John > John's Quotes

“Ever dumb thing I ever done in my life there was a decision I made before that got me into it. It was never the dumb thing. It was always some choice I'd made before it.”
― Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

“Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.”
― Anne Lamott

“Talking, talking. Spinning a web of words, pale walls of dreams, between myself and all I see.”
― John Gardner, Grendel

“...Don't rupture another's illusion unless you're positive the alternative you offer is more worthwhile than that from which you're wrenching them. Interrogate your solipsism: Does it offer any better a home than the delusions you're reaching to shatter?”
― Jonathan Lethem, Chronic City

“It was a rebus of heartbreak, misfortune a dog could parse.”
― Jonathan Lethem, Chronic City

“She knows, now, absolutely, hearing the white noise that is London, that Damien's theory of jet lag is correct: that her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can't move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.”
― William Gibson, Pattern Recognition

“Good writin' ain't necessarily good readin'.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“If I had known it was harmless I would have killed it myself.”
― Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly