Lillie Gutoff > Lillie's Quotes

“Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“And so it goes...”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

“Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.”
― Anne Lamott

“You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.”
― Anne Lamott

“You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
― Anne Lamott

“There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

“The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.”
― Mary Oliver

“Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle. It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say.”
― Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

“If you think that moral reasoning is something we do to figure out the truth, you’ll be constantly frustrated by how foolish, biased, and illogical people become when they disagree with you.”
― Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

“Anyone who values truth should stop worshipping reason.”
― Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

“to live in this world

you must be able
to do three things
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go”
― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Volume One

“LITTLE DOGS RHAPSODY IN THE NIGHT
(PERCY THREE)

He puts his cheek against mine
and makes small, expressive sounds.
And when I'm awake, or awake enough

he turns upside down, his four paws
in the air
and his eyes dark and fervent.

Tell me you love me, he says.

Tell me again.

Could there be a sweeter arrangement?
Over and over
he gets to ask it.
I get to tell.”
― Mary Oliver

“Through its creative power, art may trigger approximation, reconciliation and harmonization between individuals and peoples. Through art, beings can meet and exchange their points of view, as it rules out alienation, and arouses chemistry and understanding. By definition, art is universal and helps to cross borders and barriers without prejudice.”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Perhaps one day, all these conflicts will end, and it won't be because of great statesmen or churches or organisations like this one. It'll be because people have changed. They'll be like you, Puffin. More a mixture. So why not become a mongrel? It's healthy.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

“There is a common superstition that “self-respect” is a kind of charm against snakes, something that keeps those who have it locked in some unblighted Eden, out of strange beds, ambivalent conversations, and trouble in general. It does not at all. It has nothing to do with the face of things, but concerns instead a separate peace, a private reconciliation.”
― Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

“My gut feeling says he needs a second chance. Like we all do." WINTER'S PAST”
― Mary E. Hanks, Winter's Past

“I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross and concentrating. Also, dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“And when you look at the sky you know you are looking at stars which are hundreds and thousands of light-years away from you. And some of the stars don’t even exist anymore because their light has taken so long to get to us that they are already dead, or they have exploded and collapsed into red dwarfs. And that makes you seem very small, and if you have difficult things in you life it is nice to think that they are what is called negligible, which means they are so small you don’t have to take them into account when you are calculating something.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“...and there was nothing to do except to wait and to hurt.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“Metaphors are lies.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“I think it’s important to live in a nice country rather than a powerful one. Power makes everybody crazy.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Letters

“Fear is the State's psychological weapon of choice to frighten citizens into sacrificing their basic freedoms and rule-of-law protections in exchange for the security promised by their all-powerful government.”
― Philip G. Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

“Heroes are those who can somehow resist the power of the situation and act out of noble motives, or behave in ways that do not demean others when they easily can.”
― Philip Zimbardo