Eric > Eric's Quotes

“I may be the wrong person for my life.”
― Thomas McGuane

“An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.”
― Charles Bukowski

“What's friendship's realest measure?
I'll tell you. The amount of precious time you'll squander on someone else's calamities and fuck-ups.”
― Richard Ford

“Find what causes a commotion in your heart. Find a way to write about that”
― Richard Ford

“Tweet, tweet, you're alive, you ignorant asshole.”
― Richard Ford

“You're only good if you can do bad and decide not to.”
― Richard Ford, Canada

“Humor is what happens when we're told the truth quicker and more directly than we're used to.”
― George Saunders, The Braindead Megaphone

“I don't think much new ever happens. Most of us spend our days the same way people spent their days in the year 1000: walking around smiling, trying to earn enough to eat, while neurotically doing these little self-proofs in our head about how much better we are than these other slobs, while simultaneously, in another part of our brain, secretly feeling woefully inadequate to these smarter, more beautiful people.”
― George Saunders

“My heart goes out to him. Sort of. Because empathy depends on how you've spent your day.”
― George Saunders, The Braindead Megaphone

“Huck [Finn] and Tom [Sawyer] represent two viable models of the American Character. They exist side by side in every American and every American action. America is, and always has been, undecided about whether it will be the United States of Tom or the United States of Huck. The United States of Tom looks at misery and says: Hey, I didn't do it. It looks at inequity and says: All my life I have busted my butt to get where I am, so don't come crying to me. Tom likes kings, codified nobility, unquestioned privilege. Huck likes people, fair play, spreading the truck around. Whereas Tom knows, Huck wonders. Whereas Huck hopes, Tom presumes. Whereas Huck cares, Tom denies. These two parts of the American Psyche have been at war since the beginning of the nation, and come to think of it, these two parts of the World Psyche have been at war since the beginning of the world, and the hope of the nation and of the world is to embrace the Huck part and send the Tom part back up the river, where it belongs.”
― George Saunders, The Braindead Megaphone

“I haven't learned yet to be the instrument of unconscious good.”
― Ferrol Sams, The Whisper of the River

“...but I could not sleep without proper covering and spent the rest of the night rewriting lost arguments from my past, altering history so that I emerged victorious.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“Here is another miserable mental image I will have to catalog and make room for.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“He only wished to fight and cultivate an anger toward me, thus alleviating his guilt, but I would not abet him in this.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“You are afraid of hell. But that’s all religion is, really. Fear of a place we’d rather not be, and where there’s no such a thing as suicide to steal us away.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“I do not know what it was about that boy but just looking at him, even I wanted to clout him on the head. It was a head that invited violence.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without expectations of rewards or punishments after I am dead.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“He was going to live forever, or die in the attempt.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.”
― Joseph Heller

“...[A]nything worth dying for ... is certainly worth living for.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“[They] agreed that it was neither possible nor necessary to educate people who never questioned anything.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“Every writer I know has trouble writing. ”
― Joseph Heller

“The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likable. In three days no one could stand him.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“There is no disappointment so numbing...as someone no better than you achieving more.”
― Joseph Heller

“mankind is resilient: the atrocities that horrified us a week ago become acceptable tomorrow.”
― Joseph Heller

“Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian's fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22