Hans Christian Andersen Quotes

People are even more reluctant to admit that man explains nothing, than they were to admit that God explains nothing.

The world today is a very different one. Social media, which I use as a way of connecting with people, is something that my father never got to use. I'm not worried about defending my father's legacy. I'm very much worried about what the future holds.

I've always been into having stories told to me. I was a voracious reader, my father was also a teller of tales; and the kind of Baron Munchausen proxy of a tall tale was much more interesting than a true tale.

The Court is making the preposterous assumption that the People of the United States somehow silently redefined marriage in 1868 when they ratified the 14th Amendment.

There are people. There are stories. The people think they shape the stories, but the reverse if often closer to the truth. Stories shape the world. They exist independently of people, and in places quite devoid of man, there may yet be mythologies.

Holy mother!" "Hmph. More like holy father. I'd think you'd know the difference." -Hephaetus

Most people are not particularly good at anything.

The javelin-snake amphiptere hurls itself from the branches of trees.

People become the stories they hear and the stories they tell.

The Seahawks have only been around since 1976, so our fan base is relatively young. You talk about the Patriots, or the Celtics or, obviously, Red Sox and Bruins. Your grandfather's father was a fan of that team. People have lived there their whole lives.

There is a certain embarrassment about being a storyteller in these times when stories are considered not quite as satisfying as statements and statements not quite as satisfying as statistics; but in the long run, a people is known, not by its statements or its statistics, but by the stories it tells.

I've never made an excuse of not knowing my father, because I've had great people in my life.

It's difficult for me to write in English as it's not my first language, but French is even worse because of my father's influence and because the comparisons that I - not even other people - would make.

There is a myth that homosexuals are 'born that way,' and we are pounded with this idea so thoroughly that many people think that somebody, somewhere, must have proved it.

The problem for me is that I look like so many people in my family, so I can't really see anything. Except I could say that I look rather like my father without his mustache.

Hippogriff, n. An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin. The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and half eagle. The hippogriff was actually, therefore, only one-quarter eagle, which is two dollars and fifty cents in gold. The study of zoology is full of surprises.

The reason I wouldn't dare to write a Western is simply because that seems to be so much a part of American culture. Maybe if I want to write a Western enough I should try to overcome that fear, but I'll certainly feel like I'm trespassing. I feel that that is so much a part of American foundation myth, it's part of the myth of America, the American vision of what America is, which people have glorified and then challenged and then vilified.

Money is a bad god. People are a bad god. They don't have the power to do what God can do.

A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don’t get to choose our own hearts. We can’t make ourselves want what’s good for us or what’s good for other people. We don’t get to choose the people we are.

Why is it we can never love the people we ought to?

We grew up as poor people but we never knew poverty. I still love and miss the Somalia I grew up in. Things changed, when my father became a diplomat later on.

Modernity sees humanity as having ascended from what is inferior to it - life begins in slime and ends in intelligence - whereas traditional cultures see it as descended from its superiors. As the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins put the matter: We are the only people who assume that we have ascended from apes. Everybody else take it for granted that they are descended from gods.