Bobby > Bobby's Quotes

“Why do insurance companies, when they want to describe an act of God, invariably pick on something which sounds much more like an act of the Devil? One would think that God was exclusively concerned in making hurricanes, smallpox, thunderbolts, and dry rot. They seem to forget that He also manufactures rainbows, apple-blossom, and Siamese kittens. However, that is, perhaps, a diversion.”
― Beverley Nichols, Sunlight on the Lawn

“I've come to think that's what heaven is- a place in the memory of others where our best selves live on.”
― Christina Baker Kline, Orphan Train

“There was a certain luxury to charity that she could not identify with and did not have. To take "charity" for granted, to revel in this charity towards people whom one did not know -- perhaps it came from having had yesterday and having today and expecting to have tomorrow. She envied them this.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

“The purpose of Buddhism is not to convert people. It is to give them tools so they can create greater happiness. So they can be happier Catholics, happier atheists, happier Buddhists. There are many practices . . .”
― David Michie, The Dalai Lama's Cat

“. . . she felt the way she always did when she was traveling, as though she was enjoying the novelty but would be happiest when she could consider it all from the vantage point of home, with her suitcase unpacked . . .”
― Anna Quindlen

“A lucky man, I've always said, is a man who was lucky once, and after that, he learned a thing or two about investment. Luck only happens once and it''s always an accident when it does. (Dick Mannering -- 19th century New Zealand goldfields magnate)”
― Eleanor Catton

“This was the result of one of the cruelest paradoxes of the Nazis' policy of 'Judenrein.' The Nazis wanted Jews to leave and readily allowed Jews to leave. But it took money to go someplace, and Hitler's anti-Jewish laws and policies had stripped virtually all Jewish adults of their wealth and means of earning a living.”
― Steven Pressman, 50 Children: One Ordinary American Couple's Extraordinary Rescue Mission into the Heart of Nazi Germany

“He [God] chooses not to intervene in the world. Why not? Because he figures he's done enough and the rest is up to us? Or he wouldn't know where to begin? Or because he's in awe of his own miracle? That's how I picture him, his mouth slightly agape, his eyes wide in disbelief.”
― Jon Cohen, The Man in the Window

“. . . A. J. does not particularly care for writers . . . . He tries to avoid meeting the ones who've written books he loves for fear that they will ruin their books for him.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“. . . for most of us there was a central, unavoidable problem— the world was populated by people who were unlike us . That explained so many wars— particularly religious ones; that explained persecutions and injustices; that explained simple everyday irritation with one’s fellow man: They were just not like us.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, At the Reunion Buffet

“The problem with telling people that they can do anything they want to do is that it is objectively, factually inaccurate. Otherwise the whole world would just be ballet dancers and pop stars.”
― David Nicholls, Us

“From an evolutionary point of view, most emotions - fear, desire, anger - serve some practical purpose, but nostalgia is a useless, futile thing because it is a longing for something that is permanently lost . . . .”
― David Nicholls, Us

“The practice of baring all, analyzing every nuance embedded in a quarrel, is a surefire way to keep an argument alive. Better to establish a temporary peace and revisit the conflict later. Often, by then, both parties have decided the issue isn’t worth the relationship.”
― Sue Grafton, X

“She was so much better at being alone; being alone came more naturally to her. She led a life of deliberate solitude, and if occasional loneliness crept in, she knew how to work her way out of that particular divot. Or even better, how to sink in and absorb its particular comforts.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“Insomnia was its own kind of haunting.”
― Angela Flournoy, The Turner House

“Morty trusted trees far more than he did people. 'You know what a tree can and cannot give you,' he said in one interview. 'It's very straightforward that way. And I am not talking about that cruel Silverstein book, one of the only children's books I've ever thought ought to be banned.”
― Julia Glass, A House Among the Trees

“Anyone with any sense welcomes retirement,”
― Miss Read, The School at Thrush Green

“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”
― Epictetus

“Daniel had learned from his mother that when life is in chaos, there is a certain comfort in order. Things don’t get lost, moved, or forgotten. One still needs to eat, to sleep, to have laundry done. The rhythm of housework, busy hands, can hold the world together when it seems to be falling apart.”
― Anne Perry, Twenty-One Days

“The work of any decent detective is at least nine-tenths monotony, despite the invariably brisk pace of any detective novel, or even a police file, for that matter . . . . No, if I wanted a life filled with non-stop excitement and challenge, I should not choose the life of a detective. High-wire acrobatics, perhaps, or teaching twelve-year-olds, or motherhood, but not detecting.”
― Laurie R. King, A Letter of Mary