Belle > Belle's Quotes

“People are more difficult to work with than machines. And when you break a person, he can't be fixed.”
― Rick Riordan, The Battle of the Labyrinth

“I’ve had many enemies over the years. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s never engage in a fight you’re sure to lose. On the other hand, never let anyone who has insulted you get away with it. Bide your time and strike back when you’re in a position of strength—even if you no longer need to strike back.”
― Steig Larson, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

“But when we really delve into the reasons for why we can’t let something go, there are only two: an attachment to the past or a fear for the future.”
― Marie Kondo, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

“The urge to point out someone else’s failure to tidy is usually a sign that you are neglecting to take care of your own space.”
― Marie Kondo, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

“There are three approaches we can take toward our possessions: face them now, face them sometime, or avoid them until the day we die.”
― Marie Kondo, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

“After all, our possessions very accurately relate the history of the decisions we have made in life. Tidying is a way of taking stock that shows us what we really like.”
― Marie Kondo, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

“If you can say without a doubt, “I really like this!” no matter what anyone else says, and if you like yourself for having it, then ignore what other people think.”
― Marie Kondo, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

“Great relationships are created, not discovered.”
― Logan Ury, How to Not Die Alone: The Surprising Science That Will Help You Find Love

“In comparison, those with the work-it-out mindset believe that relationships take effort, that love is an action you take, not something that happens to you. People with the work-it-out mindset tend to fare better in relationships because when they stumble, they put in the work needed to get the relationship back on track, rather than giving up. If”
― Logan Ury, How to Not Die Alone: The Surprising Science of Finding Love

“When people ask me what makes a relationship work long term, I often refer to this quote about Charles Darwin’s findings on natural selection: “It is not the strongest of the species which survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” Even if you have a strong relationship today, your relationship may fail if you don’t adapt. Your life or your partner’s life might take an unpredictable course. Creating a relationship that can evolve is the key to making it last.”
― Logan Ury, How to Not Die Alone: The Surprising Science of Finding Love

“You can love someone and still choose to say goodbye to them,” she says now. “You can miss a person every day, and still be glad that they are no longer in your life.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“It’s strange how you give the people you love so much power over you.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“The thing about having a mental breakdown is that no matter how obvious it is that you're having one, it is somehow not obvious to you. I'm fine, you think. So what if I watched TV for twenty-four straight hours yesterday. I'm not falling apart. I'm just lazy. Why it's better to think yourself lazy than think yourself in distress, I'm not sure. But it was better. More than better: it was vital.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“We are all of us more complicated than the roles we are assigned in the stories other people tell”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“I began to experience the most powerful advantage of money: the ability to think of things besides money.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“Whomever you become, whatever you make yourself into, that is who you always were.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“Curiosity is a luxury for the financially secure.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“First find out what you are capable of, then decide who you are.”
― Tara Westover

“An education is not so much about making a living as making a person.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“Guilt is the fear of one’s own wretchedness. It has nothing to do with other people.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“I carried the books to my room and read through the night. I loved the fiery pages of Mary Wollstonecraft, but there was a single line written by John Stuart Mill that, when I read it, moved the world: “It is a subject on which nothing final can be known.” The subject Mill had in mind was the nature of women. Mill claimed that women have been coaxed, cajoled, shoved and squashed into a series of feminine contortions for so many centuries, that it is now quite impossible to define their natural abilities or aspirations.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“Only dead fish go with the flow.”
― Andy Hunt, Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware

“Learning isn’t done to you; it’s something you do.”
― Andy Hunt, Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware

“As a counterexample, consider the case of the developer who claims ten years of experience, but in reality it was one year of experience repeated nine times. That doesn’t count as experience.”
― Andy Hunt, Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware

“I’ve heard from teams who have created email-free afternoons or entire days: no email, no phone calls, no interruptions. The developers involved said these were the most productive, happiest times of the week.”
― Andy Hunt, Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware

“That’s not what it’s all about. In fact, it seems we tend to misun-
derstand the very meaning of the word education.
Education comes from the Latin word educare, which literally
means “led out,” in the sense of being drawn forth. I find that little
tidbit really interesting, because we don’t generally think of educa-
tion in that sense—of drawing forth something from the learner.
Instead, it’s far more common to see education treated as some-
thing that’s done to the learner—as something that’s poured in,
not drawn out. This model is especially popular in corporate train-
ing, with a technique that’s known as sheep dip training.”
― Andy Hunt, Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware

“Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.

Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men – friends, coworkers, strangers – giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I’d want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bag and say: The bitch doesn’t really love chili dogs that much – no one loves chili dogs that much! And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They’re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh, and if you’re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn’t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version – maybe he’s a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he’s a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain. (How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: “I like strong women.” If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because “I like strong women” is code for “I hate strong women.”)”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“Tampon commercial, detergent commercial, maxi pad commercial, windex commercial - you'd think all women do is clean and bleed.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“A lot of people lacked that gift: knowing when to fuck off.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“For several years, I had been bored. Not a whining, restless child's boredom (although I was not above that) but a dense, blanketing malaise. It seemed to me that there was nothing new to be discovered ever again. Our society was utterly, ruinously derivative (although the word derivative as a criticism is itself derivative). We were the first human beings who would never see anything for the first time. We stare at the wonders of the world, dull-eyed, underwhelmed. Mona Lisa, the Pyramids, the Empire State Building. Jungle animals on attack, ancient icebergs collapsing, volcanoes erupting. I can't recall a single amazing thing I have seen firsthand that I didn't immediately reference to a movie or TV show. A fucking commercial. You know the awful singsong of the blasé: Seeeen it. I've literally seen it all, and the worst thing, the thing that makes me want to blow my brains out, is: The secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can't anymore. I don't know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script.

It's a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters.

And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don't have genuine souls.

It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because I'm not a real person and neither is anyone else.

I would have done anything to feel real again.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl