Ryan LaBee > Ryan's Quotes

“You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
― Winston Churchill

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

“We learn from failure, not from success!”
― Bram Stoker, Dracula

“What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore, it knows it’s not foolin’ a soul.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas ... with the music at top volume and at least a pint of ether.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

“There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.”
― John Adams 1826

“Who makes the world? Perhaps the world is not made. Perhaps nothing is made. Perhaps it simply is, has been, will always be there…a clock without a craftsman.”
― Alan Moore, Watchmen

“An artist must either give up art or develop.”
― Pauline Kael, I Lost it at the Movies: Film Writings, 1954-1965

“Mr. Farmer? Is that you?” But she knew it wasn’t George Farmer. Even if it looked like him, it wasn’t George Farmer.”
― Ronald Malfi, Snow

“There’s no such thing as “the passive tense.” Passive and active aren’t tenses, they’re modes of the verb. Each mode is useful and correct where appropriate. Good writers use both.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Steering The Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story

“There’s a lot of talk lately about “the family you choose.” It’s a phrase often used by people who were rejected by their parents or siblings and so formed a group of supportive, kindred spirits. I think it’s great they’re part of a tight-knit circle, but I wouldn’t call it a family. Essential to that word is that the people you’re surrounded by were not chosen. They were assigned by fate, and now you must deal with them in one way or another until you die.”
― David Sedaris, The Best of Me

“There’s an Allan Gurganus quote I think of quite often: “Without much accuracy, with strangely little love at all, your family will decide for you exactly who you are, and they’ll keep nudging, coaxing, poking you until you’ve changed into that very simple shape.”
― David Sedaris, The Best of Me

“And despite the miraculous, well-documented healing powers of the Comedic Arts my old man dies taking a big bloody shit in his bed.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Make Something Up: Stories You Can't Unread

“To write a novel, you begin with what you can see and then you add what came before and what came after.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“Graham switched on the lights and bloodstains shouted at him from the walls, from the mattress and the floor. The very air had screams smeared on it. He flinched from the noise in this silent room full of dark stains drying.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“Young people want mirrors. Older people want art.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Burnt Tongues

“Every year, I open Slaves of New York or The Day of the Locust or even Jesus’ Son and enjoy it as if it’s a wholly different book. Of course, it’s not the book that’s changing. It’s me. I’m the one who still needs rewriting. Don’t we all?”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Burnt Tongues Anthology

“Can I even know who I was before the world got its hands on me and turned me against myself into this…thing?”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“Starbucks is the smart coffee for dumb people. It’s the Christopher Nolan of coffee. Dunkin’ Donuts is lowbrow, authentic. It is the simple, real pleasure of a Judd Apatow movie. Not showing off. Actual. Human. Don’t compete with me, Christopher Nolan. You will always lose. I know who you are, and I know I am the smarter of us.”
― Charlie Kaufman, Antkind

“People can get used to just about anything. That’s the best of our lives, I guess. Of course, it’s the horror of them, too.”
― Stephen King, From a Buick 8

“I have conquered the world, and none of it is secure; I have shown liberty to the people, and they flee it as if it were a disease; I despise those whom I can trust, and love those best who would most quickly betray me. And I do not know where we are going, though I lead a nation to its destiny.”
― John Williams, Augustus

“It is the world of Rome, where no man knows his enemy or his friend, where license is more admired than virtue, and where principle has become servant to self.”
― John Williams, Augustus

“Living up the Moyea with plenty of small chores to distract him, he forgot he was a sad man. When the hymns began, he remembered.”
― Denis Johnson, Train Dreams

“When he got back to his Mercedes, a single sea gull was flapping and squawking in the sky, and a big blast of shit was already beginning to harden on the car’s windshield. Someone had remembered him after all, and he cried all the way home.”
― Herman Raucher, Summer of '42

“I wondered if they would ever know that their daddy was evil. Perhaps love would block the knowledge like an eclipse.”
― Karen Russell, The Antidote