110+ Vera Nazarian Quotes On Education, Religion And World

Vera Nazarian is an American writer of speculative fiction, fantasy, and poetry. She is the author of several novels, including The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration, Dreams of the Compass Rose, and Lords of Rainbow. She is also the publisher and editor of Norilana Books, an independent press focusing on speculative fiction. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Vera Nazarian on education, life, religion.

Top 10 Vera Nazarian Quotes

1. The pyramid shape is said to hold many secrets and amazing properties. One of them is a sense of wonder.
2. Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light.
3. 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.
4. Sunrise paints the sky with pinks and the sunset with peaches. Cool to warm. So is the progression from childhood to old age.
5. 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.
6. Patience is not a virtue. It is an achievement.
7. A boomerang returns back to the person who throws it. But first, while moving in a circle, it hits its target. So does gossip.
8. Each letter of the alphabet is a steadfast loyal soldier in a great army of words, sentences, paragraphs, and stories. One letter falls, and the entire language falters.
9. Fantasy, at its best, is balm for the soul. But it is faulty logic to assume that balm is necessarily mind-numbing anesthesia.
10. 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.

Vera Nazarian Short Quotes

• A boomerang returns back to the person who throws it.
• Being smart as a whip includes knowing when not to crack it.
• Withhold a smile only when the smile can hurt someone. Otherwise, let it bloom forth in a riot.
• Don't be afraid of the dark. Shine!
• In the kingdom of glass everything is transparent, and there is no place to hide a dark heart.
• A wise person is like a smoothly polished rock: it takes time to become either.
• Some people prefer eating dessert to the main course. These people have never been really hungry.
• Sometimes, being true to yourself means changing your mind. Self changes, and you follow.
• I'll tell you a secret. Old storytellers never die. They disappear into their own story.
• Strange dreams are better than no dreams at all.

Vera Nazarian Quotes About Life

Passion and courtesy are two polar opposite traits that serve to balance each other into a full-blooded whole. Without socialization, passion is a crude barbarian, and without passion, the elegant and polite are dead. Allow both passion and courtesy into your life in equal measure, and be complete. — Vera Nazarian

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. — Vera Nazarian

When I was a little kid back in Moscow, Russia, I've always thought I would become an artist or a folk dancer or an astronomer. In fact, if you'd asked me then about a life of solitary writing I would have said, "Oh how boring! Imagine, to sit at a desk all day and just write." — Vera Nazarian

What we need in fantasy is the sudden balm of clarity - a temporary reprieve from life's white noise and clamor of pain, a kind of time-out. Such clarity, a new perspective, is made possible by fantastic metaphor. — Vera Nazarian

We often engage the defense mechanism of tunnel vision, just to keep ourselves focused on our daily lives. This makes us terribly jaded in our perception of what is really around us. — Vera Nazarian

True balm [of fantasy] takes away the painful irritation of life and simply heals, allowing one to begin anew. And that is what fantasy can do for us. — Vera Nazarian

In the desert, water gives life, while in the ocean an island stands to give anchor. Opposites are desirable and necessary. Once again, you see the theme of taking away a precious element of the world or making it rare and precarious. — Vera Nazarian

What is blood but the wine of life? — Vera Nazarian

We don't need fantasy to mess with our minds to the point of rendering us insane - real life horrors do that already. — Vera Nazarian

Clad in metaphor, the world becomes newborn to our senses, like a phoenix. It is the most effective fresh presentation of the elements of our life for our jaded, numbed, even ailing sense of imagination. — Vera Nazarian

Vera Nazarian Quotes About Love

Is it folly to believe in something that is intangible? After all, some of the greatest intangibles are Love, Hope, and Wonder. Another is Deity. The choice to be a fool is yours. — Vera Nazarian

Neither sugar nor salt tastes particularly good by itself. Each is at its best when used to season other things. Love is the same way. Use it to "season" people. — Vera Nazarian

And it is a quiet terrible thing, too, to discover the value of love this way [after loss] - when the object of love is no longer there, when love dies or goes away or changes. When it is too late. — Vera Nazarian

Love - not dim and blind but so far-seeing that it can glimpse around corners, around bends and twists and illusion; instead of overlooking faults love sees through them to the secret inside. — Vera Nazarian

