Top 30 Threads Quotes

A novel is a collision of ideas. Three or four threads may be floating around in the writer’s consciousness, and at a single moment in time, these ideas collide and produce a novel.

Every morning, I take a deep breath and then go online to discover what new insult or smear has been thrown in my direction. Whether it’s tweets, blogposts or comment threads, the abuse is as relentless as it is vicious.

Kmart uses such mass production that they are able to lower their prices. My hose, for instance, is made by the same factory, the same machines, the same threads as the hose made by four top designers.

I’ve now got a 35,000-word document of quotes from people who hate me, a lot from the ‘Guardian’ comment threads. Mostly, I’ve managed to get myself into the mindset where the criticism is quite affirming.

Of all the fictions we heard last week in Tampa, the one I find most troubling is this: If we all just go our own way, our nation will be stronger for it. Because if we sever the threads that connect us, the only people who will go far are those who are already ahead.

A lot has been written about Tony Perkins and myself and I figured, Let’s get it straight. I had a relationship with Tony for two to three years, but those are only threads in the tapestry of my whole life.

Even though I don’t write about things that come from my life because I’m lucky, and I live in a great place with great kids and, you know, a great husband, I think you can find threads of me in the characters, so that’s really what being a writer is, probably.

To our critical eyes, the threads of which the past is woven are, by nature, endless and indivisible. Scientifically speaking, we cannot grasp the absolute beginning of anything: everything extends backwards to be prolonged by something else.

A habit leads a man so gently in the beginning that he does not perceive he is led – with what silken threads and down what pleasant avenues it leads him! By and by, the soft silk threads become iron chains, and the pleasant avenues Avernus!

It feels like we have two threads running through our lives: one pulling us into the world to achieve, the other pulling us back to replenish us. These threads can seem at odds, but really, they enforce each other. It’s not a trade-off between success and sleep.

We look at life from the back side of the tapestry. And most of the time, what we see is loose threads, tangled knots and the like. But occasionally, God’s light shines through the tapestry, and we get a glimpse of the larger design with God weaving together the darks and lights of existence.

It’s interesting to me that apparently distasteful comments from the Right against weak targets tend to draw a lot less media fire than apparently distasteful comments from the Left against hard targets. That’s one of the threads that runs through the show and that people hopefully pick up on.

I had a great grandmother who believed in so many strange superstitions. She used to tell the future from the things that catch on to the hem of your skirt when you’ve been sewing, and different colored threads would mean different things… Of course, all that influenced me quite a lot as a child.

I believe in a kind of literature which makes clear that, at a deeper level, below the surface, we are tied together through invisible but existing threads. A kind of literature which talks about a lively, ever-changing world of unity, of which we are a small, but not insignificant part.

The challenge is always to find the good place to end the book. The rule I follow with myself is that every book should end where the next book would logically begin. I know that some readers wish that literally all of the threads would be neatly tied off and snipped, but life just doesn’t work that way.

What does the artist do? He draws connections. He ties the invisible threads between things. He dives into history, be it the history of mankind, the geological history of the Earth or the beginning and end of the manifest cosmos.

When there were no kids to play football with in my local park, I would go to my grandma’s factory. She used to give me £2 if I cleaned all the threads and scraps off the floor. I even learned how to sew.

When I first entered the corporate world, doing good and making money were seen as separate and contradictory threads. Challenging that notion set my career – and life – on a new course.

When I was Surgeon General, I spent a lot of time talking to people in living rooms and town halls all across the country, and one of the things I started to notice was that behind many of the stories of addiction, violence, depression and anxiety were threads of loneliness.

Unraveling the threads of a good game story is like solving a well-crafted puzzle. After a lengthy, sometimes difficult journey, the pieces click into place, and you’re rewarded with the satisfying payoff of a job well done.

I pledged California to a Northern Republic and to a flag that should have no treacherous threads of cotton in its warp, and the audience came down in thunder.

When I was a boy, I’d hide under the kitchen table and wind string around the chairs. I have a sense now that I am pulling on those threads. The more I pull, the more it comes unraveled.

When it came to ‘Concussion,’ I found myself with so many threads to weave. So integral to the whistle-blower’s tale were spirituality, the cost of hero-worshipping, what it means to be an American, and just how dangerous the truth can be.

My career choice has largely been what I wanted to do. I always knew that technology would be one of the threads.

We are all woven of different colored threads and strengths and colors. We are all a part of something bigger, a very special part of something that continues to evolve. A more perfect union.

Comment threads are the new therapy for people. They just go and post the worst things they can think of because they feel bad, and then other people start attacking them, and then they attack back.

Writing fiction has developed in me an abiding respect for the unknown in a human lifetime and a sense of where to look for the threads, how to follow, how to connect, find in the thick of the tangle what clear line persists.

My writing process is chaos. I usually start with an overarching theme. Then I establish several story threads, but I don’t outline. I just start writing and keep notes for what may come. It’s an organic process that’s usually pretty flexible.

A memoir takes some particular threads, some incidents, some experience from a person’s life and gives an account of it.

Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue.