Ryan > Ryan's Quotes

“Every rock or molotov cocktail thrown should make a very obvious political point. Random violence produces random propaganda results. Why waste even a rock?”
― Abbie Hoffman, Steal This Book

“There was a time in my demented youth
When somehow I suspected that the truth
About survival after death was known
To every human being: I alone
Knew nothing, and a great conspiracy
Of books and people hid the truth from me.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire

“Don't start an argument with somebody who has a microphone when you don't. They'll make you look like chopped liver.”
― Harlan Ellison

“Men who leave their mark on the world are very often those who, being gifted and full of nervous power, are at the same time haunted and driven by a dominant idea, and are therefore within a measurable distance of insanity.”
― Francis Galton

“We live in an age in which there is no heroic death.”
― Yukio Mishima

“Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you – as if you haven't been told a million times already – that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching. ”
― Harlan Ellison

“It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.”
― Robert E. Lee

“Smoking dope and hanging up Che's picture is no more a
commitment than drinking milk and collecting postage stamps.”
― Abbie Hoffman, Steal This Book

“The intercom buzzes while you're changing your shirt. You push the Talk button: "Who is it?" "Narcotics squad. We're soliciting donations for children all over the world who have no drugs.”
― Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City

“Matt would stare at Andrew for 10 minutes. It's depressing that people are different. Everyone should be one person, who should then kill itself in hand-to-hand combat.”
― Tao Lin

“Too weird to live, too rare to die!”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

“The correct arrangement of words will make these bad feelings go away tonight.”
― Tao Lin

“Exercising the right of occasional suppression and slight modification, it is truly absurd to see how plastic a limited number of observations become, in the hands of men with preconceived ideas.”
― Francis Galton

“Can it be that I have not lived as one ought?" suddenly came into his head. "But how not so, when I've done everything as it should be done?”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych

“Hep is a very dangerous disease that can cause a number of permanent conditions, including death, which is extremely permanent.”
― Abbie Hoffman, Steal This Book

“What do you do?' she asks, holding out the vest.
'What do you do?'
'What do you do?' she asks, her voice shaking. 'Don't ask me, please. Okay, Clay?'
'Why not?'
She sits on the mattress after I get up. Muriel screams.
'Because... I don't know,' she sighs.
I look at her and don't feel anything and walk out with my vest.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Less Than Zero

“that was bad; i shouldn't have done that

to prevent you from entering a catatonic state
i am going to maintain a calm facial expression
with crinkly eyes and an overall friendly demeanor
i believe in a human being that is not upset
i believe if you are working i should not be insane
or upset--why am i ever insane or upset and not working?
i vacuumed the entire house this morning
i cleaned the kitchen and the computer room
and i made you a meat helmet with computer paper
the opportunity for change exists in each moment, all moments are alone
and separate from other moments, and there are a limited number of moments
and the idea of change is a delusion of positive or negative thinking
your hands are covering your face
and your body moves like a statue
when i try to manipulate an appendage
if i could just get you to cry tears of joy one more time”
― Tao Lin, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

“You were one person alive and your brain was encased in a skull. There were other people out there. It took effort to be connected.”
― Tao Lin, Bed

“I don't mind you thinking I'm stupid, but don't talk to me like I'm stupid”
― Harlan Ellison

“I will use big words from time to time, the meanings of which I may only vaguely perceive, in hopes such cupidity will send you scampering to your dictionary: I will call such behavior 'public service'.”
― Harlan Ellison

“A little bit of this town goes a very long way. After five days in Vegas you feel like you've been here for five years.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

“On average, since the urge to kill myself isn't so strong that I actually kill myself, the world is worth living in.”
― Tao Lin, Taipei

“Moose had no friends that year. A lot of the time a moose would feel tired and lean against other moose. Only there wouldn't be moose there and the moose would fall.”
― Tao Lin, Eeeee Eee Eeee

“They won't let me ... I can't be ... good!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead

“Do you sometimes look up from the computer and look around the room and know you are alone, I mean really know it, then feel scared ?”
― Tao Lin, Shoplifting from American Apparel

“I agreed. By this time the drink was beginning to cut the acid and my hallucinations were down to a tolerable level. The room service waiter had a vaguely reptilian cast to his features, but I was no longer seeing huge pterodactyls lumbering around the corridors in pools of fresh blood. The only problem now was a gigantic neon sign outside the window, blocking our view of the mountains -- millions of colored balls running around a very complicated track, strange symbols & filigree, giving off a loud hum....

"Look outside," I said.

"Why?"

"There's a big ... machine in the sky, ... some kind of electric snake ... coming straight at us."

"Shoot it," said my attorney.

"Not yet," I said. "I want to study its habits.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

“He wanted to hide by shrinking past zero, through the dot at the end of himself, to a negative size, into an otherworld, where he would find a place— in an enormous city, too large to know itself, or some slowly developing suburb— to be alone and carefully build a life in which he might be able to begin, at some point, to think about what to do about himself.”
― Tao Lin, Taipei

“Gradually the awful truth dawns on you: that Santa Claus was just the tip of the iceberg - that your future will not be the rollercoaster ride you'd imagined, that the world occupied by your parents, the world of washing the dishes, going to the dentist, weekend trips to the DIY superstore to buy floor tiles, is actually largely what people mean when they speak of 'life'.”
― Paul Murray, Skippy Dies

“When I'm talking to someone I think 'can I use this dialogue in a book,'" said Luis. "If the answer is no I try talking to someone else.”
― Tao Lin, Shoplifting from American Apparel

“Ignoring is what you are supposed to do with bullies, so they get bored and leave you alone. But the problem in school is that they don't get bored, because whatever else there is to do is more boring still.”
― Paul Murray, Skippy Dies