Jack > Jack's Quotes

“Scientists talk about dark matter, the invisible, mysterious substance that occupies the space between stars. Dark matter makes up 99.99 percent of the universe, and they don't know what it is. Well I do. It's apathy. That's the truth of it; pile together everything we know and care about in the universe and it will still be nothing more than a tiny speck in the middle of a vast black ocean of Who Gives a Fuck.”
― David Wong, John Dies at the End

“One had followed the rules, and one had not. But the problem with rules... was that they implied a right way and a wrong way to do things. When, in fact, most of the time they were simply ways, none of them quite wrong or quite right, and nothing to tell you for sure what side of the line you stood on.”
― Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“All her life, she had learned that passion, like fire, was a dangerous thing. It so easily went out of control. It scaled walls and jumped over trenches. Sparks leapt like fleas and spread as rapidly; a breeze could carry embers for miles. Better to control that spark and pass it carefully from one generation to the next, like an Olympic torch. Or, perhaps, to tend it carefully like an eternal flame: a reminder of light and goodness that would never - could never - set anything ablaze. Carefully controlled. Domesticated. Happy in captivity. The key, she thought, was to avoid conflagration.”
― Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Another affordable way to add a drop of loveliness to the world was not to change it but to change how one saw it.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

“For people are created for happiness, and he who is completely happy can at once be deemed worthy of saying to himself: ‘I have fulfilled God’s commandment on this earth.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“nor had I understood till then how the shameless vanity of utter fools can so strongly determine the fate of others.”
― Philip Roth, The Plot Against America

“One little shot during a card game in Arkansas had started things happening—things he couldn’t see the end of.”
― Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove

“Then they up and thrashed me.” “But what for, what for?” “For my education. A man can be thrashed for all sorts of reasons,” Maximov summed up meekly and sententiously.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“And have you noticed, Smurov, that in the middle of winter, when there are fifteen or even eighteen degrees of frost, it doesn’t seem as cold as it does now, for example, in the beginning of winter, if there’s suddenly an unexpected cold snap, like now, of twelve degrees, especially when there isn’t much snow. It means people aren’t used to it yet. Everything is habit with people, everything, even state and political relations. Habit is the chief motive force.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“In fact, it is not a funny one, you’re wrong there. Nothing is funny in nature, however it may seem to man with his prejudices. If dogs could reason and criticize, they would undoubtedly find as much that is funny to them in the social relations of humans, their masters—if not far more; I repeat, because I am convinced of it, that there is far more foolishness in us.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“For now we are either horrified or pretend that we are horrified, while, on the contrary, relishing the spectacle, like lovers of strong, eccentric sensations that stir our cynical and lazy idleness, or, finally, like little children waving the frightening ghosts away, and hiding our heads under the pillow until the frightening vision is gone, so as to forget it immediately afterwards in games and merriment.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Let us first of all and before all be kind, then honest, and then—let us never forget one another.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“From the sound of it, had I stayed in California I might have ended up in a cult or at the very least practicing some weird dietary restriction.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely?”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“One does not deceive oneself about the consequences of one's acts; one deceives oneself about the ease with which one can live with those consequences.”
― John Williams, Augustus

“I have been thinking about existence lately. In fact, I have been so full of admiration for existence that I have hardly been able to enjoy it properly . . . I feel sometimes as if I were a child who opens its eyes on the world once and sees amazing things it will never know any names for and then has to close its eyes again. I know this is all mere apparition compared to what awaits us, but it is only lovelier for that. There is a human beauty in it. And I can’t believe that, when we have all been changed and put on incorruptibility, we will forget our fantastic condition of mortality and impermanence, the great bright dream of procreating and perishing that meant the whole world to us. In eternity this world will be Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets. Because I don’t imagine any reality putting this one in the shade entirely, and I think piety forbids me to try.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“Somebody has been fuckin my watermelons.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Suttree