Henry David Thoreau Quotes

I have come to believe that this is a mighty continent which was hitherto unknown.

I realized I had something new to say, something that wasn't already out there.

I didn't play baseball my entire life, so I do bring something a little more unique to the telecast and I get really excited about stuff that, maybe if I had been around baseball my whole life, I would just say, 'Come on. Everybody knows that. Its not a big deal.'

True stories are always good because they're so odd, and so unlikely. It's always good to have a world that people don't know about - a world that hasn't yet been done. It's like treading on fresh snow. You're the first one there. It always feels good to be dealing with a period of history or a world that no one else has dealt with.

I like to pretend that each book is my first one and last one, because it takes a tremendous amount of energy to do a book.

I have come to believe that this is a mighty continent which was hitherto unknown. I am greatly supported in this view by reason of this great river [Ozama], and by this sea which is fresh.

What a writer has to do is write what hasn't been written before or beat dead men at what they have done.

In the beginning, all the world was America.

Originality is also very important to a writer. And all of the writers I've mentioned, of course, are original, but it's important to me that every book that I do be really a completely fresh and new look at the world. And of course, that makes it frightening to start a new book because you can't really depend upon what you've done with previous books.

I'm a more skilled writer now, but after 23 books it's harder to be fresh and that's really important to me. I don't want to write the same thing over and over again.

True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision. That new, that personal, vision is attained only by looking long enough at the object represented to make it the writer's own; and the mind which would bring this secret gem to fruition must be able to nourish it with an accumulated wealth of knowledge and experience.

You're sincere, but in order not to upset your views you avoid talking with people who think differently. You pick your thoughts from conversations with people like yourself, from books written by people like yourself. In physics they call it resonance. You start out with modest opinions, but they match and build each other up to a scale.

My grandmother ... came here, not only like so many others because of the streets 'being paved with gold' and all, but because she wanted to leave the place where the streets were paved with people who had not gone to America.

You're all alone when you're a writer. Sometimes you just feel you need a humanity bath. Even a ride on the subway will do that. But it's much more interesting to talk about books. After all, that's what life used to be for writers: they talk books, politics, history, America. Nothing has replaced that.

America was discovered by Amerigo Vespucci and was named after him, until people got tired of living in a place called "Vespuccia" and changed its name to "America"

While a book has got to be worthwhile from the point of view of the reader it's got to be worthwhile from the point of view of the writer as well.

Major theme of the book ["Hotels of North America"], from my point of view: what is persona, what is self, in the digital sphere, and/or what is the effect of it on self in a prolonged interaction.

I reminded myself: when a book lies unopened it might contain anything in the world, anything imaginable. It therefore, in that pregnant moment before opening, contains everything. Every possibility, both perfect and putrid. Surely such mysteries are the most enticing things You grant us in this mortal mere -- the fruit in the garden, too, was like this. Unknown, and therefore infinite. Eve and her mate swallowed eternity, every possible thing, and made the world between them.

Enterprise is first creativity. You need creativity to see what's out there and shape it to your advantage. You need creativity to look at the world a little differently. You need creativity to take a different approach, to be different.

Columbus found a world, and had no chart save one that Faith deciphered in the skies.

I always thought the front line was the bookstores. And bookstores around America, around the world did astonishingly well. They held the line. They didn't chicken out. You know, they defended the book. They kept it in the front of the store.

America is therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World's History shall reveal itself.

You pick up very well-known books on Lincoln [and] you will find almost no reference to his long-term belief in colonization. Why? Because it doesn't fit the image of the Great Emancipator. It doesn't fit the retrospective view we want to have of Lincoln as the man who was the moralist in politics, who came into office committed to ending slavery and waited to sign this document.

When once your point of view is changed, the very thing which was so damning becomes a clue to the truth.