Rudyard Kipling

Source: Explore Haileybury

Rudyard Kipling
Born: 30 December, 1865 - Bombay, India
Died: 18 January, 1936 - London England



poet
short story writer
journalist
war correspondent - Boer War, South Africa
Nobel Prize winner - 1907



If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!
- If (1896)


If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.
-  Epitaphs of War - Common Form (1914-18)


God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle line,
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
- Recessional (1897)
- Originally published in the Times of London for Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee


I keep six honest serving-men: 
(They taught me all I knew) 
Their names are What and Where and When 
And How and Why and Who.
- Just So Stories - The Elephant's Child (1902)

Isaac Asimov

Source of image

Isaac Asimov
Born: January 2nd, 1920 - Petrovichi, Russia
Died: April 6th, 1992 - New York City, U.S.


novelist
short story writer
non-fiction writer


Any planet is 'Earth' to those that live on it.
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There never can be a man so lost as one who is lost in the vast and intricate corridors of his own lonely mind, where none may reach and none may save.
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Of course there are worlds. Millions of them! Every star you see has worlds, and most of those you don't see.
- Pebble in the Sky


The first problem of living is to minimize friction with the crowds that surround you on all sides.
- The Caves of Steel


You show me someone who can't understand people and I'll show you someone who has built up a false image of himself.
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It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.
- Foundation's Edge


Isn't it sad that you can tell people that the ozone layer is being depleted, the forests are being cut down, the deserts are advancing steadily, that the greenhouse effect will raise the sea level 200 feet, that overpopulation is choking us, that pollution is killing us, that nuclear war may destroy us - and they yawn and settle back for a comfortable nap. But tell them that the Martians are landing, and they scream and run.
- The Secret of the Universe


You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason---if you pick the proper postulates.
- I, Robot

J. D. Salinger

Source of image

J. D. Salinger
Born: January 1st, 1919 - New York City, U.S.
Died: January 27th, 2010 - New Hampshire, U.S.


novelist
short story writer


What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.
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I don't exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it.
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Make sure you marry someone who laughs at the same things you do.
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Know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly
- Catcher in the Rye


The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.
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Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.
- Nine Stories


He said I was unequipped to meet life because I had no sense of humor.
- For Esme - With Love and Squalor, and Other Stories


I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.
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An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.
- Franny and Zooey


I have so much I want to tell you, and nowhere to begin.
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The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it. 
- Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

Graham Greene...

Graham Greene 
Born: October 2nd, 1904 - Berkhamstead, U.K.
Died: April 3rd, 1991 - Vevey, Switzerland


novelist
short story writer
playwright
travel writer
screenplay writer
critic


A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.
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Eternity is said not to be an extension of time but an absence of time.
- The End of the Affair


He gave her a bright fake smile; so much of life was a putting off of unhappiness for another time.
- The Heart of the Matter

We never get accustomed to being less important to other people than they are to us.
- The Third Man

It is always of interest to know what strikes another human being as remarkable.
The Ministry of Fear

There was always another side to a joke, the side of the victim.
- Our Man in Havana


Hate is a lack of imagination.
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The world was in her heart already, like the small spot of decay in a fruit.
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Oh well, perhaps when you're my age you'll know the heart is an untrustworthy beast.The mind too,but it doesn't talk about love.
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And when we love our sin then we are damned indeed.
- The Power and the Glory


You cannot love without intuition.
- The Quiet American

Faith Baldwin...

Faith Baldwin  (wrote about 85 books - New York Times HERE)
Born: October 1st, 1893 - New York, U.S.
Died: March 18th, 1978 - Connecticut, U.S.


novelist
short story writer
poet
magazine articles

(special mentor to a child HERE)


All this makes me realize that miracles are everyday things. Not only the sudden, great good fortune, wafting in on a new wind from the sky. They are almost routine, yet miracles just the same.
- Seasons of the Heart

Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees.
- American Family

That coffee's strong enough to walk on.
- Give Love the Air

You could get to the bottom of her mind in one dive. And rarely, if ever, come up with a pearl.
- Something Special

Kissing tends to bring on woolgathering, even amnesia.
- One More Time


The plan of Nature is progress and for any progress mankind must pay a price.
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Life is rather like a long train ride; you may encounter a great many people, but looking out from your own small compartment of self you catch only a glimpse of other people's joy or despair.
- Evening Star


Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations.
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Sometimes there is a greater lack of communication in facile talking than in silence.
- Face Toward the Spring

Truman Capote...

Truman Capote
Born: September 30th, 1924 - Louisianna, U.S.
Died: August 25th, 1984 - California, U.S.


novelist
short story writer
playwright
non-fiction writer


It’s better to look at the sky than live there.
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Never love a wild thing...If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky.
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Everybody has to feel superior to somebody," she said. "But it's customary to present a little proof before you take the privilege.
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Home is where you feel at home. I'm still looking.
- Breakfast at Tiffany's


It is no shame to have a dirty face- the shame comes when you keep it dirty.
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Just remember: If one bird carried every grain of sand, grain by grain, across the ocean, by the time he got them all on the other side, that would only be the beginning of eternity.
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Imagination, of course, can open any door - turn the key and let terror walk right in.
- In Cold Blood


There were hints of sunrise on the rim of the sky, yet it was still dark, and the traces of morning color were like goldfish swimming in ink.
- The Muses Are Heard


