Sophie Kern > Sophie's Quotes

“Trees're always a relief, after people.”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”
― Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

“Sometimes not talking is effortless, and other times it’s more exhausting than lifting pianos.”
― Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata

“If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Essays, Letters and Miscellanies

“The music coming from inside sounded like robots fucking. And complaining about it. In rhythmic monotone. European robots.”
― Christopher Moore, You Suck: A Love Story

“I'm thinking of being a professional mourner. How hard can it be? Tear at your hair, sing a dirge or two, take the rest of the week off.”
― Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal

“Don't drive drunk. Ever. Don't shag anyone you don't like, or who doesn't like you. Get a look at how people live in a place where you don't. Suffering is over-rated, don't pursue it. Ask for help when you need it, don't when you don't, and learn to recognize the difference. Don't confuse movement and progress. Be kind. Be forgiving. Pay attention.”
― Christopher Moore

“Language always betrays us, tells the truth when we want to lie, and dissolves into formlessness when we would most like to be precise.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry

“...you are battered and bruised in the collisions between reminiscence and reality.”
― David Eagleman, Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives

“Love was not specified in the design of your brain; it is merely an endearing algorithm that freeloads on the leftover processing cycles.”
― David Eagleman, Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives

“Humans have discovered that they cannot stop Death, but at least they can spit in his drink.”
― David Eagleman, Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives

“Wasn't that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted”
― Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone

“You are an instrument of God. Don't leave the instrument sitting in its case, my son. Play! Leave no part of your instrument unexplored. Why settle for 'Three Blind Mice' when you can can play the 'Gloria'? No, not Bach's 'Gloria.' Yours! Your 'Gloria' lives within you. The greatest sin is not finding it, ignoring what God made possible in you.”
― Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone

“You know... no matter what you do, people are going to expect you to be someone you're not. But if you're clever and lucky and work your butt off, then you get to be surrounded by people who expect you to be the person you wish you were.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“A society that has to burn witches to hold itself together is a society that has already failed, and just doesn't know it yet.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“One you start gazing into the abyss of the far right, pretty soon it turns its gaze right back on you. And its gaze is a fearsome thing, a twisted thing, one full of boredom and anger that have calcified into hatred.”
― Talia Lavin, Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy

“Loretta said that, a couple months ago, Cindy asked her what assassination meant. She told her the truth, of course—that an assassination is when someone kills you to make a point. Which was correct enough, Stella supposed, but only if you were an important man. Important men became martyrs, unimportant ones victims. The important men were given televised funerals, public days of mourning. Their deaths inspired the creation of art and the destruction of cities. But unimportant men were killed to make the point that they were unimportant—that they were not even men—and the world continued on.”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half

“The will to be polite, to maintain civility and normalcy, is fearfully strong. I wonder sometimes how much evil is permitted to run unchecked simply because it would be rude to interrupt it.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Ten Thousand Doors of January

“Most people can't tell the difference between truthtelling and madness; try it sometime and you'll see what I mean.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Ten Thousand Doors of January

“Adventure works in any strand—it calls to those who care more for living than for their lives.”
― Amal El-Mohtar, This Is How You Lose the Time War

“I thot falling in love was a burden A kind of crowding on my landscape Love creates space, dummy Doesn’t take it up”
― Tommy Pico, Junk

“Surely Muse will want
to kiss me bc I appear
disinterested in kissing.
This is my technique.
Lol so far, so along. What
the hell do you expect?
Emotional transparency?
What kind of artless
simpleton says what they
truly feel?”
― Tommy Pico

“There is often no line between perfection and evil.”
― Ken Liu, The Grace of Kings

“Read a lot of books and try a lot of recipes," Jia said. "When you learn enough about the world, even a blade of grass can be a weapon.”
― Ken Liu, The Grace of Kings

“Politics were for those who had too much to eat.”
― Ken Liu, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

“Real magic can never be made by offering someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“Her voice left a flavor of honey and gunpowder on the air.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“We are our own dragons and our own heroes. We must rescue ourselves from ourselves.”
― Peter S. Beagle

“Men have to have heroes, but no man can ever be as big as the need, and so a legend grows around a grain of truth, like a pearl.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn