little bit scary but also a really positive thing in a lot of ways.
Rebecca Stead
#48. I'm an old man, and she's gone now. So don't worry, okay?
Rebecca Stead
#49. On Sunday, I think the most important thing for me is to just turn my brain off. The idea of not trying is the key, because that's where you're relaxed enough to let your brain make new connections.
Rebecca Stead
#50. I remember a young Hungarian Jew, his shoulders stooped like an old man's, who confessed to some infraction so as to be beaten in his uncle's stead. "I am young", he said, "and stronger than he." He was young but no less weak. He did not survive the beating
Elie Wiesel
#51. For in her stead. It's not the same, of course. But it's better to love others than to sit miserable without loving or being loved in return.
Rose Gordon
#52. There's been rumors of war and wars that have been The meaning of life has been lost in the wind And some people thinkin' that the end is close by 'Stead of learnin' to live they are learnin' to die
Bob Dylan
#53. In your actor's heart, you know when you're playing well. Others may not always agree with you, but I'm always aware of when the scene is cooking or not. You have an instinct about that from years of doing scenes and plays, and I think it stands you in good stead even in the TV world.
Michael Emerson
#54. Why is it every careerist tries to turn his mother into a Madonna
to prove his intellect is a virgin birth, papa had nothing to do with it? It's the sign of the misogynist.
Christina Stead
#55. The army taught me to sign my name very quickly, and that's stood me in good stead the rest of my life.
Nicky Oppenheimer
#56. He nodded like he felt sorry for me and my stupid brain. 'I think that's probably because of your common sense. You can't accept the idea of arriving before you leave, the idea that every moment is happening at the same time, that it's us who are moving - ' Enough was enough.
Rebecca Stead
#57. Anyone would think a thin stick like me, weak and miserable would go down with everything: do you think I get more than my cough every winter? I bet I live till ninety, with all my aches and pains. To think that's fifty more years of the Great-I-Am.
Christina Stead
#58. Sometimes you never feel meaner than the moment you stop being mean. It's like how turning on a light makes you realize how dark the room had gotten. And the way you usually act, the things you would have normally done, are like these ghosts that everyone can see but pretends not to.
Rebecca Stead
#59. It's crazy the things a person can pretend not to notice.
Rebecca Stead
#60. Some feeling had started in my stomach and was traveling up to my face, and I knew that when it got there I would turn bright red and hear the ocean, which is what happens when I get put on the spot. If I don't cry, I turn red and hear the ocean. It's a lose-lose situation.
Rebecca Stead
#61. Pace, like everything else in writing, involves a trade-off. If you're not offering the reader a lot of action to keep her interested, you must offer something else in its stead. Slow pace is ideal for complex character development, detailed description, and nuances of style.
Nancy Kress
#62. I have nothing like a writing routine. I sometimes have trouble buckling down to write at home.
Rebecca Stead
#63. Creation of something out of nothing is the most primitive of human passions and the most optimistic
Christina Stead
#64. People who don't like scandals shouldn't be in finance.
Christina Stead
#65. Two young doctors - one from Harvard and the other from Dartmouth - invited me to go to Mecca in my husband's stead. And that is what helped put me back on track.
Betty Shabazz
#66. It was hard to imagine him sneaking around and leaving a rose on anyone's doormat, but I guess boys will surprise you sometimes.
Rebecca Stead
#67. My kids really like food, and they like to cook, so it's a lot of fun to shop with them.
Rebecca Stead
#68. God has given you the same brain, so use your own in stead of borrowing ideas from somebody else. Think about and fathom the ideas before following them.
Raj Singh
#69. I think that kids are a wonderful, wonderful reader to have in your head.
Rebecca Stead
#70. Weak, tea-drinking, effeminate, ineffectual
masters of India, robbers of South Africa, bedevillers of all Europe.
Christina Stead
#71. Sometime it last in love but sometime it hurt in stead.
Irfan Syamil
#74. I don't know. I just feel stuck, like I'm afraid to take any steps, in case they're the wrong ones.