Still, when all is said, somewhere one must belong: even the soaring falcon returns to its master's wrist.
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Oh, I adore to cook. It makes me feel so mindless in a worthwhile way.
- Summer Crossing


It's bad enough in life to do without something YOU want; but confound it, what gets my goat is not being able to give somebody something you want THEM to have.
- A Christmas Memory 

We all, sometimes, leave each other there under the skies, and we never understand why.
- Music for Chameleons

F. Scott Fitzgerald...

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Born: September 24th, 1896 - Minnesota, U.S.
Died: December 21st, 1940 - California, U.S.


novelist
short story writer


In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.
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I love New York on summer afternoons when everyone's away. There's something very sensuous about it - overripe, as if all sorts of funny fruits were going to fall into your hands.
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So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star.
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The exhilarating ripple of her voice was a wild tonic in the rain.
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A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about.
- The Great Gatsby

All life is just a progression toward, and then a recession from, one phrase--"I love you."
- The Offshore Pirate

Receding from grief, it seems necessary to retrace the same steps that brought us there.
- Tender is the Night

In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.
- The Crack-Up

I simply state that I'm a product of a versatile mind in a restless generation — with every reason to throw my mind and pen in with the radicals.
- This Side of Paradise

Everybody's youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.
- The Diamond as Big as the Ritz

Ken Kesey...

Ken Kesey
Born: September 17th, 1935 - Colorado, U.S.
Died: November 10th, 2001 - Oregon, U.S.


novelist
short story writer
children's story writer
essayist



Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.
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You get your visions through whatever gate you're granted.
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They can't tell so much about you if you got your eyes closed.
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest


I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph.
- Tom Wolfe's record of Kesey quotes in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968)


What I always wanted to be was a magician... My real upbringing when I was a teenager was doing magic shows, all over the state, with my father and brothers. Doing magic, you not only have to be able to do a trick, you have to have a little story line to go with it. And writing is essentially a trick.
- interview in The Sun Times (South Africa) - 29 August 1999

Agatha Christie...

Agatha Christie
Born: September 15th, 1890 - Torquay, U.K.
Died: January 12th, 1976 - Winterbrook, U.K.


novelist
short story writer
playwright


The impossible could not have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.
- Murder on the Orient Express

Everybody always knows something," said Adam, "even if it's something they don't know they know.
- Cat Among the Pigeons

Many homicidal lunatics are very quiet, unassuming people. Delightful fellows.
- And Then There Were None: A Mystery Play in Three Acts

There is no detective in England equal to a spinster lady of uncertain age with plenty of time on her hands.
- Murder at the Vicarage

I know there's a proverb which that says 'To err is human,' but a human error is nothing to what a computer can do if it tries.
- Hallowe'en Party

It is clear that the books owned the shop rather than the other way about. Everywhere they had run wild and taken possession of their habitat, breeding and multiplying, and clearly lacking any strong hand to keep them down.
- The Clocks


NOTE
2016 marks the centenary of Agatha Christie writing her first detective story
 – The Mysterious Affair at Styles.
The Royal Mail is marking the centenary with the release of 6 stamps representing 6 of her novels...
- more HERE

Roald Dahl...

Roald Dahl
Born: September 13th, 1916 - Cardiff, U.K.
Died: November 23rd, 1990 - Oxford, U.K.


novelist
short story writer
poet
screen-writer


A little nonsense now and then, is cherished by the wisest men.
- Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

Whipped cream isn't whipped cream at all if it hasn't been whipped with whips, just like poached eggs isn't poached eggs unless it's been stolen in the dead of the night.
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I am the maker of music, the dreamer of dreams!
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Two rights don't equal a left.
- The BFG

My dear young fellow,' the Old-Green-Grasshopper said gently, 'there are a whole lot of things in this world of ours you haven't started wondering about yet.'
- James and the Giant Peach 

And don’t worry about the bits you can’t understand. Sit back and allow the words to wash around you, like music.
- Matilda

D.H. Lawrence...

D. H. Lawrence
Born: September 11, 1885 - U.K.
Died: March 2nd, 1930 - Vence, France


novelist
poet
short story writer


I like to write when I feel spiteful. It is like having a good sneeze.
(Letter to Cynthia Asquith, November 1913)

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.
- The Complete Poems

Instead of chopping yourself down to fit the world, chop the world down to fit yourself.
- Women in Love

And in this passion for understanding her soul lay close to his; she had him all to herself. But he must be made abstract first.
- Sons and Lovers

Perhaps only people who are capable of real togetherness have that look of being alone in the universe. The others have a certain stickiness, they stick to the mass.
- Lady Chatterley's Lover 


A snake came to my water-trough 
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat, 
 To drink there. 
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree 
I came down the steps with my pitcher 
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before 
me. 

 He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom 
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of 
the stone trough 
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom, 
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness, 
He sipped with his straight mouth, 
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body, 
 Silently.
- Snake

Leo Tolstoy...

Leo Tolstoy
Born: September 9th, 1868 - Russia
Died: November 20, 1910 - Russia


novelist
short story writer


We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.
- War and Peace

Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.
- Anna Karenina

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
- The Kreutzer Sonata 

Art lifts man from his personal life into the universal life.
- What is Art?

Mary Shelley...

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Born: 30th August, 1797 - UK

Died: February 1, 1851 - UK

novelist

short story writer

essayist

biographer

travel writer

Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.

- Frankenstein

I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine

and rage the likes of which you would not believe.

If I cannot satisy the one, I will indulge the other.

- Frankenstein