"They will not be pleased. But they know we must catch the monsoon with a well-found ship; and they know they are in the Navy--they have chosen their cake, and must lie on it.' You mean, they cannot have their bed and eat it.' No, no, it is not quite that either. I mean--I wish you would not confuse my mind, Stephen."

-- Patrick O'Brian

#Lying Quotes #Mean Quotes #Cake Quotes

“One of my pet theories is that readers have built-in BS detectors that enable them to recognize insincerity in writers. David [Halberstam] was sincerity to the core. He believed in what he wrote, and that conviction conveyed itself to readers.”

Source : "David Halberstam". The Washington Post Live Q&As, www.washingtonpost.com. April 24, 2007.
“My anger with the US was not at first, that they had used that weapon - although that anger came later.”
“The only fool bigger than the person who knows it all is the person who argues with him.”
“The universe is not indifferent to intelligence, it is actively hostile to it. Love thy neighbor as yourself, but choose your neighborhood.”
“I feel that in the past, my style has shown itself to be capable of handling dark and light in the same paragraph, or even in the same sentence. That's something I almost take for granted. I think it was more a concern to get the details right and persuasively recreate the world I was trying to write about.”
“Your responses to the events of life are more important than the events themselves.”
“I never knew what to do with a paper except to put it in a side pocket or pass it to a clerk who understood it better than I did.”
“I am my own sanctuary and I can be reborn as many times as I choose throughout my life.”

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