Ali's quotes

(showing 1-50 of 78)

#1

"Remember to always be yourself. Unless you suck."
— Joss Whedon

tags: individuality
746 people liked it

#2

"Half of writing history is hiding the truth"
— Joss Whedon

tags: history, lies, truth
61 people liked it

#3

"People love a happy ending. So every episode, I will explain once again that I don't like people. And then Mal will shoot someone. Someone we like. And their puppy."
— Joss Whedon

tags: television, writing
280 people liked it

#4

"If you're good at it, and you love it, and it helps you navigate the river of the world, then it can't be wrong."
— Sherman Alexie (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian)

24 people liked it

#5

"Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly."
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 6: Fables and Reflections)

tags: inspiration
652 people liked it

#6

"Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."
— G.K. Chesterton

tags: books, inspirational
3,293 people liked it

#7

"Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft were written by men. "
— Neil Gaiman (Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch)

276 people liked it

#8

"God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time"
— Neil Gaiman (Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch)

190 people liked it

#9

"Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and adventures are the shadow truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes and forgotten."
— Neil Gaiman

tags: sandman
282 people liked it

#10

"I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing."
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones)

1,644 people liked it

#11

"Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters."
— Neil Gaiman

tags: writing
398 people liked it

#12

"Let us begin this letter, this prelude to an encounter, formally, as a declaration, in the old-fashioned way: I love you. You do not know me (although you have seen me, smiled at me). I know you (although not so well as I would like. I want to be there when your eyes flutter open in the morning, and you see me, and you smile. Surely this would be paradise enough?). So I do declare myself to you now, with pen set to paper. I declare it again: I love you."
— Neil Gaiman

tags: four, letter, love, word
229 people liked it

#13

"Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent."
— Neil Gaiman

172 people liked it

#14

"It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people."
— Neil Gaiman (Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch)

tags: humor
113 people liked it

#15

"There's never been a true war that wasn't fought between two sets of people who were certain they were in the right. The really dangerous people believe they are doing whatever they are doing solely and only because it is without question the right thing to do. And that is what makes them dangerous."
— Neil Gaiman (American Gods)

50 people liked it

#16

"Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe."
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 5: A Game of You)

tags: imagination
336 people liked it

#17

"But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world."
— Tim O'Brien

17 people liked it

#18

"That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth."
— Tim O'Brien

tags: fiction, stories, truth, writing
30 people liked it

#19

"A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth."
— Tim O'Brien (The Things They Carried)

tags: lies, truth, war
29 people liked it

#20

"The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it."
— Terry Pratchett (Diggers)

tags: humor, open-mind, thinking
3,710 people liked it

#21

"It's not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing it."
— Terry Pratchett

638 people liked it

#22

"'It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever,' he said. 'Have you thought of going into teaching?'"
— Terry Pratchett (Mort)

tags: discworld, humor, humour, teaching
190 people liked it

#23

"Chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized."
— Terry Pratchett (Interesting Times)

107 people liked it

#24

"The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned by no later than the date shown; and 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality."
— Terry Pratchett (Guards! Guards!)

116 people liked it

#25

"Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong."
— Terry Pratchett

118 people liked it

#26

"It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life."
— Terry Pratchett (The Last Continent)

tags: death, humor, life
1,032 people liked it

#27

"Insanity is catching."
— Terry Pratchett (Making Money)

tags: insanity
99 people liked it

#28

"A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read."
— Terry Pratchett (Guards! Guards!)

tags: bookshop, bookstore, discworld, read, reading
252 people liked it

#29

"If you have enough book space, I don't want to talk to you."
— Terry Pratchett

228 people liked it

#30

"Perhaps it would be simpler if you just did what you're told and didn't try to understand things."
— Terry Pratchett (Sourcery)

tags: life
43 people liked it

#31

"Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom."
— Terry Pratchett

tags: humor, life
294 people liked it

#32

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."
— Mark Twain

tags: literacy
7,469 people liked it

#33

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
— Mark Twain

tags: individuality, majority, minority, pause, reflect, wisdom
7,745 people liked it

#34

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
— Mark Twain

tags: action, actions, disappointed, disappointment, discover, dream, dreams, explore, sail
10,202 people liked it

#35

"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
— Mark Twain

tags: humor
2,529 people liked it

#36

"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't."
— Mark Twain

tags: books, truth
1,322 people liked it

#37

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."
— Mark Twain (The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain: A Book of Quotations)

tags: writing
1,189 people liked it

#38

"I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way."
— Mark Twain

tags: spelling
208 people liked it

#39

"There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he less savage than the other savages."
— Mark Twain

tags: civilization
144 people liked it

#40

"Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident."
— Mark Twain

tags: humor, inventing
718 people liked it

#41

"When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained."
— Mark Twain

193 people liked it

#42

"There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy."
— Mark Twain

132 people liked it

#43

"Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it is the sickening grammar that they use."
— Mark Twain

tags: cats
49 people liked it

#44

"The most interesting information come from children, for they tell all they know and then stop."
— Mark Twain

tags: children, humor
210 people liked it

#45

"The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in heaven."
— Mark Twain

10 people liked it

#46

"If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that."
— Stephen King

tags: reading, writing
1,150 people liked it

#47

"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."
— Winston S. Churchill

tags: history, humor, writing
745 people liked it

#48

"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader."
— Robert Frost

tags: reading, writing
714 people liked it