Michael > Michael's Quotes

“We can only feel sorry for ourselves when our misfortunes are still supportable. Once this limit is crossed, the only way to bear the unbearable is to laugh at it.”
― Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

“One's appreciation of meager comforts, it seems, depends on what misery one has gone through before getting them.”
― Alice Munro, Too Much Happiness: Stories

“I am careful never to talk about religion. Who am I to kick at people's crutches?”
― Yann Martel, The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios

“You could take the entirety of the common sense of humans and put it in the palm of your hand and still have room for your dick.”
― Anne Carson, Red Doc>

“What goes on inside isn't ever the same as what goes on outside.”
― Margaret Laurence, The Fire-Dwellers

“Who wants tea and sympathy? Let's have coffee and sex, Stacey, eh?”
― Margaret Laurence, The Fire-Dwellers

“Fake it, I scream at myself inside my head. You must remember how. Let's get this over with or you'll be here all night. Bestir yourself. Move your flesh around, breathe audibly. It's the least you can do.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“The most aggressive and therefore the most dangerous words in the languages of the world are to be found in the assertion I AM.”
― Donald Woods Winnicott, Home Is Where We Start from

“It would be nice if we were different people but we are not different people. We are ourselves and we are sure as hell not going to undergo some total transformation at this point.”
― Margaret Laurence, The Fire-Dwellers

“She was learning, quite late, what many people around her appeared to have known since childhood – that life can be perfectly satisfying without major achievements.”
― Alice Munro, Too Much Happiness: Stories

“I can't say it. Now, at last, it becomes impossible for me to mouth the words -- I'm fine. I won't say anything.”
― Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel

“To move to a new place -- that's the greatest excitement. For a while you believe you carry nothing with you -- all is canceled from before, or cauterized, and you begin again and nothing will go wrong this time.”
― Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel

“Adults can talk all they want about youth feeling invincible.”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“Dreaming and loving and screwing. None of these are identities. Maybe when other people look at us, but not to ourselves. We are so much more complicated than that.”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“We know that some of you are still scared. We know that some of you are still silent. Just because it's better now doesn't mean that it's always good.”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“Ignorance is not bliss. Bliss is knowing the full meaning of what you have been given.”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“They would be displeased to have anybody call them docile, yet in a way they are. They submit themselves to manly behaviour. They submit themselves to manly behaviour with all its risks and cruelties, its complicated burdens and deliberate frauds. Its rules, which in some cases you benefited from, as a woman, and then some that you didn't.”
― Alice Munro, Too Much Happiness: Stories

“She sits in her usual ample armchair, with piles of books and unopened magazines around her. She sips cautiously from the mug of weak herb tea which is now her substitute for coffee. At one time she thought that she could not live without coffee, but it turned out that it is really the warm large mug she wants in her hands, that is the aid to thought or whatever it is she practices through the procession of hours, or of days.”
― Alice Munro, Too Much Happiness: Stories

“Seeing someone read a book you love is seeing a book recommend a person.”
― Reddit user coolstoryreddit

“So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“We accept the love we think we deserve.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“He had never been able to understand the assumption of intimacy fans felt with those they had never met.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Cuckoo's Calling

“People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“It’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“There are just some kind of men who-who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Love is so painful, how could you ever wish it on anybody? And love is so essential, how could you ever stand in its way?”
― David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

“It's both possible, and even necessary, to simultaneously enjoy media while also being critical of its more problematic or pernicious aspects.”
― Anita Sarkeesian

“When someone is crying, of course, the noble thing to do is to comfort them. But if someone is trying to hide their tears, it may also be noble to pretend you do not notice them.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

“The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel