I'm not in the business of meddling with people's destinies - and yes, my characters are real people to me. They have histories and thoughts and yearnings and hurts and misgivings and pleasures that don't belong to me.


Jonathan Evison

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I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
JONATHAN SWIFT
It was a bold person that first ate an oyster.
JONATHAN SWIFT
A bad forgery's the ultimate insult.
JONATHAN GASH
Promises and pie crusts are made to be broken.
JONATHAN SWIFT
But you think that it is time for me to have done with the world, and so I would if I could get into...
JONATHAN SWIFT
She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on her with a pitchfork.
JONATHAN SWIFT
Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same positi...
JONATHAN SWIFT
And he gave it for his opinion, "that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, ...
JONATHAN SWIFT
I warrant you lay abed till the cows came home.
JONATHAN SWIFT
Faith, that's as well said as if I had said it myself.
JONATHAN SWIFT
Forget regret, or life is yours to miss.
JONATHAN LARSON
Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.
JONATHAN SWIFT
There's an enduring American compulsion to be on the side of the angels. Expediency alone has never ...
JONATHAN RABAN
What she doesn't say is just as important as what she does say -- but there's so much more of it. I ...
JONATHAN KATZ
Nor do they trust their tongue alone, but speak a language of their own; can read a nod, a shrug, a ...
JONATHAN SWIFT
I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
JONATHAN SWIFT
As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a...
JONATHAN SWIFT
How we apples swim.
JONATHAN SWIFT
Instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnis...
JONATHAN SWIFT
Convey a libel in a frown. And wink a reputation down!
JONATHAN SWIFT
For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
JONATHAN SWIFT
The worthiest people are the most injured by slander, as is the best fruit which the birds have been...
JONATHAN SWIFT
Modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
JONATHAN SWIFT
They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.
JONATHAN SWIFT
What some invent the rest enlarge.
JONATHAN SWIFT
I heard the little bird say so.
JONATHAN SWIFT
A prince, the moment he is crown'd, Inherits every virtue sound, As emblems of the sovereign p...
JONATHAN SWIFT
Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody else has thought.
JONATHAN SWIFT
So, naturalists observe, a flea Has smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller sti...
JONATHAN SWIFT
A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.
JONATHAN SWIFT
In all distresses of our friends We first consult our private ends; While Nature, kindly bent ...
JONATHAN SWIFT
A man suffers death himself as often as he loses those dear to him.
JONATHAN SWIFT
He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be p...
JONATHAN SWIFT
Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and speakers because, whoever shares his thoughts wit...
JONATHAN SWIFT
Necessity is the mother of invention, it is true -- but it's father is creativity, and knowledge is...
JONATHAN SCHATTKE
Necessity is the mother of invention.
JONATHAN SWIFT
It is a maxim, that those to whom everybody allows the second place have an undoubted title to the ...
JONATHAN SWIFT
That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that th...
JONATHAN SWIFT
Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.
JONATHAN SWIFT