Zoë Heller Quotes

A man's head is his castle.

What do you do when it rains?" The captain answered frankly. "I get wet.

Clevinger had a mind, and Lieutenant Scheisskoph had noticed that people with minds tended to get pretty smart at times.

And anything worth dying for

I don't write books for people to be friends with the characters. If you want to find friends, go to a cocktail party.

That is what we are, what we do: nose a net, push push, a net that never exists. The knots in the mesh as strong as our own believing. Our own fears.

To multiply the years and divide by the desire to live is a kind of false accounting.

mankind is resilient: the atrocities that horrified us a week ago become acceptable tomorrow.

I want to protect and preserve social security and Medicare.

The "difficult" female character can-and will-do the shocking, the unexpected and, as a consequence, will give your story an immediate jolt of energy. She is the character who doesn't fit the mold.

Men went mad and were rewarded with medals.

Remember that everyone deserves some fun during working hours.

All of our religions but the Judaic and the Greek think more of us dead than alive.

Everything passes. (That's what makes it endurable.)

The promises of maniacs, like those of women, are not safely relied upon.

If character is destiny, the good are damned.

Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective.

Now you've given them hope, and they're unhappy. So the blame is all yours.

If Richard Nixon was second-rate, what in the world is third-rate?

I never even realized I was Jewish until I was practically grown up. Or rather, I used to feel that everybody in the world was Jewish, which amounts to the same thing.

I write longhand and I type and I rewrite on the typed pages.

I don't think the 'what' distinguishes a good novel from a bad one but rather the 'how.'

Erogenous zones are either everywhere or nowhere.

The smartest people in Washington are the political reporters. They write about their inferiors.

I think that maybe inside any business, there is someone slowly going crazy

Gold was not altogether certain what, anatomically, a gorge was, but he knew that his was rising.

Maybe the most real thing the end. To realize when it's too late.

If there is nothing else there is this: to be inundated, consumed.

Something did happen to me somewhere that robbed me of confidence and courage and left me with a fear of discovery and change and a positive dread of everything unknown that may occur.

You name the TV psychic - they're con men.

The great thing about Gotham is it encompasses so many different worlds.

You can't be someone you're not on TV. You can in movies, but not on TV because you can't hide.

One of the tricks that you have to learn, with episodic TV, is you don't know how many years you're going to be blessed with.

All life is profoundly dependent on communication.

As someone who grew up in tough circumstances, I know that being on public assistance is not a spot that anyone wants to be in.

I want to talk about jobs, the economy, foreclosures. I want to talk about energy prices.

Serving in the United States Senate has been the greatest privilege of my life.

The American people deserve long-term, forward-thinking policies.

There's no point in clinging to illusions.

It's always hard when you've known a person a long time and then you have to recognise that you have nothing left in common but your memories.

Don't claim you're sincere, just be it.

Open your heart to a baseball team and you're liable to get it broken.

You wouldn’t be normal if you were never afraid. Even the bravest men experience fear. One of the biggest jobs we all face in combat is to overcome fear.

Just for once I'd like to see all these things sort of straightened out, with each person getting exactly what he deserves. It might give me some confidence in this universe.

Everybody is as unstable as water.

Under Colonel Korn's rule, the only people permitted to ask questions were those who never did.

Prostitution gives her an opportunity to meet people. It provides fresh air and wholesome exercise, and it keeps her out of trouble.

The problem with the loneliness I suffer is that the company of others has never been a cure for it.

If God was dead, how could I feel this bad?

It made him proud that 29 months in the service had not blunted his genius for ineptitude.