Deborah Biancotti Quotes

Her parents didn't understand that braille meant big clunky books that marked you as different, while audiobooks live invisibly on your phone and text-to-speech gave you the whole damn internet. ~ Scott Westerfeld

If you define yourself as someone fixing education, there's nothing short-range you can do to fix education directly. It's labor intensive. You have to change the way people act. You have to convince people, and change people. ~ Deborah Meier

Young poets are too apt to consider themselves "children of the mist" – they must dwell apart from men and contemn their kind, or they fear they shall be only taken for common-place characters. They forget that poetry is the language which speaks to all hearts - and that instead of cherishing the sacred fire as a lonely light, as one that burns in a charnel house, they should bring it forth in its beauty and brightness as a guide to the pleasant places and sparkling waters of earth's happiness and the radiant messenger of heaven's exalted hopes. And they should rejoice and be glad that to them the kindling of such high imagination is given.

~ Sarah Josepha Hale
Ladies Magazine, November 1830

From the Introduction to Cherishing the Sacred Fire ~ Deborah L. Halliday

When one contemplated Portia, when one contemplated Sharon, when one contemplated one's own apparently pointless, utterly trivial being, the questions hung all around one, as urgent as knives at the throat. But the instant one tried to grasp one of them and turn it to one's own purpose and pierce through the murk, it became blunt and useless as a piece of cardboard. ~ Deborah Eisenberg

Diana's eyes were the blue and gold of a summer sky, and Matthew wanted nothing more than to fall headlong into their bright depths, not to lose himself but to be found ~ Deborah Harkness

I am not alone in thinking that we are at a tipping point ecologically and morally and politically. Democracy cannot survive without a vibrant middle class, yet the policies of one of the parties has been committed to wiping it out for 30 years. ~ Deborah Kass

Nothing is more fortifying than learning that you have a real reader, a reader who truly responds both accurately and actively. It gives you courage, and you feel, I can crawl out on the branch a little further. It's going to hold. ~ Deborah Eisenberg

My point, Clara Gill, is that it's wise to choose your allegiance in this world, take a side or a story or a creed, but you might be wrong. You might be dazzled."~Will Cross ~ Deborah Noyes

Maybe life isn't about being one way or the other. Perhaps the answers we are looking for come from everywhere–our faith, our brains, and our hearts. ~ Deborah Rodriguez

You look like a Greek God, not to attract me per say, but to be attractive to all. It's part of your power, your persuasive way. It's also part of the evil, to make it harder for you to remain good. Evil doesn't just come in the form of a monster, it comes in the form of a beautiful woman, a temptress if you will, in the form of sin. With your incredible good looks, women will be more drawn to you, which could tempt you to evil's sin; a curse, as well as a gift. ~ Deborah Ann

Critiquing relieves you of the responsibility of doing integrative thinking. ~ Deborah Tannen

Sol in Sagittarius

Sagittarius governs faith, religion, writings, bookes, and the interpretation of dreames.
Those born under the signe of the archer shall work great wonders and receive much honour and joye.
While Sagittarius rules the heavens, consult with lawyers about thy business.
It is a good season for making oaths and striking bargains. ~ Deborah Harkness

Bu keyi, Cannot. It was one of the first Mandarin phrases I learned, and it is the phrase of choice for all things forbidden, out of bounds, not possible, or otherwise not allowed. Its meaning seems to vacillate with circumstances: sometimes bu keyi means no, sometimes it suggests maybe, and sometimes it even hints at yes. ~ Deborah Fallows

Lately I can't help wanting us
to be like other people.
For example, if I were a smoker,

you'd lift a match to the cigarette
just as I put it between my lips.
It's never been like that

between us: none of that
easy chemistry, no quick, half automatic
flares. Everything between us

had to be learned.
Saturday finds me brooding
behind my book, all my fantasies

of seduction run up
against the rocks.
Tell me again

why you don't like
sex in the afternoon?
No, don't tell me--

I'll never understand you
never understand us, America's strangest
loving couple: they never

drink a bottle of wine together
and rarely look at each other.
Into each other's eyes, I mean. ~ Deborah Garrison

I am always nighttime on the inside
barefoot and heretic ~ Deborah Landau

One man commented that he and I seemed to have different definitions of gossip. He said, 'To you it seems to be discussion of personal details about people known to the conversationalists. To me, it's a discussion of the weaknesses, character flaws, and failures of third persons, so that the participants in the conversation can feel superior to them. This seems unworthy, hence gossip is bad. ~ Deborah Tannen

If you encase yourself in stone like a fossil, you'll have an existence, but not a life. ~ Deborah O'Brien

Because I've got an AFI award, I feel there is a certain expectation when I walk into a room, you know, that 'That Deb Mailman must know something!' But I'm just as nervous with every experience. I still doubt whether or not I can pull something off. I still think, 'When is the review going to come along that says Deb Mailman's not very good?' ~ Deborah Mailman

I don't really see, but I like how his mind works in a different way from mine, in a way that could open mine up. ~ Deborah Meyler

