Everthere > Everthere's Quotes

“Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos (no less) and we can accomplish this only by the most vigilant exercise of choice, but in a world that changes more swiftly that we can perceive there is always the danger that our powers of selection will be mistaken and that the vision we serve will come to nothing.”
― John Cheever

“Age certainly hadn't conferred any smarts on me. Character maybe, but mediocrity is a constant, as one Russian writer put it. Russian writers have a way with aphorisms. They probably spend all winter thinking them up.”
― Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase

“A few years ago it dawned on me that everybody past a certain age - regardless of how they look on the outside - pretty much constantly dreams of being able to escape from their lives.”
― Douglas Coupland, The Gum Thief

“Too much time alone had done something peculiar to his heart: A confused and unreliable organ at best, it now held something akin to joy.”
― James Leo Herlihy, Midnight Cowboy

“I was oppressed with a sense of vague discontent and dissatisfaction with my own life, which was passing so quickly and uninterestingly, and I kept thinking it would be a good thing if I could tear my heart out of my breast, that heart which had grown so weary of life.”
― Anton Chekhov

“Isn't it true that you start your life a sweet child believing in everything under your father's roof? Then comes the day of the Laodiceans, when you know you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, and with the visage of a gruesome grieving ghost you go shuddering through nightmare life.”
― Jack Kerouac

“And did I not think then, What nonsense it is to suppose one man so different from another when all that life really boils down to is getting a decent cup of coffee and room to stretch out in?”
― Alice Munro

“There are people who carry decency and optimism around with them, who seem to cleanse every atmosphere they settle in, and you can't tell such people things, it is too disruptive.”
― Alice Munro

“For lovers, touch is metamorphosis. All the parts of their bodies seem to change, and they seem to become something different and better.”
― John Cheever

“If I had done this, if I had said that, in the end you are always more tormented by what you didn't do than what you did, actions already performed can always be rationalized in time, the neglected deed might have changed the world.”
― Damon Galgut, In a Strange Room

“How awful we are all when we look at ourselves under a light, finally seeing our reflections+. How little we know about ourselves. How much forgivennes it must take to love a person , to choose not to see their flaws, or to see those flaws and love the person anyway. If you never forgive you'll always be alone.”
― Stephen Elliott, The Adderall Diaries: A Memoir of Moods, Masochism, and Murder