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. — Vera Nazarian

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. — Vera Nazarian

In some of my works I take away other elements of the world - normalcy, sex drive, sense of time, memory, a loved one. Without some of these basics, characters have no choice but to do something to reclaim their lives. — Vera Nazarian

Q: Why do I love thee, O Night? A: Because you know I will never answer. — Vera Nazarian

There is only Love -- and Stories. All else is but a shadow dream. — Vera Nazarian

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. — Vera Nazarian

Vera Nazarian Quotes About World

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. — Vera Nazarian

The weight of the world is a trifle, if we all put our two fingers under it and try to lift together. — Vera Nazarian

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. — Vera Nazarian

Our world is so bursting-full of natural wonder that we are all experiencing a sensory overload. We are no longer perceiving all of Ú the details, just the ones that immediately interest us. — Vera Nazarian

Incidentally, the world is magical. Magic is simply what's off our human scale... at the moment. — Vera Nazarian

Consolation has been wrongly reviled. Consolation is not apathy or inaction. It is not closing one's eyes to the evils of the world. Rather, consolation is the first step in regaining personal equilibrium and strength, which necessarily precedes the ability to act. — Vera Nazarian

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. — Vera Nazarian

Respect the young and chastise your elders. It's about time the world was set aright. — Vera Nazarian

The world is shaped by two things — stories told and the memories they leave behind. — Vera Nazarian

Worry is the secret weapon perpetrated upon us by the dark forces of the world that lurk in the shape of fear, uncertainty, confusion, and loss. We, on the other hand, have our own secret weapon against these incorporeal fiends. It is laughter. — Vera Nazarian

Vera Nazarian Quotes About Creative

The only way to help your unique literary voice grow and eventually sing like a glorious creature of wonder is to write what you excites you into a creative passion and brings you pure unadulterated joy. — Vera Nazarian

I was forgetting that an artist also just stares at a piece of paper or canvas all day. It somehow never occurred to me to connect these two diverse creative modes. — Vera Nazarian

I've always been creative verbally, had a flair, my teachers said - wrote great expository essays in elementary school, scribbled little poems, embraced all writing assignments. And all along I read voraciously - first in Russian and then, after we left the USSR, in English, and even Spanish. — Vera Nazarian

Creativity is not so much a boundless well, but an all-you-can-eat buffet of elements for your creative endeavor. Eventually you've eaten your fill, and it's time to digest and then make something. But at some point, it will be time to return to the restaurant. — Vera Nazarian

Vera Nazarian Famous Quotes And Sayings

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. — Vera Nazarian

The sand in the hourglass runs from one compartment to the other, marking the passage of moments with something constant and tangible.If you watch the flowing sand, you might see time itself riding the granules.Contrary to popular opinion, time is not an old white-haired man, but a laughing child.And time sings. — Vera Nazarian

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. — Vera Nazarian

SUN, MOON, AND STARRY SKY Early summer evenings, when the first stars come out, the warm glow of sunset still stains the rim of the western sky. Sometimes, the moon is also visible, a pale white slice, while the sun tarries. Just think -- all the celestial lights are present at the same time! These are moments of wonder -- see them and remember. — Vera Nazarian

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. — Vera Nazarian

Sometimes, reaching out and taking someone's hand is the beginning of a journey. At other times, it is allowing another to take yours. — Vera Nazarian

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. — Vera Nazarian

Luck is not as random as you think. Before that lottery ticket won the jackpot, someone had to buy it. — Vera Nazarian

The master of the garden is the one who waters it, trims the branches, plants the seeds, and pulls the weeds. If you merely stroll through the garden, you are but an acolyte. — Vera Nazarian

Unlike a fountain that circulates the same water in an enclosed, perpetually recycling system, a human being circulates thoughts in an unlimited reservoir of self. Don't limit yourself to being a mere fountain when you contain an ocean. — Vera Nazarian

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. — Vera Nazarian

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. — Vera Nazarian

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. — Vera Nazarian

Not every puzzle is intended to be solved. Some are in place to test your limits. Others are, in fact, not puzzles at all. — Vera Nazarian

