Paul Whybrow's latest activity

“I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin...

Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Samuel Ullman

"In the end you don't so much find yourself as you find someone who knows who you are." Robert Brault

"You don't write about people you know, you write what you know about people." Jan Mark

“I’ve spent 35 years trying to learn how to let go of the destructive parts of my character, and I still have days when I struggle with it. We all have our broken pieces. Emotionally, spiritually, in this life, nobody gets away unhurt. We’re...

Over-thinking ruins you. It ruins the situation. And it twists things around. It makes you worry. Plus it just makes everything worse than it actually is. Karen Salmansohn

“The best thing about rock bottom is the rock part. You discover the solid bit of you. The bit that can't be broken down further. The thing that you might sentimentally call a soul. At our lowest we find the solid ground of our foundation. And we...

A line is a dot that went for a walk. Paul Klee

The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant. Salvador Dali

If you expect nothing from somebody, you are never disappointed. Sylvia Plath

“Only when you do not know yourself, the opinion of other people becomes important.” Sadhguru

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original...

Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders. Walter Bagehot

“Sometimes we don’t want to be tethered to yesterday. It’s nicer to forget. Maybe the gaps in our memory are there for a reason, evolutionary perhaps, to give us the space to grow, to get away from childishness or childish things. Or maybe it’s...

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up. Mark Twain