Ben > Ben's Quotes

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain

“Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind.
"Pooh!" he whispered.
"Yes, Piglet?"
"Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. "I just wanted to be sure of you.”
― A.A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner

“There were no lions any more. There had been lions once. Sometimes in the shimmer of the heat on the plains the motion of their running still flickered on the dry wind — tawny, great, and quickly gone. Sometimes the honey-colored moon shivered to the silence of a ghost-roar on the rising air.”
― Russell Hoban, The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz

“For although this was a very heroic war, with a parade of every sort of high moral principle, and with the most sonorous language employed upon both sides, it somehow failed to bring about either the reformation or the ruin of humankind: and after the conclusion of the murdering and general breakage, the world went on pretty much as it has done after all other wars, with a vague notion that a deal of time and effort had been unprofitably invested, and a conviction that it would be inglorious to say so.”
― James Branch Cabell, Figures of Earth

“This is the circus of Dr. Lao.
We show you things that you don't know.
We tell you of places you'll never go.
We've searched the world both high and low
To capture the beasts for this marvelous show
From mountains where maddened winds did blow
To islands where zephyrs breathed sweet and low.
Oh, we've spared no pains and we've spared no dough;
And we've dug at the secrets of long ago;
And we've risen to Heaven and plunged Below,
For we wanted to make it one hell of a show.
And the things you'll see in your brains will glow
Long past the time when the winter snow
Has frozen the summer's furbelow.
For this is the circus of Dr. Lao.
And youth may come and age may go;
But no more circuses like this show!”
― Charles G. Finney, The Circus of Dr. Lao

“Current-borne, wave-flung, tugged hugely by the whole might of ocean, the jellyfish drifts in the tidal abyss. The light shines through it, and the dark enters it. Borne, flung, tugged from anywhere to anywhere, for in the deep sea there is no compass but nearer and farther, higher and lower, the jellyfish hangs and sways; pulses move slight and quick within it, as the vast diurnal pulses beat in the moondriven sea. Hanging, swaying, pulsing, the most vulnerable and insubstantial creature, it has for its defense the violence and power of the whole ocean, to which it has entrusted its being, its going, and its will.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

“Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

“Romance is the glamour which turns the dust of everyday life into a golden haze. ”
― Elinor Glyn

“& only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!
Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“La risa es una blasfemia anárquica. Los tiranos hacen bien en temerla.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“A book you finish reading is not the same book it was before you read it.”
― David Mitchell, Number9Dream

“Why fight the 'natural' (oh, weaselly word!) order of things? Why? Because of this--one fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itself. In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Give me a night by the fire, with a book in my hand, not that flickering rectangular son of a bitch that sits screaming in every living room in the land.”
― Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

“Quite possibly there's nothing as fine as a big freight train starting across country in early summer, Hardesty thought. That's when you learn that the tragedy of plants is that they have roots.”
― Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

“The hell of it is, I know the answer. The answer is that you never, ever, rely on another person for your peace of mind. If you do, you're screwed but good. Not right away, maybe, but sooner or later. You have to -- I don't know --you have to learn to live with yourself. You have to learn to turn back your own sheets and set a table for one without feeling pathetic. You have to be strong and confident and pleased with yourself and never give the slightest impression that you can't hack it without that certain goddamn someone. You have to fake the hell out of it.”
― Armistead Maupin, More Tales of the City

“How terrible to be alcoholic. You just want to quietly soothe and maybe poison yourself, but you end up poisoning those around you as well, like trying to commit suicide with a gas oven and unwittingly murdering your neighbors.”
― Jonathan Ames

“A circle looks at a square and sees a badly made circle.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Authority

“Where lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner I shall bring forth the seeds of the dead to share with the worms that gather in the darkness and surround the world with the power of their lives while from the dim-lit halls of other places forms that never could be writhe for the impatience of the few who have never seen or been seen. In the black water with the sun shining at midnight, those fruit shall come ripe and in the darkness of that which is golden shall split open to reveal the revelation of the fatal softness in the earth. The shadows of the abyss are like the petals of a monstrous flower that shall blossom within the skull and expand the mind beyond what any man can bear”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Authority

“I do not aim with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.
I aim with my eye.

I do not shoot with my hand; he who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.
I shoot with my mind.

I do not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father.
I kill with my heart.”
― Stephen King, The Gunslinger

“You put too much stock in human intelligence, it doesn't annihilate human nature.”
― Philip Roth, American Pastoral

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.”
― Henry David Thoreau