David Black > David's Quotes

“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.”
― Marcel Proust

“One must dare to be happy. ”
― Gertrude Stein

“You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.”
― Pearl S. Buck

“If there are no books. There is no civilization.”
― Thomas Cahill

“I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.”
― Marilyn Monroe

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don’t get to choose our own hearts. We can’t make ourselves want what’s good for us or what’s good for other people. We don’t get to choose the people we are.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“Because not all monsters were monsters in the beginning. Some are monsters born of sorrow.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises

“He’s twelve years old, and this summer he learns that people will always choose a simple lie over a complicated truth, because the lie has one unbeatable advantage: the truth always has to stick to what actually happened, whereas the lie just has to be easy to believe.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Unfairness is a far more natural state in the world than fairness.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Feelings are complicated. Actions are simple.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Exclusion is a form of exhaustion that eats its way into your skeleton.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Dennis the Peasant: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Arthur: Be quiet!
Dennis: You can't expect to wield supreme power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!”
― Graham Chapman, Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Book): Mønti Pythøn Ik Den Hølie Gräilen

“How do I know what I think until I see what I say?”
― E.M. Forster

“Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate.”
― E.M. Forster, A Passage to India

“A happy ending was imperative. I shouldn't have bothered to write otherwise. I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows, and in this sense, Maurice and Alec still roam the greenwood.”
― E.M. Forster, Maurice

“You can get all A's and still flunk life.”
― Walker Percy, The Second Coming

“There's things that happen in a person's life that are so scorched in the memory and burned into the heart that there's no forgetting them.”
― John Boyne

“Maybe there were no villains in my mother’s story at all. Just men and women, trying to do their best by each other. And failing.”
― John Boyne, The Heart's Invisible Furies

“...what matters in life is not whether we receive a round of applause; what matters is whether we have the courage to venture forth despite the uncertainty of acclaim.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“The past is never where you think you left it.”
― Katherine Anne Porter

“I am frightened of nothing."
"Nothing?"
"Nothing."
"Are you extremely frightened of nothing?"
"Absolutely terrified of it."
"I have nothing in my pockets. Would you like to see it?"
"No, I most definitely would not.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“People take on the shapes of the songs and the stories that surround them, especially if they don't have their own song.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide.”
― Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“To say she was bitter fell a wee bit short, like calling sulfuric acid tangy.”
― David Sosnowski, Happy Doomsday

“Most seemed to have been prepping for the Obama apocalypse, the one with FEMA storm trooping in, black helicopters dispatched by the first black president, come to seize their guns, hustling them off to camps where they’d be forced to read the Koran, eat kale, who knew what, while they waited to be dragged before death panels.”
― David Sosnowski, Happy Doomsday

“if you’re going to be degenerate, you might as well be a lady about it, don’t you think?”
― Armistead Maupin, Tales of the City

“Well … everything gets old after a while. I personally get a little sick of wrecking my liver at The Lion for the privilege of tricking with some guy whose lover is in L.A. for the weekend.”
― Armistead Maupin, Tales of the City

“All serious daring starts from within.”
― Eudora Welty, On Writing

“Telling a story is like reaching into a granary full of wheat and drawing out a handful. There is always more to tell than can be told.”
― Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow