Jay Neugeboren famous quotes

It was difficult to enjoy the trees and flowers when I was so aware of all that I had not yet done - pruning, weeding, transplanting, mulching, composting, tagging. When I was doing the work myself, I was happy, free.
-- Jay Neugeboren

#Happiness #Weed #Flower

A wife who loses a husband is called a widow. A husband who loses a wife is called a widower. A child who loses his parents is called an orphan. There is no word for a parent who loses a child. That's how awful the loss is.
-- Jay Neugeboren

#Children #Husband #Losing A Loved One

I remain curious about all the lives I can't have - and about the lives of others, real and imagined, past and present, and how people came to be who they are... and who they might yet be. I am enchanted by the landscape of possibility.
-- Jay Neugeboren

#Real #Past #People

There is no particular source my stories come from. The stories always seem to be there waiting for me, though sometimes shrouded in mist and fog.
-- Jay Neugeboren

#Fog #Waiting #Stories

A novel, for me, relies on my imagination to inspire your (the reader's) imagination. It is not all there for you. My novels or my stories come to me visually. I use words to translate the novel I see inside my head into words that I hope will create a movie inside your head.
-- Jay Neugeboren

#Imagination #Inspire #Stories

A movie can evoke feelings, thoughts, it is all there and happening, there is no control over the images when you are watching a movie. You are transported for three hours to a world where you see real people. In a novel it is private - there's only you, and words on pages. The landscape is in your mind and in your feelings.
-- Jay Neugeboren

#Real #People #Feelings

As a writer I am proud that if you took my last four books, and they didn't have my name on them, I don't think readers would know they were by the same author.
-- Jay Neugeboren

#Book #Thinking #Names

Writing a novel, I am making is an object that has a life and identity of its own, apart from me.
-- Jay Neugeboren

#Writing #Identity #Novel

I hope my novels will allow you to become lost in a world totally unlike the actual world we live in. I work hard to make the words evoke particular images, thoughts, feelings, the mystery of relationships.
-- Jay Neugeboren

#Hard Work #Feelings #World

Gilbert White discovered the formula for complete happiness, but he died before making the announcement, leaving it for me to do so. It is to be very busy with the unimportant.

I have now reigned above fifty years in victory and peace, beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honors, power and pleasure, have waited on my call, nor does any earthly blessing appear to be wanting for my felicity. In this situation, I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: they amount to fourteen. O man, place not thy confidence in this present world!

Kissing power is stronger than will power.

The only happy people I know are the ones who are working well at something they consider important.

A brilliant inquiry into the contemporary Iranian predicament and what it means for the world. At a time when all too many of our leading thinkers are mired in the weeds of provincialism and narrow ideological wars, Postel has written a work of grace, intelligence, and towering integrity. Reading 'Legitimation Crisis' in Tehran is nothing less than a masterpiece of moral and political criticism.

Basically what's happening is I'm pleading guilty to possessing and having plants and not guilty to the charges of supply.

Every theory in medicine, if medicine is to remain healthy, must be beaten out on the anvil of skepticism. So do we weed out charlatanism.

If the weeds are pulled out of the garden too soon, the too shallow roots of the plants developing around it get pulled up with the weed also. Time is what is needed before criticism can be useful.

Power is the flower of organization.

We cannot teach a flower how to grow, we can only learn from it.