Len > Len's Quotes

“... I started to die 36 hours before I was born, so dying was a way of life for me.”
― Hubert Selby Jr.

“There was a problem and that was that. Why didnt make a fiddlers fuck.”
― Hubert Selby Jr., Requiem for a Dream

“I think the function of suffering is to let me know that my perception is skewed; what I’m doing is judging natural events in such a way that I am creating suffering within myself. For instance, you have pain over certain conditions, certain situations that occur. And if you just say ‘ok, here I am, I’m going to experience the pain,’ you don’t suffer. The resistance and the degree of the resistance to the natural phenomenon of life causes tremendous suffering.”
― Hubert Selby Jr.

“I knew the alphabet. Maybe I could be a writer.”
― Hubert Selby Jr.

“It hurts to let go. Sometimes it seems the harder you try to hold on to something or someone the more it wants to get away. You feel like some kind of criminal for having felt, for having wanted. For having wanted to be wanted. It confuses you, because you think that your feelings were wrong and it makes you feel so small because it's so hard to keep it inside when you let it out and it doesn't coma back. You're left so alone that you can't explain. Damn, there's nothing like that, is there? I've been there and you have too. You're nodding your head.”
― Henry Rollins, The Portable Henry Rollins

“Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on.”
― Henry Rollins

“Girls aren't beautiful, they're pretty. Beautiful is too heavy a word to assign to a girl. Women are beautiful because their faces show that they know they have lost something and picked up something else.”
― Henry Rollins, Smile, You're Traveling

“Don't do anything by half. If you love someone, love them with all your soul. When you go to work, work your ass off. When you hate someone, hate them until it hurts.”
― Henry Rollins

“My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.”
― Henry Rollins

“Love heals scars love left”
― Henry Rollins, The Portable Henry Rollins

“It is sad when someone you know becomes someone you knew.”
― Henry Rollins

“Knowledge without mileage equals bullshit.”
― Henry Rollins

“You don't make me feel like you used to.
That's why I'm leaving
That's why people leave each other
They come to their senses and get selfish again.”
― Henry Rollins, See a Grown Man Cry, Now Watch Him Die

“I believe that one defines oneself by reinvention. To not be like your parents. To not be like your friends. To be yourself. To cut yourself out of stone.”
― Henry Rollins

“My love is a thousand French poets puking black blood on your Cure CD collection.”
― Henry Rollins, Eye Scream

“Don't push me
I've got a corner at my back
I've nowhere to go except over you.”
― Henry Rollins, See a Grown Man Cry, Now Watch Him Die

“There are perhaps many causes worth dying for, but to me, certainly, there are none worth killing for.”
― Albert Dietrich, Army GI, Pacifist CO: The World War II Letters of Frank Dietrich and Albert Dietrich

“But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.”
― Albert Camus

“I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist.”
― Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959

“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”
― Albert Camus

“Always go too far, because that's where you'll find the truth”
― Albert Camus

“I would rather live my life as if there is a god and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is.”
― Albert Camus

“People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves.”
― Albert Camus, The Fall

“Peace is the only battle worth waging.”
― Albert Camus

“Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing

1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”
― Elmore Leonard

“Fate was working its ass off when it got us all together.”
― Elmore Leonard

“Sure, this will probably end up being another in a long line of emotionally crippling misadventures...but let's try to have some fun along the way.”
― Brian K. Vaughan

“Happy endings are bullshit. There are only happy pauses.”
― Brian K. Vaughan, Ex Machina, Vol. 10: Term Limits

“My mom once told me that a good relationship isn't where the other person makes you feel better, but where they make *you* better.”
― Brian K. Vaughan, Y: The Last Man, Vol. 10: Whys and Wherefores

“Can't be part of the rat race when you're one of the rats who knows you're in a cage.”
― Ed Brubaker