Steven Farmer > Steven's Quotes

“Solidarity is what the State fears. -- Leah-Lynn Plante”
― Leah-Lynn Plante

“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.”
― Jessamyn West

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.”
― David Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

“Money buys things that people with money never even realize they’ve bought, like time and freedom. -- Whitney Otto”
― Whitney Otto, Eight Girls Taking Pictures

“Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give to an American.”
― Edward Snowden

“The only difference between Hitler and Bush is that Hitler was elected.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“I'm worried that the government might kill Edward Snowden with a drone. --Ron Paul”
― Ron Paul, Lies the Government Told You: Myth, Power, and Deception in American History

“Prism is the worst attack on personal freedom since 1939: Mallick U.S. snoopers know you are guilty - Don Radhay”
― Don Radhay

“Reality is frequently inaccurate.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“The street finds its own uses for things.”
― William Gibson

“Never. Never ask for what ought to be offered.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone

“What she had realized was that love was that moment when your heart was about to burst.”
― Stieg Larsson, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

“Next to music, beer was best.”
― Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

“When we die, we will turn into songs, and we will hear each other and remember each other.”
― Rob Sheffield, Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time

“The only real elegance is in the mind; if you've got that, the rest really comes from it.”
― Diana Vreeland

“While we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary.”
― Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah

“Everything in the world exists in order to end up as a book.”
― Stéphane Mallarmé

“People haven't always been there for me but music always has.”
― Taylor Swift

“His books were the closest thing he had to furniture and he lived in them the way other men live in easy chairs.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Seabiscuit: An American Legend

“A kiss is a secret which takes the lips for the ear.”
― Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac

“First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons — but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which had lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. So there is only one thing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself as best he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward world — a world intense and strange, complete in himself. Let it be added here that this lover about whom we speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a wedding ring — this lover can be man, woman, child, or indeed any human creature on this earth.

Now, the beloved can also be of any description. The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. A man may be a doddering great-grandfather and still love only a strange girl he saw in the streets of Cheehaw one afternoon two decades past. The preacher may love a fallen woman. The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. Yes, and the lover may see this as clearly as anyone else — but that does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp. A good man may be the stimulus for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of someone a tender and simple idyll. Therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.

It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain.”
― carson mccullers, The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories

“Everyone loves a conspiracy.”
― Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code

“If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.”
― Woody Allen

“You can either practice being right or practice being kind.”
― Anne Lamott

“Funny, for all surveillance, Osama bin Laden is still free—and we're not. Guess who's winning the "war on terror?”
― Cory Doctorow

“Real courage is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. Doing the unpopular thing because it's what you believe, and the heck with everybody.”
― Justin Cronin, The Summer Guest

“Don't be afraid of missing opportunities. Behind every failure is an opportunity somebody wishes they had missed.”
― Lily Tomlin

“It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“I'd rather be weird and happy than normal and miserable.”
― Susane Colasanti, Waiting for You

“For our excess we lost everything.”
― Andre Dubus III, House of Sand and Fog