As the majestic pearl is formed inside a clam through much irritation, so are you being formed throu...
E. L. MCDOWELL Making decisions in anger is like spitting in the wind; it comes back and hits you in the face.
E. L. MCDOWELL Struggles are really opportunities for your next level.
E. L. MCDOWELL Boredom is the result of lacking focus.
E. L. MCDOWELL Prosperity is a mindset.
E. L. MCDOWELL State of mind determines destination.
E. L. MCDOWELL Take nothing or no one for granted, for what is predictable today will one day become unpredictable ...
E. L. MCDOWELL Build a man's ego and you'll win his favor; crush a man's ego and you'll receive much grief from him...
E. L. MCDOWELL Time is an advocate for truth.
E. L. MCDOWELL Antagonists come with all life progression.
E. L. MCDOWELL Closed doors present other opportunities!
E. L. MCDOWELL Existence is the greatest opportunity one can have; so why settle for a mediocre state of being?
E. L. MCDOWELL The nature of good fiction is that it dwells in ambiguity.
E. L. DOCTOROW If we ever find out how the brain works, with all its complexity, then we will be able to build a ma...
E. L. DOCTOROW The essential problems remain the same... The kids I write about are asking for the same things I wa...
E. L. KONIGSBURG When I began writing in the mid-1960s, I thought it was not important for readers to know whether I ...
E. L. KONIGSBURG Readers let me know that they like books that have more to them than meets the eye. Had they not let...
E. L. KONIGSBURG After I won the Newbery Medal for 'From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler,' ch...
E. L. KONIGSBURG Characters are so important to a story that they actually decide where the story is going. When I wr...
E. L. KONIGSBURG I was the first one in my family to go away to college. I came from a small town where there was no ...
E. L. KONIGSBURG I get ideas for my books from people I know and what happens to them, from places I've been and ...
E. L. KONIGSBURG Art comes from a visceral need and is usually generated by something I have seen; writing comes from...
E. L. KONIGSBURG I think most of us are outsiders. And I think that's good because it makes you question things.
E. L. KONIGSBURG I was born in New York City. But my family moved when I was still an infant. Except for a year and h...
E. L. KONIGSBURG When I was in college at Carnegie Mellon, I wanted to be a chemist. So I became one. I worked in a l...
E. L. KONIGSBURG Growing up in a small town gives you two things: a sense of place and a feeling of self-consciousnes...
E. L. KONIGSBURG I never set out to do this - getting to No. 1 in the 'New York Times' bestseller list wasn&#...
E. L. JAMES I'm a bit of a control freak.
E. L. JAMES Yes, I'm a 'Twi-hard.' I became obsessed. Absolutely obsessed. I didn't watch televi...
E. L. JAMES I see myself as a story teller.
E. L. JAMES I hate having my photograph taken.
E. L. JAMES Everyone's clamoring for the fourth book in the 'Fifty Shades' trilogy, which makes me l...
E. L. JAMES I've worked in television all my life, but really I've always wanted to work in the movies.
E. L. JAMES I don't watch much British television at all. I mean, it's ironic because I used to work in ...
E. L. JAMES If you've been married for 400 years, as I have, it's nice to experience first love again an...
E. L. JAMES I've set the bar quite high in terms of storytelling.
E. L. JAMES I think women love to read love stories.
E. L. JAMES I'm looking forward to getting back to my house and my Ugg boots and not washing sometimes, and ...
E. L. JAMES I'm not a great writer.
E. L. JAMES I came up with a story and I wrote it.
E. L. JAMES Once you're in charge of your job, your house, your children, getting the food on the table, doi...
E. L. JAMES All a writer wants is to be read, and people are so flattering and lovely. I mean, there are witches...
E. L. JAMES Write for yourself. That's it. And write every day.
E. L. JAMES God forbid that women have fantasies.
E. L. JAMES I really like clever men who challenge you.
E. L. JAMES Women basically want the same thing - a good passionate story, a great fantasy - and for our partner...
E. L. JAMES I value my anonymity. I'm happy to come in on the tube or the train and watch other people readi...
E. L. JAMES I think women love a passionate love story.
E. L. JAMES The important thing is not to be too comfortable when you're writing. Noise in the street? That&...
E. L. DOCTOROW I started on computers with 'Billy Bathgate,' a little orange screen with black letters. I t...
E. L. DOCTOROW One of the things I had to learn as a writer was to trust the act of writing. To put myself in the p...
E. L. DOCTOROW I have a number of vices, one of which is moderation.
E. L. DOCTOROW I began to ask two questions while I was reading a book that excited me: not only what was going to ...
E. L. DOCTOROW History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think o...
E. L. DOCTOROW A period of time is as much an organising principle for a work of fiction as a sense of place. You c...
E. L. DOCTOROW When I'm writing, I like to seal everything off and face the wall, not to look outside the windo...
E. L. DOCTOROW The writer isn't made in a vacuum. Writers are witnesses. The reason we need writers is because ...
E. L. DOCTOROW There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there's only narrative.
E. L. DOCTOROW Books are acts of composition: you compose them. You make music: the music is called fiction.
E. L. DOCTOROW I discovered Einstein said the same thing about his celebrated theories of relativity that writers s...
E. L. DOCTOROW The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.
E. L. DOCTOROW We're always attracted to the edges of what we are, out by the edges where it's a little raw...
E. L. DOCTOROW I like commas. I detest semi-colons - I don't think they belong in a story. And I gave up quotat...
E. L. DOCTOROW Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're do...
E. L. DOCTOROW I got married very early, and in no time at all, we had three children. And it seemed to me I had an...
E. L. DOCTOROW Here's how it goes: I'm up at the stroke of 10 or 10:30. I have breakfast and read the paper...
E. L. DOCTOROW There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there's only narrative.
E. L. DOCTOROW The writer isn't made in a vacuum. Writers are witnesses. The reason we need writers is because we n...
E. L. DOCTOROW Like art and politics, gangsterism is a very important avenue of assimilation into society.
E. L. DOCTOROW It's like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the w...
E. L. DOCTOROW I try to avoid experience if I can. Most experience is bad.
E. L. DOCTOROW Often the search proves more profitable than the goal.
E. L. KONIGSBURG In the twentieth century one of the most personal relationships to have developed is that of the per...
E. L. DOCTOROW Murders are exciting and lift people into a heart-beating awe as religion is supposed to do, after s...
E. L. DOCTOROW The true greatness of a nation is not measured by the vastness of its territory, or by the multitude...
L. E. BLAZE You can't remember sex. You can remember the fact of it, and recall the setting, and even the detail...
E. L. DOCTOROW Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.
E. L. DOCTOROW Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.
E. L. DOCTOROW I think it's important to experience kindness so that you can experience it more in the future. ...
E. L. KONIGSBURG It's like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make t...
E. L. DOCTOROW Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the...
E. L. DOCTOROW Washington is designed not to solve problems. Congress is so beholden to the money that any solution...
E. L. DOCTOROW Congress is so beholden to the money that any solution in the general interest will be frustrated an...
E. L. DOCTOROW Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can...
E. L. DOCTOROW Often the search proves more profitable than the goal.
E. L. KONIGSBURG I don't think anything I've written has been done in under six or eight drafts. Usually it t...
E. L. DOCTOROW In the twentieth century one of the most personal relationships to have developed is that of the per...
E. L. DOCTOROW If Dr. [John A. T.] Robinson is right in saying that "God is teaching us that we must live as men wh...
E. L. MASCALL Commemoration of Eglantine Jebb, Social Reformer, Founder of 'Save the Children', 1928 I do not w...
E. L. MASCALL Enough has... been said to show that the impoverished secularized versions of Christianity which are...
E. L. MASCALL Feast of the Annunciation of our Lord to the Virgin Mary Even the most traditional theologian wil...
E. L. MASCALL Continuing a short series on topics of Christian apologetics: In the rare cases where faith appea...
E. L. MASCALL Continuing a short series on topics of Christian apologetics: The critical scholar is not committe...
E. L. MASCALL Beginning a short series on topics of Christian apologetics: If we are prepared to admit, even as ...
E. L. MASCALL Feast of Mark the Evangelist There are, of course, interesting questions that can be asked about t...
E. L. MASCALL Suffering isn't a moral endowment. People don't always do well under duress, and it seemed t...
E. L. DOCTOROW Getting an idea should be like sitting down on a pin. It should make you jump up and do something.
E. L. SIMPSON If the people raise a howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not ...
E. L. DOCTOROW We dress them [children] in the presumptions of the world. They are the bright small face of hope. T...
E. L. DOCTOROW Not really, ... There is no Carl. I made him up.
E. L. DOCTOROW Its glory is all moonshine.
E. L. DOCTOROW So what this is is a 'road novel.' Eventually entire civilization (in the South) had been uprooted a...
E. L. DOCTOROW The wretched war had destroyed not only their country but all their presumptions of human self-regar...
E. L. DOCTOROW For some reason that excited me.
E. L. DOCTOROW History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as...
E. L. DOCTOROW Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a...
E. L. DOCTOROW Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing,...
E. L. DOCTOROW We're always attracted to the edges of what we are, out by the edges where it's a little raw and ner...
E. L. DOCTOROW The thing about this march is it was totally different than the rest of the war, as bloody and bruta...
E. L. DOCTOROW He was a brilliant man, a complex man. The march justified him as a military man, but he had a great...
E. L. DOCTOROW You could go for miles without seeing an end to the procession of troops and horses and wagons, ... ...
E. L. DOCTOROW You can't do that to Carl.
E. L. DOCTOROW It seemed to me so much more sensible to make something up than go through the tedious business of i...
E. L. DOCTOROW I can walk into a bookstore and hand over my credit card and they don't know who the hell I am. Mayb...
E. L. DOCTOROW I don't see any point in making a big fuss about it.  I just said, 'No, thank you.'
E. L. DOCTOROW My father was the proprietor of a music shop on Forty-third Street, where many of the finest perform...
E. L. DOCTOROW You were my marital bliss,” he said to me this morning. “You can be again!” You know what I an...
E. L. NEVE The movie that changed my life,' he liked to say, by which he meant that it had changed his wardrobe...
E. L. NEVE I like to think of myself as an unmediated novelist - or perhaps a national novelist.
E. L. DOCTOROW Movies are too literal.
E. L. DOCTOROW I did have a feeling then that the culture of factuality was so dominating that storytelling had los...
E. L. DOCTOROW Things that appear on the front page of the newspaper as 'fact' are far more dangerous than ...
E. L. DOCTOROW I'm not the sort of writer who can walk into a party and take a look around, see who's sleep...
E. L. DOCTOROW A new reader shouldn't be able to find you in your work, though someone who's read more may ...
E. L. DOCTOROW My theory about why Hemingway killed himself is that he heard his own voice; that he reached the poi...
E. L. DOCTOROW Each book tends to have its own identity rather than the author's. It speaks from itself rather ...
E. L. DOCTOROW Writing is immensely difficult. The short forms especially.
E. L. DOCTOROW I can walk into a bookstore and hand over my credit card and they don't know who the hell I am. ...
E. L. DOCTOROW Obama is a great man who's just beginning to understand the realities. And I'm not just sayi...
E. L. DOCTOROW I get intrigued by a first lin and I write to find out why it means something to me. You make discov...
E. L. DOCTOROW There are two books that impressed me when I was very young. One was 'The Adventures of Augie Ma...
E. L. DOCTOROW Somewhere along the line the rhythms and tonalities of music elided in my brain with the sounds that...
E. L. DOCTOROW I thought I would lose, so I didn't prepare a speech.
E. L. DOCTOROW In fiction, you know, there are no borders. You can go anywhere.
E. L. DOCTOROW When you're working well, you don't do research. Whatever you need comes to you.
E. L. DOCTOROW To have the regard of one's peers is immensely moving.
E. L. DOCTOROW My sense of what a book should be has changed so radically. I like to think for the better.
E. L. DOCTOROW I've outlasted many marriages at Random House.
E. L. DOCTOROW People come out of the mid-west and go to the Ivy League. I kind of reversed the direction.
E. L. DOCTOROW My books start almost before I realise it. Once in a while, some accident causes an idea to rise to ...
E. L. DOCTOROW From my undergraduate days, I've always been interested in the major philosophical questions tha...
E. L. DOCTOROW I'm from a country where acting is taken very seriously; it's a very serious profession.
MALCOLM MCDOWELL I love doing every role I do!
MALCOLM MCDOWELL You know, I've had an incredible career and I'm blessed.
MALCOLM MCDOWELL An actor cannot be a censor. I'm there to interpret.
MALCOLM MCDOWELL The most nurturing of directors can make you feel too comfortable, and you don't really push for...
MALCOLM MCDOWELL I'd love to do radio plays. I think that one should be open to everything and shouldn't limi...
MALCOLM MCDOWELL Different directors offer you different things, and it's not necessarily the most obvious things...
MALCOLM MCDOWELL There are no great scripts - just great films.
MALCOLM MCDOWELL I think we're all a little afraid of the dark. If you lived in the country, as I did, there'...
MALCOLM MCDOWELL I've always been one to do the work and just hone my craft.
MALCOLM MCDOWELL I don't worry about whether I'm making a masterpiece, because I know that if you get just on...
MALCOLM MCDOWELL If you dunk your head in cold water, you can't stay under for more than five seconds. I mean, th...
MALCOLM MCDOWELL I am a professional actor, and I don't go about moralizing about what the character does. Otherw...
MALCOLM MCDOWELL If you look a little punkish, then they're going to give you the parts. And if you play an iconi...
MALCOLM MCDOWELL My favorite actor who played villains - who could play anything, really - was Jimmy Cagney.
MALCOLM MCDOWELL I'm not quite as buoyant as I was in my youth.
MALCOLM MCDOWELL I like to razz the Trekkies a little bit. Who doesn't? It's trainspotting, isn't it? But...
MALCOLM MCDOWELL Let's not get too precious about it: actors are not heart surgeons or brain surgeons. We are jus...
MALCOLM MCDOWELL I just love a challenge, and always have, and will do anything to make it interesting. I'll try ...
MALCOLM MCDOWELL The villains that I play, I always think that they are grounded, wonderful people with enormous inte...
MALCOLM MCDOWELL The thing is, I've never been a handsome leading-man type, so let's not kid ourselves.
MALCOLM MCDOWELL Once you commit to something, you've got to commit the whole way. Try and make the best of it.
MALCOLM MCDOWELL You can't hold back. You can't think of the subtleties of playing. You just have to get out ...
MALCOLM MCDOWELL You've always got to work with the best if you can, and of course, the best are the best because...
MALCOLM MCDOWELL The definition of insanity in Texas is so insane that it's impossible to be insane in Texas.
MALCOLM MCDOWELL Why don't the names of Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius offend people? The reason is that these other...
JOSH MCDOWELL When I was a crusade director in British Columbia, all of our meetings were at 9:03. Somebody said &...
JOSH MCDOWELL The test of man is how well he is able to feel about what he thinks. The test of a woman is how we...
MARY MCDOWELL The test of man is how well he is able to feel about what he thinks. The test of a woman is how well...
MARY MCDOWELL Forgiveness is the oil of relationships.
JOSH MCDOWELL It is true I'd rather get a hole in one than win an Academy Award.
MALCOLM MCDOWELL No matter how devastating our struggles, disappointments, and troubles are, they are only temporary....
JOSH MCDOWELL Anyone with sincere religious beliefs cannot say that all religions are true. That is so illogical i...
JOSH MCDOWELL After I set out to refute Christianity intellectually and couldn't, I came to the conclusion the...
JOSH MCDOWELL No matter how devastating our struggles, disappointments, and troubles are, they are only temporary.
JOSH MCDOWELL While the resurrection promises us a new and perfect life in the future, God loves us too much to le...
JOSH MCDOWELL If Jesus Christ was who He claimed to be, and He did die on a cross at a point of time in history, t...
JOSH MCDOWELL Few people seem to realize that the resurrection of Jesus is the cornerstone to a worldview that pro...
JOSH MCDOWELL Christ appeared alive on several occasions after the cataclysmic events of that first Easter.
JOSH MCDOWELL The first thing that stuck in the minds of the disciples was not the empty tomb, but rather the empt...
JOSH MCDOWELL Every university in America teaches 'Clockwork Orange.' I get fed up with it.
MALCOLM MCDOWELL The Internet has given atheists, agnostics, skeptics, the people who like to destroy everything that...
JOSH MCDOWELL For centuries many of the world's distinguished philosophers have assaulted Christianity as bein...
JOSH MCDOWELL Paul the apostle recounted that Jesus appeared to more than 500 of His followers at one time, the ma...
JOSH MCDOWELL The downfall of the church will not come from a lack of apologetic teaching; it will come from disin...
JOSH MCDOWELL Here's the simplest answer: Within weeks, the disciples proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus Chr...
JOSH MCDOWELL As a reward for their efforts, however, those early Christians were beaten, stoned to death, thrown ...
JOSH MCDOWELL It's been a long day.
BOB MCDOWELL We just wanted to see what we could contribute.
BOB MCDOWELL The magnitude of the destruction was unbelievable. ... The scope of the conditions down there is jus...
BOB MCDOWELL We had to take a big knife off one guy who we rescued. That's not anything that should be a surprise...
BOB MCDOWELL Because the New Testament provides the primary historical source for information on the resurrection...
JOSH MCDOWELL On that Sunday morning the first thing that impressed the people who approached the tomb was the unu...
JOSH MCDOWELL I never do research unless it's extraordinary circumstances.
MALCOLM MCDOWELL It's definitely a very feminine season. There's just a huge variety out there, which is good because...
LAURA MCDOWELL Richard Lester is a wonderful director, a great comedy director, of course.
MALCOLM MCDOWELL We elect Democrats to the Congress to give us stuff and we elect Republicans to the White House so w...
CHARLIE MCDOWELL In my home we are having to water every day, every night. I've put new plants in, some have died, so...
SUSAN MCDOWELL Always have a little sweater with you.
LAURA MCDOWELL