Sam > Sam's Quotes

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“There are plenty of good reasons for fighting...but no good reason to ever hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It's that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive....it's that part of an imbecile that punishes and vilifies and makes war gladly.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

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

“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?”
― Ernest Hemingway

“I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
― Leo Tolstoy , Anna Karenina

“I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.”
― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”
― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You

“Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.
Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.”
― William Faulkner

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“You can't measure the mutual affection of two human beings by the number of words they exchange.”
― Milan Kundera

“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
― Anton Chekhov

“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young

“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“The first draft of anything is shit.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

“Of course it is exhausting, having to reason all the time in a universe which wasn't meant to be reasonable.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

“Ideas on earth were badges of friendship or enmity. Their content did not matter. Friends agreed with friends, in order to express friendliness. Enemies disagreed with enemies, in order to express enimity.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

“Honest to God, Bill, the way things are going, all I can think of is that I'm a character in a book by somebody who wants to write about somebody who suffers all the time.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

“This much I knew and know: I was making myself hideously uncomfortable by not narrowing my attention to details of life which were immediately important, and by refusing to believe what my neighbors believed.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions