Source: The Alchemist
“Maktub,” she said. “If I am really part of your dream, you’ll come back one day.”
Fatima, p. 101<!-- also p. 116 -->; has also been quoted in slight variant: "If I am really part of your dream, you will come back one day."
Variant: If I am really a part of your dream, you'll come back one day.
Source: The Alchemist (1988)
Sermon (1899)
“Poetry can be written only because it has been written.”
"The Responsibility of the Poet".
What Are People For? (1990)
Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms
“Love of love written by the broken hearted, love of life written by the dead.”
Source: House of Leaves
“Some laws are not written, but are more decisive than any written law.”
Quædam iura non scripta, sed omnibus scriptis certiora sunt.
Book I, Chapter I; slightly modified translation from Norman T. Pratt Seneca's Drama (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983) p. 140
Controversiae
Variant: There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
“Science fiction is no more written for scientists than ghost stories are written for ghosts.”
Penguin Science Fiction (1961) Introduction
Response to a would be biographer in 1980, as quoted in "When Stephen met Sylvia" in The Guardian (24 April 2004) http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1201328,00.html
Context: I am very honoured by your wanting to write a life of me. But the fact is I regard my life as rather a failure in the only thing in which I wanted it to succeed. I have not written the books I ought to have written and I have written a lot of books I should not have written. My life as lived by me has been interesting to me but to write truthfully about it would probably cause much pain to people close to me — and I always feel that the feelings of the living are more important than the monuments of the dead.
“Who publishes the sheet-music of the winds, or the written music of water written in river-lines?”
August 1875, page 220
John of the Mountains, 1938
