Jade Saul > Jade's Quotes

“The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people. You're there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is useful to a writer, you see - every scrap, even the longest and most boring of luncheon parties.”
― Graham Greene

“When people ask me whether I am a spy –‘are you now, or have you ever been?’ –I am tempted to reply with a hearty –‘Yes, and since the age of five.’ For a state of watchfulness must surely be the first requisite of a writer, as it is of a secret agent. A writer, like a spy, must prey upon his neighbours; like a spy he is dependent on those whom he deceives; like a spy he must somehow contrive to keep a distance from his own feelings and by doing so conjure up a package that will meet with the approval of his masters. Like a spy, he is not merely an outsider, but implicitly a subversive..”
― John le Carré

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
― Anais Nin

“Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be obtained only by someone who is detached. ”
― Simone Weil

“It's been my experience, Langford, that the past always has a way of returning. Those who don't learn, or can't remember it, are doomed to repeat it.”
― Steve Berry, The Charlemagne Pursuit

“Study the past if you would define the future. --CONFUCIUS”
― Steve Berry, The Emperor's Tomb

“Be your own biggest fan, your own biggest believer, and put it on your back and carry the weight.”
― Nipsey Hussle

“War is brutish, inglorious, and a terrible waste... The only redeeming factors were my comrades' incredible bravery and their devotion to each other. Marine Corps training taught us to kill efficiently and to try to survive. But it also taught us loyalty to each other - and love. That espirit de corps sustained us.”
― Eugene B. Sledge, With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa

“When she had asked him how he was able to kill two men with his bare hands, he had gone into asshole mode, telling her not to look a gift horse in the mouth.”
― Brad Taylor, One Rough Man

“Don’t spend a lot of time imagining the worst-case scenario. It rarely goes down as you imagine it will, and if by some fluke it does, you will have lived it twice.”
― Michael J. Fox, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future...: Twists and Turns and Lessons Learned

“he wasn’t a bad guy, as far as assholes go.”
― Brad Taylor, Operator Down

“O Divine Master, grant that
I may not so much seek
To be consoled, as to console;
Not so much to be understood as
To understand; not so much to be
Loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning, that we are pardoned”
― Saint Francis of Assisi

“for a soldier who’d spent eight years at war, not owning a weapon was like a writer emptying his house of pens.”
― Nicholas Petrie, The Drifter

“Dogs always liked little kids. They tasted like sweat and table scraps.”
― Nicholas Petrie, The Drifter

“swearing made things hurt less. It validated what she herself had known for years. Swearing was good for you.”
― Nick Petrie, Light It Up

“he did his best Swedish Chef imitation, just to be saying something that sounded vaguely Scandinavian. Peter had always liked the Muppets.”
― Nick Petrie, The Wild One

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”
― Robert Frost

“Fiction is the truth inside the lie.”
― Stephen King

“Since you seldom spoke, you were rarely wrong. You seldom spoke because you seldom went out. If you did go out, you listened and watched. Now, since you no longer speak, you will always be right. In truth, you do still speak: through those, like me, who bring you back to life, and interrogate you. We hear your responses and admire their wisdom. If the facts turned out to contradict your counsel, we blame ourselves for having misinterpreted you. Yours are the truths, ours are the errors.”
― Edouard Levé, Suicide

“An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self sustained.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“He was going through one of those moments that you read about in books, when a character reacts in an unexpectedly extreme way to the normal discontents of living.”
― Elena Ferrante, The Days of Abandonment

“The circle of an empty day is brutal and at night it tightens around your neck like a noose.”
― Elena Ferrante, The Days of Abandonment

“I would propose that to worry people are desensitized is to assume the jurors, and most people, were ever sensitive to Black pain to begin with.”
― Gabrielle Union, You Got Anything Stronger?

“Wäre ich eine andere Art von Mensch, würde ich vielleicht sagen, dass dieser Vorfall eine Art Metapher für das Leben als Ganzes ist: Dinge gehen kaputt, und manchmal können sie wieder repariert werden, und meistens stellt man fest, dass das Leben, egal was zerstört wurde, einen Weg findet, den Verlust wieder gut zu machen, manchmal auf ganz wunderbare Weise. Und weiß du was? Vielleicht bin ich diese Art von Mensch.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“The scene would give white people a chance to see themselves as complicit in cultural appropriation, but the takeaway for marginalized audiences would be different. It could tell them, "You're not crazy. Your physical and intellectual labor really has been stolen and repackaged for profit. It's real.”
― Gabrielle Union, You Got Anything Stronger?

“Die pausenlose Abwehrhaltung war anstrengend, aber irgendwann wurde sie wurde sie schlicht ein Teil seines Lebens, eine Angewohnheit, wie eine gute Körperhaltung.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“In order to write about life first you must live it.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Most people are good and occasionally do something they know is bad. Some people are bad and struggle every day to keep it under control. Others are corrupt to the core and don’t give a damn, as long as they don’t get caught. But evil is a completely different creature, Mac. Evil is bad that believes it’s good.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Shadowfever