Heather R > Heather R's Quotes

“there are so many happy endings that the man who believes there is no God needs his rationality called into serious question.”
― Stephen King, It

“A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.”
― Lewis Mumford

“The richness of the rain made me feel safe and protected; I have always considered the rain to be healing—a blanket—the comfort of a friend. Without at least some rain in any given day, or at least a cloud or two on the horizon, I feel overwhelmed by the information of sunlight and yearn for the vital, muffling gift of falling water.”
― Douglas Coupland, Life After God

“My mind then wandered. I thought of this: I thought of how every day each of us experiences a few little moments that have just a bit more resonance than other moments—we hear a word that sticks in our mind—or maybe we have a small experience that pulls us out of ourselves, if only briefly—we share a hotel elevator with a bride in her veils, say, or a stranger gives us a piece of bread to feed to the mallard ducks in the lagoon; a small child starts a conversation with us in a Dairy Queen—or we have an episode like the one I had with the M&M cars back at the Husky station.

And if we were to collect these small moments in a notebook and save them over a period of months we would see certain trends emerge from our collection—certain voices would emerge that have been trying to speak through us. We would realize that we have been having another life altogether; one we didn’t even know was going on inside us. And maybe this other life is more important than the one we think of as being real—this clunky day-to-day world of furniture and noise and metal. So just maybe it is these small silent moments which are the true story-making events of our lives.”
― Douglas Coupland, Life After God

“Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn--that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness--that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul”
― John Muir

“With few ambitions, most people allowed efficient machines to perform everyday tasks for them. Gradually, humans ceased to think, or dream... or truly live.”
― Brian Herbert, The Butlerian Jihad

“Fear was inevitable. We all made our choices, and we all suffered our consequences. We all felt fear. The trick was learning to live with that fear, to continue forward in spite of it.”
― Shelby Mahurin, Gods & Monsters

“The sea, the great unifier, is man’s only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning—we are all in the same boat.”
― Sally Hepworth, Uncharted Waters

“I suppose I do have one embarrassing passion- I want to know what it feels like to care about something passionately.”
― Susan Orlean, The Orchid Thief

“Sometimes I think I've figured out some order in the universe, but then I find myself in Florida”
― Susan Orlean, The Orchid Thief

“I think the real reason is that life has no meaning. I mean, no obvious meaning. You wake up, you go to work, you do stuff. I think everybody's always looking for something a little unusual that can preoccupy them and help pass the time.”
― Susan Orlean, The Orchid Thief

“The old orchid hunter lay back on his pillow, his body limp... 'You'll curse the insects,' he said at least, 'and you'll curse the natives... The sun will burn you by day and the cold will shrivel you by night. You'll be racked by fever and tormented by a hundred discomforts, but you'll go on. For when a man falls in love with orchids, he'll do anything to possess the one he wants. It's like chasing a green-eyed woman or taking cocaine... it's a sort of madness...”
― Susan Orlean, The Orchid Thief

“She was the still point in the turning world.”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides

“A man who plants a tree could never be called a pessimist.”
― Iain Cameron Williams, The KAHNS of Fifth Avenue