Constance > Constance's Quotes

“In my head, I was getting 'gangsta,' which I've always felt showed greater intent than getting 'gangster' in that it expresses a willful unlawfulness even upon its own linguistic representation.”
― Mat Johnson, Pym

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.”
― David Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

“If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.”
― David Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

“You were young, I thought, not once but always before, always always, every day before the day just passed. You were young only minutes ago.”
― Timothy Schaffert, The Coffins of Little Hope

“I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“I don't think murder is an appropriate reaction to disappointment.”
― Vera Brosgol, Anya's Ghost

“Honesty is the most beautiful gift a person can give to another at the beginning of a friendship.”
― Kai Meyer

“Despite my ghoulish reputation, I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk.”
― Robert Bloch

“The worst mistake you can make, Kroeber taught, is to see another person through the lens of your prejudices. The second worst mistake is to think you aren't looking through the lens of your prejudices.”
― Paul La Farge, The Night Ocean

“Scratch a professor and you find a paranoiac, Barlow thought. But scratch a dean and you find a con artist.”
― Paul La Farge, The Night Ocean

“The American id could not be educated, Spinks thought. It needed horror in order to stay awake and to justify its most pleasureful pursuit, the destruction of helpless people who had never done anything wrong.”
― Paul La Farge, The Night Ocean

“The paradox of anthropology: to see something, you had to be outside of it, but when you were outside of it, you couldn't see it for what it was.”
― Paul La Farge, The Night Ocean

“They say it's good to let your grudges go, but I don't know, I'm quite fond of my grudge. I tend it like a little pet.”
― Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies

“You shouldn't only be nice to nice people.”
― Liane Moriarty, Truly Madly Guilty

“I'm any face in a crowd; just the Lord's way of filling in the gaps.”
― Stuart Turton, The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

“Tomorrow can be whatever I want it to be, which means for the first time in decades, I can look forward to it. Instead of being something to fear, it can be a promise I make myself. A chance to be braver or kinder, to make what was wrong right. To be better than I am today.
Every day after this one is a gift.”
― Stuart Turton

“Life renewed itself, over and over, without sympathy.”
― Emma Stonex, The Lamplighters

“It’s the small things that keep a marriage going: things that don’t cost a lot but that tell the other person you love them and don’t ask for anything in return.”
― Emma Stonex, The Lamplighters

“Nothing changed, in the aftermath of loss. Songs kept getting written. Books kept getting read. Wars didn't stop....Life renewed itself, over and over, without sympathy. Time surged on in its usual rhythms, those comings and goings, beginnings and ends, sensible progressions that fixed things in place, without a thought to the whistling in the woods on the outskirts of town....”
― Emma Stonex, The Lamplighters

“In all my years I've realized there are two kinds of people. The ones who hear a creak in a dark, lonely house, and shut the windows because it must have been the wind. And the ones who hear a creak in a dark, lonely house, light a candle, and go to take a look.

[Helen Black]”
― Emma Stonex, The Lamplighters

“I'm talking about the rest of it too. You know. The rest. Why we do it. Why we strike a match. Why we built any lighthouses in the first place and every other thing you think on a good day might save a life. We're not the ones who decide, but we wouldn't be human if we didn't set these attempts in place. Put in as many lights as we can, while we're here. Get them shining bright. Keep them shining when the dark comes in.”
― Emma Stonex, The Lamplighters