Sarah's quotes

(showing 1-50 of 51)

"I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions. "
— Augusten Burroughs (Magical Thinking: True Stories)

483 people liked it

"I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world."
— Richard Dawkins

207 people liked it

"Of course many bars in Manhasset, like bars everywhere, were nasty places, full of pickled people marinating in regret."
— J.R. Moehringer (The Tender Bar: A Memoir)

3 people liked it

"I would like to be soft and warm. I would be terrified to be that way. I could be hurt if I were soft and warm. I could be hurt by something other than myself. It is harder to be soft than it is to be hard. I could be hurt by something other than myself."
— James Frey (A Million Little Pieces)

20 people liked it

"That was beautiful.
She is holding my hand.
No, it wasn't.
If she let go, I would fall apart.
It was. It was beautiful because it was honest and it was beautiful because it hurt and it was beautiful because you didn't have to tell it to me.
Fall apart.
It makes me feel like shit.
"
— James Frey (A Million Little Pieces)

tags: love
11 people liked it

"There is no fear. Absolutely no fear. When one lives without fear, one cannot be broken. When one lives with fear one is broken before one begins to live."
— James Frey (A Million Little Pieces)

15 people liked it

"I don't have to agree with you to like you or respect you."
— Anthony Bourdain

3 people liked it

"History is the narrative of people searching for a place to go."
— J.R. Moehringer (The Tender Bar: A Memoir)

3 people liked it

"Saying 'I notice you're a nerd' is like saying, 'Hey, I notice that you'd rather be intelligent than be stupid, that you'd rather be thoughtful than be vapid, that you believe that there are things that matter more than the arrest record of Lindsay Lohan. Why is that?' In fact, it seems to me that most contemporary insults are pretty lame. Even 'lame' is kind of lame. Saying 'You're lame' is like saying 'You walk with a limp.' Yeah, whatever, so does 50 Cent, and he's done all right for himself."
— John Green

575 people liked it

"When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail."
— John Green (Looking for Alaska)

tags: invincible, teenagers, teens
241 people liked it

"In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
— George Orwell

tags: truth
560 people liked it

"Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it."
— George Orwell

tags: generations, intelligence, wisdom
82 people liked it

"Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness."
— George Orwell

tags: happiness, life
51 people liked it

"Do you know why God invented writers? Because he loves a good story. And he doesn't give a damn about the words. Words are the curain we've hung between him and our true selves. Try not to think about the words. Don't strin for the perfect sentence. There's no such thing. Writing si guesswork. Every sentence is an educated guess, the readers as much as yours."
— J.R. Moehringer (The Tender Bar: A Memoir)

1 person liked it

"In his suicide note, Kurt Cobain wrote, "It's better to burn out than to fade away." He was quoting a Neil Young song about Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols. When I was twenty-four, I interviewed John Lennon. I asked him about this sentiment, one that pervades rock and roll. He took strong, outraged exception to it. "It's better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out, " he said. "I worship people who survive. I'll take the living and the healthy.""
— David Sheff (Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction)

tags: inspirational
18 people liked it

"I am becoming used to an overwhelming, grinding mixture of anger and worry..."
— David Sheff (Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction)

2 people liked it

"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."
— Flannery O'Connor

tags: criticism, humor, writing
367 people liked it

"The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it."
— Flannery O'Connor

tags: truth
294 people liked it

"He loved her because it was his nature to do so, but there were times when he could not endure her love for him. There were times when it became nothing but pure idiot mystery..."
— Flannery O'Connor (Everything That Rises Must Converge)

tags: love
32 people liked it

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselssly into the past."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

tags: book, inspirational
272 people liked it

"Show me a hero, and I'll write you a tragedy."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

126 people liked it

"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one...just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

53 people liked it

"Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)

tags: fitzgerald
43 people liked it

"Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back."
— John Green (An Abundance of Katherines)

tags: books, reading
422 people liked it

"The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive."
— John Green (Looking for Alaska)

tags: compassion, life, suffering
181 people liked it

"So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane."
— John Green (Looking for Alaska)

tags: johngreen, lookingforalaska
143 people liked it

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference."
— Elie Wiesel

tags: activism, apathy, hate, indifference, love, opposite, philosophy
7,391 people liked it

"We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."
— Elie Wiesel

181 people liked it

"What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person."
— John Green (Paper Towns)

tags: paper, towns
173 people liked it

"'Francois Rabelais. He was a poet. And his last words were "I go to seek a Great Perhaps." That's why I'm going. So I don't have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps.' "
— John Green (Looking for Alaska)

136 people liked it

"I try to live life so that I can live with myself."
— John Green

78 people liked it

"I may die young, but at least I'll die smart."
— John Green (Looking for Alaska)

60 people liked it

"That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet."
— Jhumpa Lahiri (The Namesake)

tags: books
34 people liked it

"They were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back at, trying to accept, interpret, comprehend. Things that should never have happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end."
— Jhumpa Lahiri (The Namesake)

33 people liked it

"As long as you look for someone else to validate who you are by seeking their approval, you are setting yourself up for disaster. You have to be whole and complete in yourself. No one can give you that. You have to know who you are - what otehrs say is irrelevant."
— Nic Sheff

12 people liked it

"Be strong. Live honorably and with dignity. When you don't think you can, hold on."
— James Frey (A Million Little Pieces)

tags: dignity, honor, strength
26 people liked it

"All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring."
— Chuck Palahniuk

tags: god, life
1,627 people liked it

"The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because its only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on. If you can change the way people think. The way they see themselves. The way they see the world. You can change the way people live their lives. That's the only lasting thing you can create."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Choke)

295 people liked it

"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
29 people liked it

"No one understands and appreciates the American Dream of hard work leading to material rewards better than a non-American. "
— Anthony Bourdain (Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly)

tags: hard, work
18 people liked it

"There is no friend as loyal as a book."
— Ernest Hemingway

tags: books, friends, novelist, quotes
1,687 people liked it

"All thinking men are atheists."
— Ernest Hemingway (A Farewell to Arms)

tags: atheism, inspirational
122 people liked it

"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."
— Ernest Hemingway

tags: happiness
752 people liked it

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self."
— Ernest Hemingway

53 people liked it

"I came to think that maybe God was what you believed in because you needed to feel you weren’t alone. Maybe God was simply that part of yourself that was always there and always strong, even when you were not."
— Augusten Burroughs (A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir)

28 people liked it

"If you care about what others think of you, then you will always be their slave."
— James Frey

16 people liked it

"It's never the changes we want that change everything."
— Junot Díaz (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao)

tags: changes
27 people liked it

"Success, after all, loves a witness, but failure can't exist without one."
— Junot Díaz (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao)

tags: failure, success
29 people liked it

"But if these years have taught me anything it is this: you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in."
— Junot Díaz (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao)

tags: escape, introspection
11 people liked it

"Each morning, before Jackie started her studies, she wrote on a clean piece of paper: Tarde venientibus ossa.
To the latecomers are left the bones."
— Junot Díaz (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao)

tags: 219, inspirational
4 people liked it

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