According to human accounts, Dracula lived on for centuries – he may still be living. Are you sure he's really dead?' I asked. 'I watched Baldwin rip his head off and bury it thirty miles away from the rest of his body. He was really dead then, and he's really dead now.' Gallowglass looked at me reprovingly. 'You should know better than to believe these human stories, Auntie. They've never got more than a speck of truth in them. ~ Deborah Harkness

When you lose someone who's as close as your own skin, the only place you can find him again is hidden inside your memories. ~ Deborah Blumenthal

I don't ask for guarantees. I'll tell you what I want. I want to laugh with you. Sit and look at you. Wake up with nothing to think about but how warm and smooth you feel against me. Make a life together. All of this has been worth it if we can have that. ~ Deborah Smith

Survival and sexuality were linked in ways I'd never appreciated until now. He ~ Deborah Harkness

WHAT WAS LOST IN THE COLLAPSE: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty. Twilight in the altered world, a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream in a parking lot in the mysteriously named town of St. Deborah by the Water, Lake Michigan shining a half mile away. ~ Emily St. John Mandel

Pamela Smith and Benjamin Schmidt have gathered together a wide-ranging and provocative set of original essays that successfully demonstrate how contingent the process of making knowledge was during a period of fundamental epistemological change. This is a finely crafted and conceptualized collection. ~ Deborah Harkness

I adore not being me. I'm not very good at being me. That's why I adore acting so much. ~ Deborah Kerr

It's broadening. You meet people in your family you'd never happen to run into otherwise. ~ Deborah Eisenberg

What is it that you most fear hearing about your work? ~ Deborah Butterfield

So I did 'Something Happened on the Way to Heaven' and the original version is a ballad. The original Phil record is uptempo but we slowed it down and made it a ballad. ~ Deborah Cox

I prefer Princess. I would love to be known as a diva later on in life when I've had far more experiences. ~ Deborah Cox

I think it's fun to play with worlds that you can add a lot of your own imagination to. With 'True Blood,' you're not limited by anything, there are just leaps and bounds of the imagination you can take with these characters. ~ Deborah Ann Woll

I have been there, and I have seen these totally formed babies as early as ten weeks ... with the leg missing, or with their head off. I have seen the little rib cages ... ~ Deborah Priya Henry

Part of the reason images of women in positions of authority are marked by their gender is that the very notion of authority is associated with maleness. ~ Deborah Tannen

Another person closes you off from the world, but without anyone else there you are like a grain of pollen, vulnerable to or open to all these fleeting relationships. After ~ Deborah Meyler

Living together places a huge burden on the other person to be lover, friend, entertainments manager, chef, domestic help, which is almost impossible and can lead to disappointment. If you don't live together, you spend more time with other people and ease the pressure off your lover. ~ Deborah Moggach

Scholars do one of two things when they discover information that doesn't fit what they already know. Either they sweep it aside so it doesn't bring their cherished theories into question or they focus on it with laserlike intensity and try to get to the bottom of the mystery. ~ Deborah Harkness

What do you call love, then? Someone I can't live without. ~ Deborah Smith

I find over the next few days that acceptance is the way to go. You have to bend your mind around from the path it has always taken to a path where your own direction does not matter. You are there for someone else. It is easier if you don't struggle against that, if you simply bow your head down to it, acquiesce, comply, love. ~ Deborah Meyler

A passion for learning ... isn't something you have to inspire with; it's something you have to keep from extinguishing. ~ Deborah Meier

apparent. Once I put Clorox cream on ~ Deborah Feldman

The secret to not being afraid is to understand what scares you ~ Deborah Wiles

Who's the young man beside you?" Helen suddenly asked. "Oh, I see, you're one of us." She turned to Nonie. "And you did introduce us before." She tapped a finger against her right temple. "Every once in a while this old clock up here forgets to click to the next second. I apologize for that. ~ Deborah Leblanc

Holding on to resentments and anger can ruin your quality of life. The only person who suffers from your failure to forgive is you - it is not the other guy. When you stay hostile or resentful, it tears down your immune system and increases your risk of disease. ~ Deborah King

The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation - or a relationship. ~ Deborah Tannen

A bedraggled woman stood on his doorstep in the pouring rain, and his first impulse was to slam the door in her face.
But she had clearly come as far as she could; her pale face was twisted in pain, and she shivered convulsively beneath a denim jacket that was as soaking wet as the rest of her. Long black strands of hair hung down in twisted ribbons like seaweed in the vanishing daylight, reminding him of a sea creature he'd once dated briefly in his more adventurous youth. ~ Deborah Blake

I read The Vegetarian and fell in love with it. A year later, I was invited to go and speak at the London Book Fair (which I'd never even heard of before), as they were gearing up for Korea being the market focus country in 2014. I met Max Porter there, Kang's editor at Portobello, sent him my sample, and the rest is history. ~ Deborah Smith

The task is not primarily to have a story, but to penetrate the story, to discard the elements of it that are merely shell, or husk, that give apparent form to the story, but actually obscure the essence. In other words, the problem is to transcend the givens of a narrative. ~ Deborah Eisenberg

Goddess does not want us to imitate some ideal of perfection, but to be our true selves. ~ Deborah Harkness

Your past experiences will flavour your future ones, that is human nature. ~ Deborah Cater

She was not a poet. She was a poem. ~ Deborah Levy