When tough times come, it is particularly important to offset them with much gentle softness. Be a pillow. — Vera Nazarian

Dangling a carrot in front of a donkey—or anyone else for that matter—is not nice, and not fair, unless you eventually plan to give it up to them. — Vera Nazarian

The only thing faster than the speed of thought is the speed of forgetfulness. Good thing we have other people to help us remember. — Vera Nazarian

Once upon a time, the Reindeer took a running leap and jumped over the Northern Lights. But he jumped too low, and the long fur of his beautiful flowing tail got singed by the rainbow fires of the aurora. To this day the reindeer has no tail to speak of. But he is too busy pulling the Important Sleigh to notice what is lost. And he certainly doesn’t complain. What's your excuse? — Vera Nazarian

A choir is made up of many voices, including yours and mine. If one by one all go silent then all that will be left are the soloists. Don’t let a loud few determine the nature of the sound. It makes for poor harmony and diminishes the song. — Vera Nazarian

Stick around long enough to be someone's friend. Because true friendship, once recognized, in its essence is effortless. — Vera Nazarian

Instructions are never included. They vary with the strength of your ability to see, the measure of your selective blindness, the limits of your mercy, and the intensity of your desire. — Vera Nazarian

Whenever you go on a trip to visit foreign lands or distant places, remember that they are all someone's home and backyard. — Vera Nazarian

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. — Vera Nazarian

The ocean is a place of skin, rich outer membranes hiding thick juicy insides, laden with the soup of being. — Vera Nazarian

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. — Vera Nazarian

I usually focus on the whole group of characters in any given work-in-progress, and as a result they become particularly dear to me as I delve into their innermost motivations and live out their lives. — Vera Nazarian

Because without such a reprieve we cannot pause and regroup and with the newfound strength go on to initiate that very change which is sorely needed by all. — Vera Nazarian

Imagine a delicious glass of summer iced tea. Take a long cool sip. Listen to the ice crackle and clink. Is the glass part full or part empty? Take another sip. And now? — Vera Nazarian

The desert is an ideal illusion of a blank slate - so much mystery in endless layers is hidden underneath its bright, pseudo-sterile surface. — Vera Nazarian

No waving of enchanted wands but heightened perception. No magic objects, but a transformed and enhanced reality. No spells or chants, but the raw power of the human will to enact supernatural change upon the universal fabric. This is the kind of "magic" that fills Lords of Rainbow - elemental, organic, humanistic - an extension of reality. — Vera Nazarian

A great ancient poet was blind. A great classical composer was deaf. Many of us are dumb. What have we to show for it? — Vera Nazarian

I've just been bitten on the neck by a vampire... mosquito. Does that mean that when the night comes I will rise and be annoying? — Vera Nazarian

Yawns are not the only infectious things out there besides germs. Giggles can spread from person to person. So can blushing. But maybe the most powerful infectious thing is the act of speaking the truth. — Vera Nazarian

However I will never forget what Marion [Zimmer Bradley] did for me by accepting that first story from a stupid enthusiastic kid. — Vera Nazarian

Close your eyes and turn your face into the wind. Feel it sweep along your skin in an invisible ocean of exultation. Suddenly, you know you are alive. — Vera Nazarian

Wisdom is nothing more than the marriage of intelligence and compassion. And, as with all good unions, it takes much experience and time to reach its widest potential. Have you introduced your intellect to your compassion yet? Be careful; lately, intellect has taken to eating in front of the TV and compassion has taken in too many cats. — Vera Nazarian

If Music is a Place -- then Jazz is the City, Folk is the Wilderness, Rock is the Road, Classical is a Temple. — Vera Nazarian

Why does every road eventually narrow into a point at the horizon? Because that's where the point lies. — Vera Nazarian

Marion Zimmer Bradley took apart my first submission to her, covered the manuscript in red ink revisions, and told me to try her again. I had never been so reeling with authorial joy as I had been that day, holding Marion's letter and seeing that ravaged manuscript - finally, it meant that someone cared! — Vera Nazarian

Don't let a loud few determine the nature of the sound. It makes for poor harmony and diminishes the song. — Vera Nazarian

Fantasy is not the literature of subversion of the status quo but of 'awakening to' the status quo. — Vera Nazarian

Desire is like fog on a bathroom mirror -- its presence incites you to wipe the mirror, and see yourself clearly again. — Vera Nazarian

The nutcracker sits under the holiday tree, a guardian of childhood stories. Feed him walnuts and he will crack open a tale. — Vera Nazarian

I must admit that I do have a particular soft spot for the character of the chameleon-trickster goddess Ris in Dreams of the Compass Rose. Ris has gone through the whole spectrum of personal change and has had the longest road of all. And in the end she chooses to come back to the world, to guide, and to help, and to open the eyes of those who are suffering. In that is her true strength and humorous wisdom. I really do like her a whole lot. — Vera Nazarian

I sat down and wrote a short story in two weeks and submitted it to Marion Zimmer Bradley. And Marion bought "Wound On The Moon" .My first sale and my first pro sale rolled into one. — Vera Nazarian

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. — Vera Nazarian

I am sure that inspiration will strike multiple times - it always does. — Vera Nazarian

Frost grows on the window glass, forming whorl patterns of lovely translucent geometry. Breathe on the glass, and you give frost more ammunition. Now it can build castles and cities and whole ice continents with your breath’s vapor. In a few blinks you can almost see the winter fairies moving in . . . But first, you hear the crackle of their wings. — Vera Nazarian

The desert is a place of bones, where the innards are turned out, to desiccate into dust. — Vera Nazarian

One true king knew when to step aside and give up the reins of power—to remove his crown and relinquish his kingdom—all for the sake of glimpsing, just once in a lifetime, the face of a holy child. He was the Fourth to follow the Star. His gift was a secret. The rest of his journey is unknown. — Vera Nazarian

Every story needs to be worth telling. — Vera Nazarian

Here's a new 'Blessing' for our time -- 'May Anderson Cooper never be sent to report on your town! — Vera Nazarian

Seems to me that there is no better way to experience the depth of loss than after the fact. No more powerful instrument of imbuing value in an object than parting with it. — Vera Nazarian

Here's a funny question:What is your favorite word?Think about it—maybe it's a word that makes you absolutely happy, or a word that sounds gloriously beautiful, or a word that evokes awe and wonder. Maybe you are reminded of a great time when you hear it, or maybe it represents your life's dream.So, what is it? What is your favorite word of all words?Thought about it yet?Good.And now, think why. — Vera Nazarian

Everything I write now might have roots in myths, often disguised,often dissolved into new multi-ethnic myths of my own making. — Vera Nazarian

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. — Vera Nazarian

It is life that fights and struggles and rages; life, that tears at you in its last agonizing throes to hold on, even if but for one futile instant longer... Whereas I, I come softly when it is all done. Pain and death are an ordered sequence, not a parallel pair. So easy to confuse the correlations, not realizing that one does not bring the other. — Vera Nazarian

Most of us have nicknames-annoying, endearing, embarrassing.But what about your true name?It is not necessarily your given name. But it is the one to which you are most eager to respond when called.Ever wonder why?Your true name has the secret power to call you. — Vera Nazarian

In the desert, the only god is a well. — Vera Nazarian

I started to write. And I wrote and wrote all through high school. — Vera Nazarian

In the plains the grass grows tall, since there is no one to cut it. There is no one to water it either. — Vera Nazarian

There's a difference between playing and playing games. The former is an act of joy, the latter — an act. — Vera Nazarian

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. — Vera Nazarian

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?". — Vera Nazarian

Listen to the trees as they sway in the wind. Their leaves are telling secrets. Their bark sings songs of olden days as it grows around the trunks. And their roots give names to all things. Their language has been lost. But not the gestures. — Vera Nazarian

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. — Vera Nazarian

Here is where I like to burst in as a writer, to take one strong sensory detail or image and instead of enhancing it or directing attention to it by shouting about it, I simply take it away. — Vera Nazarian

Life Lessons by Vera Nazarian

1. Vera Nazarian encourages readers to embrace their own unique perspectives and to find strength in their own individual stories.
2. She also emphasizes the importance of resilience, showing how even in the darkest of times, hope and courage can be found.
3. Through her stories, Vera Nazarian reminds us to be unafraid of the unknown, to take risks, and to have faith in ourselves.