Olena Yurchenko > Olena's Quotes

“When your enemy has you by the throat, you put your enmity on hold.”
― Steve Shahbazian, Green and Pleasant Land

“A strong friend can be more dangerous than a weak enemy.”
― Steve Shahbazian, Green and Pleasant Land

“When you’re swimming with the sharks, you can’t afford to be burdened with scruples.”
― Steve Shahbazian, Green and Pleasant Land

“Eventually she will die the way all old people in America die. . . from humiliation, incontinence, boredom and neglect.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“The world is run by cynics and abusers, Kelly and it’s a damn shame. I don’t know if there’s anything any of us can do. Fight it? How long you think people’ve been fighting these urges? This… human nature. The best thing any of us can do is take care of ourselves. God damned the future like he damned our childhoods.”
― Ian Kirkpatrick, Dead End Drive

“dreams don't reveal your hidden desires— if they
did, I'd never be allowed to dream. They don't reveal solutions to your
problems, and they don't foretell the future. They're just the fumes your
brain exhales as it digests the day's new memories and mulches them into
the old.”
― Raphael Carter, The Fortunate Fall

“Do you know what happens when you play a country song backwards? You get your wife back, your dog back and your job back.”
― Richard Belzer

“True cynics kill themselves. The rest are posers, trying to use clever sarcasm and snarky remarks to hide insecurity and the fear that if they put themselves out there, they will fail.”
― Jewel, Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story

“Has anybody ever told you you’re a remarkably cynical person?”
“I like to think of it as learning from experience.”
― Benedict Jacka, Taken

“Music — good music, great music — had a hard, irreducible purity to it. It might be bitter and despairing and pessimistic, but it could never be cynical. If music is tragic, those with asses’ ears accuse it of being cynical. But when a composer is bitter, or in despair, or pessimistic, that still means he believes in something.”
― Julian Barnes, The Noise of Time

“A cynic is just a wounded romantic.”
― Pamela Jaye Smith, The Power of the Dark Side: Creating Great Villains, Dangerous Situations, & Dramatic Conflict

“Love is just two people
Plastering perfect masks
On each others’ faces;
And it only lasts
Until the masks crack
And the fantasy ends.”
― Justin Wetch, Bending The Universe

“I even made myself a cup of chamomile tea, the nauseating sweet smell wafting up from my chipped coffee cup like a hot diaper. This was supposed to be relaxing?”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation

“As they talked, West reflected privately that he knew exactly why people confided in Tom Severin, who never muddled an issue with moralizing or judgements, and never tried to change your opinions or talk you out of wanting something. Severin was never shocked by anything. And although he could be frequently disloyal or dishonorable, he was never dishonest.
"I'll tell you what your problem is," Severin eventually said. "It's feelings."
West paused with a crystal glass of brandy close to his lips. "Do you mean that unlike you, I have them?"
"I have feelings too, but I never let them turn into obstacles. If I were in your situation, for example, I would marry the woman I wanted and not worry about what was best for her. And if the children you raise turn out badly, that's their business, isn't it? They'll decide for themselves whether or not they want to be good. Personally, I've always seen more advantage in being bad. Everyone knows the meek won't really inherit the earth. That's why I don't hire meek people."
"I hope you're never going to be a father," West said sincerely.
"Oh, I will," Severin said. "I have to leave my fortune to someone, after all. I'd rather it be my own offspring- it's the next best thing to leaving it to myself.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Devil's Daughter

“If anyone knows how fixed the Pulitzers are, it’s the editors at the Times. I was part of a New York Times team that won the Pulitzer for our coverage of global terrorism. I watched the Times rig them year after year. The Times gives a lot of money to the Columbia Journalism School, which oversees the Pulitzers. The committee in return showers the paper with Pulitzers. It may be better now. I don’t know. But when I was at the paper it was disgraceful. One year the Times war correspondent John Burns wasn’t on the short list. The editors had a fit. He not only magically appeared on a new short list but won. Most people don’t get awards because they’re great reporters, look at Thomas Friedman. They get awards because the establishment wants to validate them. I know who makes up these committees.”
― Chris Hedges, Unspeakable

“Today is the first day of the rest of your life! xoxo"

I had no idea what I'd said to inspire Reva to leave me such a patronizing note of encouragement. Maybe I'd made a pact with her in my blackout: "Let's be happy! Let's live every day like it's our last!" Barf. I got up and snatched the note off the fridge and crumpled it in my fist. That made me feel a little better.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation

“Rouvier was the Finance Minister; I knew him by sight, although I had not yet met him. He was not widely liked. Apart from the whiff of indecency that Lucien referred to, he was also rumoured to be less than straightforward in his dealings with his fellow men. To put it another way, he was devious even by the standards of politicians; a long and successful career awaited him.”
― Iain Pears

“Failure generates its own majesty. Defeat becomes a panoptic stain on the soul; it creates its own all-embracing pathos. Reverses engulf us in fleshy feelings of self-pity, sorrow, and apathy. Resounding setbacks might even be subtlety attractive because it means we can give up trying. It is tempting to accept defeat, surrender to our insecurities, and admit that because of failing to accomplish one particular goal that the best part of our life was wasted. Cynically writing ourselves off as a failure, we are free to capitulate to the emptiness of our lives.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“This was a different Sally than Jo had first been presented with: the one with the carefully pencilled lips and brows, the modern Marlene Dietrich. With her make-up on, Sally could pass for being still in her twenties, perhaps only a little older than Jo. At a generous guess, she was about five and a half feet tall—if you counted her customary six-inch heels. But now, without her make-up and stilettos, Sally looked small, thin-lipped, and cynical. Jo decided that she liked this Sally better.”
― Elle Wild, Strange Things Done

“The day might come when I had nothing but memories, and the choice of whether to indulge my romantic side and wallow in them, or my cynical side and reflect on the reliability.”
― Graeme Simsion, The Best of Adam Sharp

“Preferring the nausea of the path to its fated and certain ending.”
― Patrick Bryant, Hum A Radiant Sickness

“I’ll tell you a story. There was once a badly wounded man lying on the battle-field waiting for the surgeon to dress his wound, which was covered with flies. A lightly wounded comrade saw the flies and was going to drive them away. ‘Oh, no,’ cried the wounded man, ‘don’t do that! These flies are almost gorged with my blood now and aren’t hurting me nearly so much as they did at first: if you drive them away their place will be taken at once by hungrier ones, and that will be the end of me.”
― Robert Graves, I, Claudius