Margot > Margot's Quotes

“Whoever has the gold makes the rules.”
― Johnny Hart

“A duel is just two murders who agree to take turns trying to kill each other.”
― Orson Scott Card, Seventh Son

“It was silly, wasn't it? But the singing made it not silly.”
― Audrey niffenegger

“Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“The book itself is a curious artifact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: a really neat little device, compact, often very pleasant to look at and handle, that can last decades, even centuries. It doesn't have to be plugged in, activated, or performed by a machine; all it needs is light, a human eye, and a human mind. It is not one of a kind, and it is not ephemeral. It lasts. It is reliable. If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell it to you again when you're fifty, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you're reading a whole new book."

(Staying Awake: Notes on the alleged decline of reading, Harper's Magazine, February 2008)”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“The main qualities that had earned him this universal respect in the service were, first, an extreme indulgence towards people, based on his awareness of his own shortcomings; second, a perfect liberalism, not the sort he read about in the newspapers, but the sort he had in his blood, which made him treat all people, whatever their rank or status, in a perfectly equal and identical way; and, third - most important - a perfect indifference to the business he was occupied with, owing to which he never got carried away and never made mistakes.”
― Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina p. 15

“...the concept of marketing is almost as old as humanity itself...suffice it to say here that it took almost no time for a wily serpent to sell Adam and Eve on a shiny apple from the Tree of Knowledge, at which point they became not only the first humans but also the first marketing demographic, and God expelled them from the Garden of Eden for being total consumerist dupes. (p. 40)”
― BikeSnobNYC, The Enlightened Cyclist: Commuter Angst, Dangerous Drivers, and Other Obstacles on the Path to Two-Wheeled Trancendence

“The ark was like a portable computer hard drive and Noah was a one-man Geek Squad, and he dumped God's most important files onto it before he zorched the virus-ridden computer that was the world.”
― BikeSnobNYC, The Enlightened Cyclist: Commuter Angst, Dangerous Drivers, and Other Obstacles on the Path to Two-Wheeled Trancendence

“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.”
― Gary Provost

“According to Hugh Thomas, author of 'A History of the World', the greatest medical advance in history has been garbage collection. The greatest psychological advance in history is just around the corner and will also have to do with cleaning up. Cleaning up lies and "coming out of the closet" is getting more attention these days. Some day we will look back on these years of suffocation in bullsh*t in the same way we look back on all the years people lived in, and died from, their garbage.”
― Brad Blanton, Radical Honesty : How to Transform Your Life by Telling the Truth

“A mind is a terrible thing; waste it.”
― Brad Blanton, Radical Honesty : How to Transform Your Life by Telling the Truth

“Most of us would rather kill ourselves than be, particularly if who we think we are keeps dying. Many of us do.”
― Brad Blanton, Radical Honesty : How to Transform Your Life by Telling the Truth

“Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“While it is true that many people simply can't afford to pay more for food, either in money or time or both, many more of us can. After all, just in the last decade or two we've somehow found the time in the day to spend several hours on the internet and the money in the budget not only to pay for broadband service, but to cover a second phone bill and a new monthly bill for television, formerly free. For the majority of Americans, spending more for better food is less a matter of ability than priority. p.187”
― Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

“Organic Oreos are not a health food. When Coca-Cola begins selling organic Coke, as it surely will, the company will have struck a blow for the environment perhaps, but not for our health. Most consumers automatically assume that the word "organic" is synomymous with health, but it makes no difference to your insulin metabolism if the high-fructose corn syrup in your soda is organic.”
― Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

“Anything that can’t be done in bed isn’t worth doing at all.”
― Groucho Marx

“We might embody those qualities we desire to possess by embracing them, over and over, until the line between seeming and being is no more.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Justice

“I became a chameleon. My color didn't change, but I could change your perception of my color. If you spoke to me in Zulu, I replied to you in Zulu. If you spoke to me in Tswana, I replied to you in Tswana. Maybe I didn't look like you, but if I spoke like you, I was you.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“Learn from your past and be better because of your past,” she would say, “but don’t cry about your past. Life is full of pain. Let the pain sharpen you, but don’t hold on to it. Don’t be bitter.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“Trevor, remember a man is not determined by how much he earns. You can still be a man of the house and earn less than your woman. Being a man is not what you have, it's who you are. Being more of a man doesn't mean your woman has to be less than you.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“Trevor, make sure your woman is the woman in your life. Don't be one of those men who makes his wife compete with his mother. A man with a wife cannot be beholden to his mother.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“The first thing I learned about having money was that it gives you choices. People don’t want to be rich. They want to be able to choose. The richer you are, the more choices you have. That is the freedom of money.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“I fell in love with McDonald's. McDonald's, to me, tasted like America. McDonald's is America. You see it advertised and it looks amazing. You crave it. You buy it. You take your first bite, and it blows your mind. It's even better than you imagined. Then, halfway through, you realize it's not all it's cracked up to be. A few bites later, you're like, Hmm, there's a lot wrong with this. Then you're done, you miss it like crazy, and you go back for more.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“You must be careful who you surround yourself with because where you are can determine who you are.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“Growing up in a home of abuse, you struggle with the notion that you can love a person you hate, or hate a person you love. It's a strange feeling. You want to live in a world where someone is good or bad, where you either hate them or love them, but that's not how people are.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood