#vice

Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#fun #pressure #wit #witty

It is better than going on loving someone who cannot love me back. Better wasting all that feelings" -Tessa gray ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#love

I tell everyone who asks me about writing...almost everyone has an idea for a book, and some even have a great ending, but it's that 290 or so pages in between that are tough! ↗

— Brooklyn Hudson

#thrillers #writing-advice #writing-craft #writing-craft

Not all that is mortal is useless. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#infernal-devices #tessa-gray #tessa-gray

Let us not neglect the forbidden. Let us not sophisticate ourselves out of the cheap thrill and chill of it: the story told for perversity's sake, and all the better for that; the image created because an artist gets tired of reasons sometimes, and wants to dredge up some picture he's been haunted by, and parade it like a new tattoo. I go with it, readily. ↗

— Clive Barker

#writing-advice #writing-craft #writing-craft

Certainly the most destructive vice if you like, that a person can have. More than pride, which is supposedly the number one of the cardinal sins - is self pity. Self pity is the worst possible emotion anyone can have. And the most destructive. It is, to slightly paraphrase what Wilde said about hatred, and I think actually hatred's a subset of self pity and not the other way around - ' It destroys everything around it, except itself '. Self pity will destroy relationships, it'll destroy anything that's good, it will fulfill all the prophecies it makes and leave only itself. And it's so simple to imagine that one is hard done by, and that things are unfair, and that one is underappreciated, and that if only one had had a chance at this, only one had had a chance at that, things would have gone better, you would be happier if only this, that one is unlucky. All those things. And some of them may well even be true. But, to pity oneself as a result of them is to do oneself an enormous disservice. I think it's one of things we find unattractive about the american culture, a culture which I find mostly, extremely attractive, and I like americans and I love being in america. But, just occasionally there will be some example of the absolutely ravening self pity that they are capable of, and you see it in their talk shows. It's an appalling spectacle, and it's so self destructive. I almost once wanted to publish a self help book saying 'How To Be Happy by Stephen Fry : Guaranteed success'. And people buy this huge book and it's all blank pages, and the first page would just say - ' Stop Feeling Sorry For Yourself - And you will be happy '. Use the rest of the book to write down your interesting thoughts and drawings, and that's what the book would be, and it would be true. And it sounds like 'Oh that's so simple', because it's not simple to stop feeling sorry for yourself, it's bloody hard. Because we do feel sorry for ourselves, it's what Genesis is all about. ↗

— Stephen Fry

#depression #depression-humor #happiness #marriage-advice #morality

Though ambition in itself is a vice, it often is also the parent of virtue. ↗

— Hosea Ballou

#ambition #itself #often #parent #though

Using the device of an imaginary world allows me in some strange way to go to the central issues - it's one of many ways to express feelings about real people, about real human relationships. ↗

— Lloyd Alexander

#allows #central #device #express #feelings

It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations. ↗

— Walter Bagehot

#temptations #vices #without

An element of exaggeration clings to the popular judgment: great vices are made greater, great virtues greater also; interesting incidents are made more interesting, softer legends more soft. ↗

— Walter Bagehot

#clings #element #exaggeration #great #great virtues