Daniel > Daniel's Quotes

“Try to learn to let what is unfair teach you.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“Young people," McDonald said contemptuously. "You always think there's something to find out."

"Yes, sir," Andrews said.

"Well, there's nothing," McDonald said. "You get born, and you nurse on lies, and you get weaned on lies, and you learn fancier lies in school. You live all your life on lies, and then maybe when you're ready to die, it comes to you — that there's nothing, nothing but yourself and what you could have done. Only you ain't done it, because the lies told you there was something else. Then you know you could of had the world, because you're the only one that knows the secret; only then it's too late. You're too old."

"No," Andrews said. A vague terror crept from the darkness that surrounded them, and tightened his voice. "That's not the way it is."

"You ain't learned, then," McDonald said. "You ain't learned yet. . . .”
― John Williams, Butcher's Crossing

“What does that mean know me, know me, nobody ever knows anybody else, ever! You will never know me. ”
― Bret Easton Ellis, The Rules of Attraction

“No one ever likes the right person.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, The Rules of Attraction

“No one will ever know anyone. We just have to deal with each other. You're not ever gonna know me.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, The Rules of Attraction

“I don’t mind getting smacked on the chin. I just don’t want to get nibbled to death. There’s a difference.”
― John Steinbeck, In Dubious Battle

“It seems to me that man has engaged in a blind and fearful struggle out of a past he can't remember, into a future he can't foresee nor understand. And man has met and defeated every obstacle, every enemy except one. He cannot win over himself. How mankind hates himself.”
― John Steinbeck, In Dubious Battle

“It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul.”
― William Styron, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness

“Written in ink, in German, in a small, hopelessly sincere handwriting, were the words "Dear God, life is hell." Nothing led up to or away from it. Alone on the page, and in the sickly stillness of the room, the words appeared to have the stature of an uncontestable, even classic indictment. X stared at the page for several minutes, trying, against heavy odds, not to be taken in. Then, with far more zeal than he had done anything in weeks, he picked up a pencil stub and wrote down under the inscription, in English, "Fathers and teachers, I ponder, 'What is Hell?' I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”
― J.D. Salinger, Nine Stories

“Look at 'em,' he said. 'Goddam fools.' 'Who?' said Ginnie. 'I don't know. Anybody.”
― J.D. Salinger, Nine Stories

“A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part