Susan > Susan's Quotes

“In my spare time I like to stare at shit. I mean, not literally. I like to stare at the TV, or the Internet, or a book, or cat videos. There’s a lot of sitting very still and not moving involved. I suspect in a former life I was probably a statue because I am profoundly good at it.”
― Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

“I'm a real self-educated kind of guy. I read voraciously. Every book I ever bought, I have. I can't throw it away. It's physically impossible to leave my hand! Some of them are in warehouses. I've got a library that I keep the ones I really really like. I look around my library some nights and I do these terrible things to myself--I count up the books and think, how long I might have to live and think, 'F@#%k, I can't read two-thirds of these books.' It overwhelms me with sadness."
--David Bowie, quoted in the Daily Beast in a 2002 interview with Bob Guccione, Jr.”
― David Bowie

“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
― Isaac Asimov

“It’s taboo in our society to discuss abortion on anything less than a political level, but I know the truth. Someone close to each and every one of us has had an abortion. The experience is common, but I do not believe it is taken lightly. Women who have exercised their right to choose never forget.”
― Susan Wicklund, This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“I don’t get the anti-slut-shaming movement. They’re like, “Don’t shame the sluts,” and I’m like, “You’re the one calling them sluts.” It’s like having a “Lay off the fatties” campaign.”
― Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

“Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.”
― Jane Smiley, Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel

“I’m always another half day behind in life.”
― Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

“If you're looking for sympathy you'll find it between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.”
― David Sedaris, Barrel Fever: Stories and Essays

“Have you ever been homesick for someplace that doesn’t actually exist anymore? Someplace that exists only in your mind?”
― Jenny Lawson

“Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.”
― Anna Quindlen

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
― Albert Einstein

“Children aren't coloring books. You don't get to fill them with your favorite colors.”
― Khaled Hosseini

“Schizoid behavior is a pretty common thing in children. It's accepted, because all we adults have this unspoken agreement that children are lunatics.”
― Stephen King

“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.”
― Robert Frost

“Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.”
― Emilie Buchwald

“Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.”
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

“Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard.”
― Anne Sexton

“I like you; your eyes are full of language."

[Letter to Anne Clarke, July 3, 1964.]”
― Anne Sexton

“The cultural insistence that parenting is the 'most important' job in the world is a smart way to satiate unappreciated women without doing a damn thing for them.”
― Jessica Valenti, Why Have Kids?: A New Mom Explores the Truth About Parenting and Happiness

“Love is not a because, it's a no matter what.”
― Jodi Picoult, Second Glance

“I simply don't think that putting every bit of energy I have into parenting-at the expense of my career, marriage and social life-will be the difference between Layla becoming homeless or the president. But too many women are made to believe that every tiny decision they make-from pacifiers to flash cards-will have a lasting impact on their child. It's a recipe for madness. It also reveals an overblown sense of self-importance.”
― Jessica Valenti, Why Have Kids?: A New Mom Explores the Truth About Parenting and Happiness

“Relief is a wonderful emotion, highly underrated. In fact, I prefer it to elation or joy. Relief lets the air out of the Tire of Pain.”
― Adriana Trigiani, Rococo

“Cram your head with characters and stories. Abuse your library privileges. Never stop looking at the world, and never stop reading to find out what sense other people have made of it. If people give you a hard time and tell you to get your nose out of a book, tell them you're working. Tell them it's research. Tell them to pipe down and leave you alone.”
― Jennifer Weiner

“Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won't have as much censorship because we won't have as much fear.”
― Judy Blume

“One of its ears stuck straight up, the other flopped as it ran, and I remembered something I'd read somewhere--that when God sees a dog he likes, He folds one of its ears down to remember it.”
― Jennifer Weiner, The Next Best Thing

“I think every person who is single should have a dog. I think the government should step in and intervene: If you're not married or coupled up, whether you've been dumped or divorced or widowed or whatever, they should require you to proceed immediately to the pound nearest you and select an animal companion.”
― Jennifer Weiner, Good in Bed

“Read everything. Read fiction and non-fiction, read hot best sellers and the classics you never got around to in college. ”
― Jennifer Weiner