Marsha Sidharth > Marsha's Quotes

“A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world."

[Speech upon being awarded the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels (Peace Prize of the German Book Trade), Frankfurt Book Fair, October 12, 2003]”
― Susan Sontag

“I think that my job is to observe people and the world, and not to judge them. I always hope to position myself away from so-called conclusions. I would like to leave everything wide open to all the possibilities in the world.”
― Haruki Murakami

“Observation is a dying art.”
― Stanley Kubrick, Stanley Kubrick: Interviews

“I sometimes think my head is so large because it is so full of dreams.”
― Joseph Merrick, How to write mysteries: A writer's notebook

“You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your perception...you see what is, where most people see what they expect.”
― Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions

“There is no such thing as magic, supernatural, miracle;
only something that's still beyond logic of the observer.”
― Toba Beta, Betelgeuse Incident: Insiden Bait Al-Jauza

“Observing and understanding are two different things.”
― Mary E. Pearson, The Miles Between

“Happiness is always on the other side of being teachable.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Begin to see the violence around you; begin to see the violence within you.”
― Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason

“You are the writer, producer, and director of your own mind programs.”
― Elizabeth Bohorquez RN

“Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Each person has a literature inside them.”
― Anna Deavere Smith

“Sometimes you make choices in life and sometimes choices make you.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“Part of me suspects that I'm a loser, and the other part of me thinks I'm God Almighty.”
― John Lennon

“I am a loser in my own plot, but I might be the hero in someone else's plot.”
― Vann Chow

“Never make a decision when you need to pee.”
― Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers

“If a book about failures doesn't sell, is it a success?”
― Jerry Seinfeld

“For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.”
― Stephen Hawking

“Fascism is capitalism plus murder.”
― Upton Sinclair

“The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real ... for a moment at least ... that long magic moment before we wake.

Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?

We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.

They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to middle Earth.”
― George R.R. Martin