Rebecca Stead
#75. I think we must all feel that there are people out there who know things about our young selves, you know, our early, early lives, that no one else can ever know.
Rebecca Stead
#76. Give me your honest opinion. I don't want truth with a veil on - I like naked ladies naked.
Christina Stead
#77. No adult can bear a child's burden or grow up in his stead.
Maria Montessori
#79. Pukka sahib or rank outsider
gentleman or bounder
and it's accent, accent, all the way.
Christina Stead
#80. Killing men is not like fencing. There's no room for fine touches in battle. Every second that you blade is stuck in one man's body is a second that another can use to skewer you.
Tim Stead
#81. These days I travel so much it's hard to get into a routine. When I'm on the road, I tend to use hotel gyms. When I'm home in L.A., I like to hike and hit the surf. All in all, I try to keep a balanced diet and exercise routine, which has stood me in good stead to date.
Curtis Stone
#82. Right! Right! 'Stead of which, over here, they shit in the water until it's dangerous to drink, then make a fucking fortune out of selling us gadgets to purify it again. Why can't they be made to strain out their own shit?
John Brunner
#83. Undoubtedly, though, what I'm really getting at is this: Since the bridegroom's permanent retirement from the scene, I haven't been able to think of anybody whom I'd care to send out to look for horses in his stead.
J.D. Salinger
#84. I read a whole lot as a child, and, of course, I still read children's books.
Rebecca Stead
#85. It's fine to be a great democrat when you've a slave to rub your boots on.
Christina Stead
#86. There's this trouble with books for me because I'm terrible at thinking of titles. The truth is, even with the titles that I've landed on in the end, they always feel wrong. I think it's because of this whole problem of having to package your book in a certain way.
Rebecca Stead
#87. There, poor sinner, take my garment, and put it on; you shall stand before God as if you were Christ, and I will stand before God as if I had been the sinner; I will suffer in the sinner's stead, and you shall be rewarded for works that you did not do, but which I did for you.
Charles Spurgeon
#88. Money that is in billions and monopolies isn't money at all, because the people have none, and money is democratic, everyone has to have some or there's none at all.
Christina Stead
#89. When a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.
C.S. Lewis
#90. I am hoping to work with writers publishing books for first time, since I of course remember what that experience is like. It's all a bit of a mystery for new authors who don't know what to expect.
Rebecca Stead
#91. That was the nature of presents. You kept them in the giver's stead. They were a small part of that person to keep.
Paul Magrs
#92. The hand of Vengeance found the Bed To which the Purple Tyrant fled The iron hand crush'd the tyrant's head And became Tyrant in his stead.
William Blake
#93. Rachel; and he said, Am I in God's stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah,
Margaret Atwood
#94. Well, it's simple to love someone," she said. "But it's hard to know when you need to say it out loud.
Rebecca Stead
#95. Tab's mom said that when people reached out to hurt your feelings, it was because they secretly felt they deserved to be talked to that way. She said that they had 'long, hard roads ahead' and that you should just wish them well.
Rebecca Stead
#96. Em: I'm falling apart. That's what I'm trying to tell you
Bridge: You're not falling apart. You're scared.
Em: Isn't that the same thing?
Bridge: No
Rebecca Stead
#97. Every published writer suffers through that first draft because most of the time, that's a disappointment.
Rebecca Stead
#98. If you took every tear cried by everyone on earth on one single day and put them in a container, how big would that container need to be? Could you fill a water tower? Three water towers? It's one of those unknowable things. There has to be an answer, but we'll never know what it is.
Rebecca Stead
#99. Life is a million different dots making one gigantic picture. And maybe the big picture is nice, maybe it's amazing, but if you're standing with your face pressed up against a bunch of black dots, it's really hard to tell.
Rebecca Stead
#100. I like the idea of a world, even within a big giant city, where you're not anonymous. You have an identity, and that's an identity that's known just sort of by shopkeepers. I felt that as a kid, and I loved it.
Rebecca Stead
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