Vera Nazarian
Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light.Collection: Inspirational
A woman is human. She is not better, wiser, stronger, more intelligent, more creative, or more responsible than a man. Likewise, she is never less. Equality is a given. A woman is human.Collection: Men
Have you ever seen the dawn? Not a dawn groggy with lack of sleep or hectic with mindless obligations and you about to rush off on an early adventure or business, but full of deep silence and absolute clarity of perception? A dawning which you truly observe, degree by degree. It is the most amazing moment of birth. And more than anything it can spur you to action. Have a burning day.Collection: Good Morning
Don't be afraid of the dark. Shine!Collection: Fear
When hope is fleeting, stop for a moment and visualize, in a sky of silver, the crescent of a lavender moon. Imagine it -- delicate, slim, precise, like a paper-thin slice from a cabochon jewel. It may not be very useful, but it is beautiful. And sometimes it is enough.Collection: Beautiful
When you reach for the stars, you are reaching for the farthest thing out there. When you reach deep into yourself, it is the same thing, but in the opposite direction. If you reach in both directions, you will have spanned the universe.Collection: Success
Once upon a time, began the story of you.Many perilous, wonderful, harrowing, brilliant, delightful, profound things happened.And yet—the most exciting twists and best turns are yet to come. And it absolutely does not matter how old or young you are.Like a bright carpet of wonders, enjoy the unrolling of your story.Collection: Profound
Love is made up of three unconditional properties in equal measure: 1. Acceptance 2. Understanding 3. Appreciation Remove any one of the three and the triangle falls apart. Which, by the way, is something highly inadvisable. Think about it — do you really want to live in a world of only two dimensions? So, for the love of a triangle, please keep love whole.Collection: Appreciation
The great miraculous bell of translucent ice is suspended in mid-air. It rings to announce endings and beginnings. And it rings because there is fresh promise and wonder in the skies. Its clear tones resound in the placid silence of the winter day, and echo long into the silver-blue serenity of night. The bell can only be seen at the turning of the year, when the days wind down into nothing, and get ready to march out again. When you hear the bell, you feel a tug at your heart. It is your immortal inspiration.Collection: Inspiration
Was it you or I who stumbled first? It does not matter. The one of us who finds the strength to get up first, must help the other.Collection: Guilt
You cannot be fair to others without first being fair to yourself. Know that a well-honed sense of justice is a measure of personal experience, and all experience is a measure of self. Know that the highest expression of justice is mercy. Thus, as the supreme judge in your own court, you must have compassion for yourself. Otherwise, cede your gavel.Collection: Compassion
An optimist is neither naive, nor blind to the facts, nor in denial of grim reality. An optimist believes in the optimal usage of all options available, no matter how limited. As such, an optimist always sees the big picture. How else to keep track of all that’s out there? An optimist is simply a proactive realist.Collection: Believe
Being smart as a whip includes knowing when not to crack it.Collection: Smart
A fine glass vase goes from treasure to trash, the moment it is broken. Fortunately, something else happens to you and me. Pick up your pieces. Then, help me gather mine.Collection: Self Esteem
The compass rose is nothing but a star with an infinite number of rays pointing in all directions.It is the one true and perfect symbol of the universe.And it is the one most accurate symbol of you.Spread your arms in an embrace, throw your head back, and prepare to receive and send coordinates of being. For, at last you know—you are the navigator, the captain, and the ship.Collection: Stars
If you are faced with a mountain, you have several options. You can climb it and cross to the other side. You can go around it. You can dig under it. You can fly over it. You can blow it up. You can ignore it and pretend it’s not there. You can turn around and go back the way you came. Or you can stay on the mountain and make it your home.Collection: Inspirational
If you have never changed your mind about some fundamental tenet of your belief, if you have never questioned the basics, and if you have no wish to do so, then you are likely ignorant.Collection: Ignorant
It's easier for a rich man to ride that camel through the eye of a needle directly into the Kingdom of Heaven, than for some of us to give up our cell phone.Collection: Giving Up
A wise person is like a smoothly polished rock: it takes time to become either.Collection: Wise
The only thing faster than the speed of thought is the speed of forgetfulness. Good thing we have other people to help us remember.Collection: People
Would you like to know your future? If your answer is yes, think again. Not knowing is the greatest life motivator. So enjoy, endure, survive each moment as it comes to you in its proper sequence -- a surprise.Collection: Motivational
All stories have a curious and even dangerous power. They are manifestations of truth -- yours and mine. And truth is all at once the most wonderful yet terrifying thing in the world, which makes it nearly impossible to handle. It is such a great responsibility that it's best not to tell a story at all unless you know you can do it right. You must be very careful, or without knowing it you can change the world.Collection: Responsibility
It is interesting that we call something good a “dream,” but being called a “dreamer” is somewhat of a putdown. Without dreamers, no dream would ever be given reality, and we would live in a very small and shallow world. If you are a secret dreamer, it’s your time to announce yourself.Collection: Dream
Sometimes, reaching out and taking someone's hand is the beginning of a journey. At other times, it is allowing another to take yours.Collection: Inspirational
Responsibility and Trust -- these two are like Yin and Yang, together perfectly complete, and each one requiring the presence of the other. The next time you mistrust someone, consider this -- does that person feel responsible for you in any way? If the answer is yes, then go ahead and trust them. Very likely, they are looking out for your best interest.Collection: Responsibility
Even for the people who are color-blind to any degree, I believe their experience would also be affected [ in Lords of Rainbow ] if everyone else too only perceived the world in colorless monochrome.Collection: Believe
I technically live in the desert - Los Angeles being an artificial oasis - but my interest stems even farther to my own ethnic roots and to my love of antiquity, of the Old World and of the east.Collection: Oasis
We don't need fantasy to mess with our minds to the point of rendering us insane - real life horrors do that already.Collection: Real
At some point, sitting in the school library, during reading period, I looked up from my leopard print hardcover composition notebook where I was scribbling a derivative [John Ronald Reuel ] Tolkien epic full of purple prose in tiny handwriting and thought to myself, "Damn! I am a writer! How did that happen?".Collection: Notebook
Thus, true long-term change is brought about not by destructive passion of the moment but by well-reasoned constructive action. Violent shock of Armageddon that leaves nothing in its wake but a blank slate is not a solution, only a postponement of progress.Collection: Passion
The satisfaction of short fiction does not come close to the rich pleasure I get as a writer in the long deep immersion in the same long work and its growing complexity. I suppose you might say I love to wallow in my characters and imaginary worlds. I love to play with the whole necklace, not just one glittering stone.Collection: Character
I am a novelist at heart.Collection: Heart
It is right here, all of it, here for the taking, right before our eyes - happiness, fulfillment, hope, peace, justice. And most of all, there is truth, ordinary and simple, just sitting there to be plucked, if only we get our lazy rear ends off the pillow of complacency. But first, we need to open our eyes to this banal fact. And for that we need a periodic bit of shakeup in the form of an infusion of wonder - fantastic literature.Collection: Eye
If you ask me now, I think every single writer whose work I've read has had some influence upon me, and I continue to be influenced, subtly, by everything I read, like a sponge. But then, what writers aren't? Being a literary sponge is one of the prerequisites for this insanity.Collection: Thinking
The act of sharing with readers was at first too much of an intimate thing. But it evolved into an intense necessity to share.Collection: Too Much
Fantasy is not the literature of subversion of the status quo but of 'awakening to' the status quo.Collection: Literature
Fantasy plunders the well of our deepest selves for existent truth instead of creating new truths out of the illusory fabric of recent events or the flow of society.Collection: Self
However I will never forget what Marion [Zimmer Bradley] did for me by accepting that first story from a stupid enthusiastic kid.Collection: Stupid
I started to write. And I wrote and wrote all through high school.Collection: Writing
My characters often start out with a loss of some sort, usually a loss of emotion or purpose or hope. What I do in the course of my writing is weave a thematic arc of fulfillment. It is my constant theme as a creator.Collection: Writing
I was nurtured on Greek Mythology and the classical epics. I lived and breathed Homer. Other mythologies - the Russian, the Norse, the Persian, the Indian, Egyptian, etc. - all came later. First and foremost were the Greeks, and they were all living in my head as though I were Zeus and they were a clamoring Chorus of Athenas.Collection: Epic
Everything I write now might have roots in myths, often disguised,often dissolved into new multi-ethnic myths of my own making.Collection: Writing
My brand of fantasy is completely devoid of the traditional notions of magic as ritual. Instead I see the fantastic as a meta-layer of existence beyond the real world.Collection: Real
A made-up proverb from Dreams of the Compass Rose says, "In the desert, the only god is a well." I love exploring the intensity of such juxtaposition, the dangerous edge.Collection: Dream
I also find the desert a wonderful metaphor for desolation and yet the exact counterpart of the ocean with its hidden depths. Both are vast, harsh, implacable, homogenous to the untrained eye, and beautiful. Bothallow the wind to roam on the surface. And both serve as wonderful vehicles for human survival stories.Collection: Beautiful
I see no profound progress taking place when there is no hope, no inspiration, only drastic overthrow and rebellion. Before having a revolution of thought there must be real ideals to aspire to, and they are only to be found within.Collection: Real
I love to fool my readers, but in a good way. If you've read any of my work, there's a good chance that at some point I surprised you.Collection: Way
Money is like fire. It is only good when there's just the right amount of it, when it's properly contained and under your control.Collection: Fire
Ice is most welcome in a cold drink on a hot day. But in the heart of winter, you want a warm hot mug with your favorite soothing brew to keep the chill away. When you don’t have anything warm at hand, even a memory can be a small substitute. Remember a searing look of intimate eyes. Receive the inner fire.Collection: Memories