Lacey Hoffman > Lacey's Quotes

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
― Mae West

“If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend”
― Albert Camus

“Suddenly evil isn’t punching people or even hating them. Suddenly it’s all that stuff you’ve left undone. All the kindness you could have given. All the excuses you gave instead.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“A god who listens is love. A god who speaks is law. At their worst, the people who want a god who listens are self-centered...And the ones who want a god who speaks are cruel. They just want laws and justice to crush everything...Love is empty without justice. Justice is cruel without love....God should be both. If a god isn't, that is no God.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“What you believe about the future will change how you live in the present.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“To lose something you never had can be just as painful—because it is the hope of having it that you lose. The hope that in this world, there are magical fish who will give you advice and warning, when really, the future is unknowable and infinitely dangerous.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“Every story is the sound of a storyteller begging to stay alive.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“Maybe it was a storybook beginning.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Another Faust

“Reading is the act of listening and speaking at the same time, with someone you’ve never met, but love. Even if you hate them, it’s a loving thing to do. You speak someone else’s words to yourself, and hear them for the first time.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“Does writing poetry make you brave? It is a good question to ask. I think making anything is a brave thing to do. Not like fighting brave, obviously. But a kind that looks at a horrible situation and doesn’t crumble. Making anything assumes there’s a world worth making it for.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“Dear reader, you have to understand the point of all these stories. What they add up to. Schererazade was trying to make the king human again. She made him love life by showing him all of it, the funny parts about poop, the dangerous parts with demons, even the boring parts about what makes marriages last.

Little by little, he began to feel the joy and sadness of others.

He became less immune, less numb, because of the stories.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“But like you, I was made carefully, by a God who loved what He saw.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“The legend of my mom is that she can’t be stopped. Not when you hit her. Not when a whole country full of goons puts her in a cage. Not even if you make her poor and try to kill her slowly in the little-by-little poison of sadness. And the legend is true. I think because she’s fixed her eyes on something beyond the rivers of blood, to a beautiful place on the other side. How else would anybody do it?”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“Reading is the act of listening and speaking at the same time, with someone you've never met, but love. Even if you hate them, it's a loving thing to do.

You speak someone else's words to yourself, and hear them for the first time.

What you're doing now is listening to me, in the parlor of your mind, but also speaking to yourself, thinking about the parts of me you like or the parts that aren't funny enough. You evaluate, like Mrs. Miller says. You think and wrestle with every word.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“Imagine you're evil.

Not misunderstood.

Not sad.

But evil.

Imagine you've got a heart that spends all day wanting more.

Imagine your mind is a selfish room full of pride or pity.

Imagine you're like Brandon Goff and you find poor kids in the halls and make fun of their clothes, and you flick their ears until they scream in pain and swing their arms, and so you pin them down and break their fingers.

Or you spit in his food in the cafeteria.

Or you just call him things like cockroach and sand monkey.

Imagine you're evil and you don't do any of those things, but you're like Julie Jenkins and you laugh and you laugh at everything Brandon does, and you even help when a teacher comes and asks what's going on and you say nothing's going on, and he believes you because you get A-pluses in English.

Or imagine you just watch all of this. And you act like you're disgusted, because you don't like meanness. But you don't do anything or tell anyone.

Imagine how much you've got compared to all the kids in the world getting blown up or starved, and the good you could do if you spent half a second thinking about it.

Suddenly evil isn't punching people or even hating them.

Suddenly it's all that stuff you've left undone.

All the kindness you could have given.

All the excuses you gave instead.

Imagine that for a minute.

Imagine what it means.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“Never believe that villains are hurting people by accident. They want to get better at their craft of breaking jaws just as you want to get better at art or music.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“But like you, I was made carefully, by a God who loved what He saw. Like you, I want a friend.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“Maybe there isn’t just one person designated for everybody. Maybe there’s a lot more to it---maybe you choose and you practice, and that’s what makes the love true.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“We are always choosing situations that hurt us. We choose them so deeply that we don’t know we chose them. We think we had to. We think the world did it to us. And then we think, what a horrible world that makes a weapon out of love. That stabs you with it, even when you can’t defend yourself and the other person hates you and wants to see you cry.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“A patchwork story is the shame of a refugee.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“All Persians are liars and lying is a sin.
That's what the kids in Mrs. Miller's class think, but I'm the only Persian they've ever met, so I don't know where they got that idea.
My mom says it's true, but only because everyone has sinned and needs God to save them. My dad says it isn't. Persians aren't liars. They're poets, which is worse.
Poets don't even know when they're lying. They're just trying to remember their dreams. They're trying to remember six thousand years of history and all the versions of all the stories ever told.
In one version, maybe I'm not the refugee kid in the back of Mrs. Miller's class. I'm a prince in disguise.
If you catch me, I will say what they say in the 1,001 Nights. "Let me go, and I will tell you a tale passing strange."
That's how they all begin.
With a promise. If you listen, I'll tell you a story. We can know and be known to each other, and then we're not enemies anymore.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“Memories are always partly untrue.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“Memories are tricky things.

They can fade or fester.

You have to seal them up tight like pickles and keep out impurities like how hurt you feel when you open them. Or they'll ferment and poison your brain.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“Maybe we get the endings we deserve. Or maybe the endings we practice.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“The lesson here is that your happiest memories can become your saddest all of a sudden.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“Does writing poetry make you brave? It is a good question to ask. I think making anything is a brave thing to do. Not like fighting brave, obviously. But a kind that looks at a horrible situation and doesn’t crumble.

Making anything assumes there’s a world worth making it for. That you’ll have someplace, like a clown’s pants, to hide it when people come to take it away.

I guess I’m saying making something is a hopeful thing to do.

And being hopeful in a world of pain is either brave or crazy.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“Another way to say it is that everybody is dying and going to die of something. And if you’re not spending your life on the stuff you believe, then what are you even doing? What is the point of the whole thing?”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“Imagine how much you’ve got compared to all the kids in the world getting blown up or starved, and the good you could do if you spent half a second thinking about it.
Suddenly evil isn’t punching people or even hating them.
Suddenly it’s all the stuff you’ve left undone.
All the kindness you could’ve given.
All the excuses you gave instead.
Imagine that for a minute.
Imagine what it means.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“Sometimes you just want somebody to look at a thing with you and say, “Yes. That is a thing you’re looking at. You haven’t lied to yourself.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue