Alexander > Alexander's Quotes

“I would really like to have had the guts and the energy and so on to be able to write about, you know, people having battles with the DHSS. But I...I haven't. They're dull things. I mean, I'm an arty person. OK, I write overblown, purple, self-indulgent prose. So fucking what?”
― Angela Carter

“There was a house we all had in common and it was called the past, even though we'd lived in different rooms.”
― Angela Carter, Wise Children

“One summer morning at sunrise a long time ago
I met a little girl with a book under her arm.
I asked her why she was out so early and
she answered that there were too many books and
far too little time. And there she was absolutely right.”
― Tove Jansson

“It was a particularly good evening to begin a book.”
― Tove Jansson, The Summer Book

“Moominpappa: "Tell us all that's happening out in the world!"

Snufkin: "Fuss and misery."

- from "Moomin and Family Life" comic strip”
― Tove Jansson, Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip, Vol. 01

“The most efficient way of rendering the poor harmless is to teach them to want to imitate the rich.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“We don’t create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay.”
― Lynda Barry

“Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.”
― Winston Churchill

“I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your own clothes.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“If you know someone who’s depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn’t a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather.

Try to understand the blackness, lethargy, hopelessness, and loneliness they’re going through. Be there for them when they come through the other side. It’s hard to be a friend to someone who’s depressed, but it is one of the kindest, noblest, and best things you will ever do.”
― Stephen Fry

“It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.”
― Stephen Fry, Moab Is My Washpot

“There are those who stay at home and those who go away, and it has always been so. Everyone can choose for himself, but he must choose while there is still time and never change his mind.”
― Tove Jansson, Moominvalley in November

“All things are so very uncertain, and that's exactly what makes me feel reassured.”
― Tove Jansson, Moominland Midwinter

“The quiet transition from autumn to winter is not a bad time at all. It's a time for protecting and securing things and for making sure you've got in as many supplies as you can. It's nice to gather together everything you possess as close to you as possible, to store up your warmth and your thoughts and burrow yourself into a deep hole inside, a core of safety where you can defend what is important and precious and your very own. Then the cold and the storms and the darkness can do their worst. They can grope their way up the walls looking for a way in, but they won't find one, everything is shut, and you sit inside, laughing in your warmth and your solitude, for you have had foresight.”
― Tove Jansson, Moominvalley in November

“Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers.”
― George R.R. Martin, Ace in the Hole

“Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

“If you don't turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else's story.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

“The intelligence of that creature known as a crowd is the square root of the number of people in it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Jingo

“In theory it was, around now, Literature. Susan hated Literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book.”
― Terry Pratchett, Soul Music

“Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”
― Will Rogers

“So that's the telephone? They ring, and you run.”
― Edgar Degas