David > David's Quotes

“Relearn astonishment.”
― Elias Canetti

“No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.”
― H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds

“As soon as one promises not to do something, it becomes the one thing above all others that one most wishes to do.”
― Georgette Heyer, Venetia

“All great and precious things are lonely.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

“I hadn’t realized, until I actually heard his voice, how much I’d missed the demented little perv.”
― Jim Butcher, Cold Days

“Uh,” I said, feeling somewhat off balance. “What do I think of gay guys?” “Yes.” “Boink and let boink, more or less.”
― Jim Butcher, Cold Days

“Ideas are easy. It's the execution of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats.”
― Sue Grafton

“Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.”
― anthony burgess

“Every day I get better at knowing that it is not a choice to be an activist; rather, it is the only way to hold on to the better parts of my human self. It is the only way I can live and laugh without guilt.”
― Staceyann Chin

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil, for I am the meanest son of a bitch in the valley.”
― Joel Rosenberg

“The problem with doing nothing is not knowing when you are finished.”
― Nelson De Mille

“Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it.”
― Jeanette Winterson

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Surprising what you can dig out of books if you read long enough, isn't it?”
― Robert Jordan

“In our deepest moments we say the most inadequate things.”
― Edna O'Brien, A Fanatic Heart: Selected Stories

“We are made of stardust; why not take a few moments to look up at the family album?”
― Natalie Angier, The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science

“...Do you stop loving someone just because they betray you? I don't think so. That's what makes the betrayal hurt so much—pain, frustration, anger... and I still loved her. I still do.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn: The Final Empire

“A German officer visited Picasso in his Paris studio during the Second World War. There he saw Guernica and, shocked at the modernist «chaos» of the painting, asked Picasso: «Did you do this?» Picasso calmly replied: «No, you did this!»”
― Slavoj Žižek, Violence: Six Sideways Reflections

“Cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn't give you what you desire - it tells you how to desire.”
― Slavoj Žižek

“The best teachers impart knowledge through sleight of hand, like a magician.”
― Kate Betts, My Paris Dream: An Education in Style, Slang, and Seduction in the Great City on the Seine

“I mean, how do you know if people are good for you or not? It's not like they come with an FDA approved sticker or anything.”
― Michael Thomas Ford, Suicide Notes

“Be hard but fair. Shoot straight. Never cheat, in sports or at work. Show up to your job early and do the best you can at it. Kill anyone that tries to blackmail you, ever. Refuse anyone who gives you an ultimatum, they’re never worth it. Leave a fair tip when you eat somewhere, and take your hat off in someone’s home. And always, always, keep your word.”
― Russell Zimmerman, Neat

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Bones mend. Regret stays with you forever.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“It’s a dangerous thing, pretense. A man ought to know who he is, even if he isn’t proud to be it.”
― Daniel Polansky, Tomorrow, the Killing

“I remember the lightning in the air, and the lovers bidding goodbye to each other in the streets, and I can tell you what I think. We went to war because going to war is fun, because there's something in the human breast that trills at the thought, although perhaps not the reality, of murdering its fellows in vast numbers. Fighting a war ain't fun - fighting a war is pretty miserable. But starting a war? Hell, starting a war is better than a night floating on daeva's honey.”
― Daniel Polansky, Low Town