S.L. Wallace Quotes

The point of vision and desire are the same.

The greatest poverty is not to live In a physical world, to feel that one's desire Is too difficult to tell from despair.

Imagination is the will of things. . . .

It is the mind that is woven, the mind that was jerked And tufted in straggling thunder and shattered sun.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind, We make a dwelling in the evening air, In which being there together is enough.

It is poverty's speech that seeks us out the most. It is older than the oldest speech of Rome. This is the tragic accent of the scene.

The mind is the great poem of winter, the man, Who, to find what will suffice, Destroys romantic tenements Of rose and ice.

The integrity of my sleep has been forever compromised, sir.

Psychotics, say what you want about them, tend to make the first move.

I am the truth, since I am part of what is real, but neither more nor less than those around me.

But the happiest people are the ones who understand that good things occur when one allows them to.

Hope was always out ahead of fact, possibility obscured the outlines of reality.

It's easier to die than to move ... at least for the Other Side you don't need trunks.

One must read poetry with one's nerves.

Poetry is the scholar's art.

No one can call themselves a writer until he or she has written at least fifty stories.

To have so little, and it of so little value, was to be quaintly free.

You can't retire to weakness -- you've got to learn to control strength.

Land and water are not really separate things, but they are separate words, and we perceive through words.

[I]f the writer does his job right, what he basically does is remind the reader of how smart the reader is.

Towns are like people. Old ones often have character, the new ones are interchangeable.

[T]o really try to be informed and literate today is to feel stupid nearly all the time, and to need help.

I was saying yes because when you're in love, the world is full of possibilities, and when you're in love, you want to take every single one of them.

To experience commitment as the loss of options, a type of death, the death of childhood's limitless possibility, of the flattery of choice without duress-this will happen, mark me. Childhood's end.

If I was going to act irresponsibly, the least I could do was be responsible for it.

I'm not afraid of new things. I'm just afraid of feeling alone even when there's somebody else there. I'm afraid of feeling bad. Maybe that's selfish, but it's the way I feel.

The assumption that you everyone else is like you. That you are the world. The disease of consumer capitalism. The complacent solipsism.

A novelist has to know enough about a subject to fool the passenger next to him on an airplane.

This appetite to choose death by pleasure if it is available to choose - this appetite of your people unable to choose appetites, this is the death.

The perfect weather of Indian Summer lengthened and lingered, warm sunny days were followed by brisk nights with Halloween a presentiment in the air.

I don't happen to have a sense of humor personally, so I don't know what's funny about a character... This happens to be a feature of my life generally.

What we need are not prohibitory marriage laws, but a reformed society, an educated public opinion which will teach individual duty in these matters

In the land of the dying, sentences go unfinished, you know how they're going to end.

Probably some of the best things that have ever happened to you in life, happened because you said yes to something. Otherwise things just sort of stay the same.

The people around you are you. They share your history. They can even write it with you. And when you lose one, there's no doubt you lose some of yourself, however they're lost.

I will say yes to every favor, request, suggestion and invitation. I will swear to say yes where once I would say no.

I let the performance speak for itself.

Music is kind of motivational and it helps me get my mind right.

I don't really have a ritual. On the car rides over to the racetrack, I just make sure that the right songs are on.

The man who knows his limitations, has none.

The point of books is to combat loneliness.

The severing of an established connection is exponentially more painful than the rejection of an attempted connection.

I am not what you see and hear.

...the sun would leave my sky if I couldn't assume you'd simply come and tell me you were sad.

every failure is also a victory.

I had four hundred thousand pages of continental philosophy and lit theory in my head. And by God, I was going to use it to prove to him that I was smarter than he was.

...morning is the soul's night.

There are no choices without personal freedom, Buckeroo. It's not us who are dead inside. These things you find so weak and contemptible in us - these are just the hazards of being free.

There are secrets within secrets, though--always.

Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty.