Sarah > Sarah's Quotes

“He tried to think of all the people in his life as chemicals, the uncertainty of mixing them together, the potential for explosions and scarring.”
― Kevin Wilson, The Family Fang

“I'd never really found a place in the outside world, but had stayed away too long to fit in at home.”
― Chris Offutt, The Same River Twice: A Memoir

“For all the pain you suffered, my mama. For all the torment of your past and future years, my mama. For all the anguish this picture of pain will cause you. For the unspeakable mystery that brings good fathers and sons into the world and lets a mother watch them tear at each other’s throats. For the Master of the Universe, whose suffering world I do not comprehend. For dreams of horror, for nights of waiting, for memories of death, for the love I have for you, for all the things I remember, and for all the things I should remember but have forgotten, for all these I created this painting—an observant Jew working on a crucifixion because there was no aesthetic mold in his own religious tradition into which he could pour a painting of ultimate anguish and torment.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“Men were doomed to repeat the sins of not only their fathers, but all their ancient forbears on back to Cain. That was the true mark upon man, scripted in his very blood.”
― Charles Dodd White, Lambs of Men

“It is always worth itemising happiness, there is so much of the other thing in a life, you had better put down the markers for happiness while you can.”
― Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture

“Of all the paths in life you take, make sure a few of them are dirt”
― John Muir

“Come to the woods, for here is rest, ...climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.”
― John Muir

“The mountains are calling and I must go.”
― John Muir

“This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.”
― John Muir, John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir

“I do what I do without hope of reward or fear of punishment. I do not require Heaven or Hell to bribe or scare me into acting decently.”
― Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow

“You know what? I really resent the idea that the only reason someone might be good or moral is because they're religious. I do what I do," Anne said, biting off each word, "without hope of reward or fear of punishment. I do not require heaven or hell to bribe or scare me into acting decently, thank you very much.”
― Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow

“I know I don't need him, but I think I want him.”
― Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain

“Ada wondered about his hundreds of tunes. Where were they now and where might they go if he died.”
― Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain

“Yet they also had loved life. They had loved it the more, John would tell her, because it was fugitive; they had loved it for the sake of the surprise, the danger, the brittleness of the moment.”
― Ellen Glasgow, Vein of Iron

“In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.”
― Carl Sagan

“You don’t have a soul, Doctor. You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily.”
― Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

“[...] I finally understood that death and numbers don't cohere. Everyone is 'one.' An accident report might say that nine died, four of them in their teens, but each death was 'one.' Each of six million Jews was 'one.' With death it is a series of 'ones.”
― Jim Harrison, Returning to Earth

“Beware O wanderer, the road is walking too.”
― Jim Harrison

“Rumi advised me to keep my spirit

up in the branches of a tree and not peek

out too far, so I keep mine in the very tall

willows along the irrigation ditch out back”
― Jim Harrison, Dead Man's Float

“So much death and no coffee to be had.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Woe to Live On

“This new spot for life might be but a short journey as a winged creature covers it, that is often said, but, oh, Lord, as you know, I had not the wings, and it is a hot, hard ride by road.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Woe to Live On

“What is it the wind has lost that she keeps looking for under each leaf?”
― Jim Harrison, Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry

“Treasure what you find already in your pocket, friend.”
― Jim Harrison, Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”
― Viktor E. Frankl

“Men are what they are because of what they do. Not what they say.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“Do you think sixty-five-year-old women don’t go to war? We are always at war. Our husbands spent their lives in comfortable chairs. Have we ever sat in comfortable chairs? No. Yoga balls, haunches tensed.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, The Mere Wife

“He felt no regrets as the work of a lifetime was swept away. He had labored to take man to the stars, and, in the moment of success, the stars—the aloof, indifferent stars—had come to him.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood's End

“Two ends of the spectrum, the haves and have-nots, whether it be faith or money or tolerance.”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man