Subtle Impact Quotes

I had a student once come up to me and we were talking about this incident, and, of course, I never had the right thing to say. But later on, I realized I should have said: Don't write about trying to change the world, just write about a changed world or a world that's not changing. Let that do the work.

Some of the greatest, most revolutionary advances in science have been given their initial expression in attractively modest terms, with no fanfare.

Joyce's writing in Dubliners contains some of the most unshowily beautiful sentences in the English language. I learned from him that if you write a good, clean line of English, you can get under a reader's skin. The reader won't even know why, but there you are. Didion, Berger, the many others I mentioned above, and many, many poets I haven't mentioned. Writers of this calibre are the moving targets the rest of us are always chasing.

I think you’re never the same person when you close a book as when you open one; it changes your life very subtly.

You have no idea how unimportant is all that the teacher says or does not say on the surface, and how important what he himself is as teacher.

I think I've always had an activist stance, yet at the same time, the other side of me - and this is where some people just don't get it, or they'd prefer it if the work was a lot uglier, a lot louder - I have this personality where I just want to put something out that's a fact and then let you interpret it. It's almost as if you might barely notice it, you might walk right by it, but you have to pay attention.

The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him.

She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.

There is one thing that matters, to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people.

In Holland, we have a saying: 'A knife cuts on two sides.' With the rubber duck, I'm trying to show people what they haven't been seeing in their public space. When the rubber duck is there and when it's gone, you know.

I like anchovies, and I don't tell everybody about them. Almost every time, they don't even notice.

I'm interested in the way major events don't necessarily announce themselves as major events. They're often little things - the drip, drip of life that changes people or affects people.

We frequently find that the influence of good women is underrated. It is an influence that is often subtle but yet has tremendous consequences. One woman can make a great difference for a whole nation.

You don't have to be a 'person of influence' to be influential. In fact, the most influential people in my life are probably not even aware of the things they've taught me.

You don't have to be noisy to be effective.

The minor events of history are valuable, although not always showy and picturesque.

Opinions are to the vast apparatus of social existence what oil is to machines: one does not go up to a turbine and pour machine oil over it; one applies a little to hidden spindles and joints that one has to know.

What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power.

There are two parts to influence: First, influence is powerful; and second, influence is subtle. You wouldn't let someone push you off course, but you might let someone nudge you off course and not even realize it.

My body was braille for the creeping influences.

I really believe in less is more. It's more sophisticated to look look and fresh and make a statement in one place.

I will have to admit, though, that I will never look at an apple in quite the same way.

I like nudging readers into a slightly different perspective, but in a sly way - I want to be the writer who slips a stiletto in and out, to make so swift and clean a cut, it's not until a chapter ends that the reader looks down and sees she's bleeding and asks what happened.

Flowers are sent to do God's work in unrevealed paths, and to diffuse influence by channels that we hardly suspect.

The ambassador was never present, but his presence was never absent.