Mark Young > Mark's Quotes

“Life is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal.”
― Neil Gaiman

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“Everyone has to scratch on walls somewhere or they go crazy”
― Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“My religious convictions and scientific views cannot at present be more specifically defined than as those of a believer in creative evolution. I desire that no public monument or work of art or inscription or sermon or ritual service commemorating me shall suggest that I accepted the tenets peculiar to any established church or denomination nor take the form of a cross or any other instrument of torture or symbol of blood sacrifice.

[From the will of GBS]”
― George Bernard Shaw

“The first draft of anything is shit.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“You know you can set fire to the capacity to say.”
― Neil Gaiman, Signal to Noise

“We humans are naturally disposed to worship gods and heroes, to build our pantheons and valhallas. I would rather see that impulse directed into the adoration of daft singers, thicko footballers and air-headed screen actors than into the veneration of dogmatic zealots, fanatical preachers, militant politicians and rabid cultural commentators.”
― Stephen Fry, The Fry Chronicles

“If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
― Stephen King

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.”
― Bernard M. Baruch

“When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called a Religion.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

“Actually, the Burmese don't refer to her by name. They just call her "The Lady." It's like Voldemort in Harry Potter, "He Who Must Not Be Named.”
― Guy Delisle, Burma Chronicles

“The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals.”
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.”
― Harlan Ellison

“If you can't say anything nice about anyone else, come sit next to me.”
― Gertrude Stein

“Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else? If contributing to the suffering of billions of animals that live miserable lives and (quite often) die in horrific ways isn't motivating, what would be? If being the number one contributor to the most serious threat facing the planet (global warming) isn't enough, what is? And if you are tempted to put off these questions of conscience, to say not now, then when?”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals

“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
― Mark Twain

“I like a woman with a head on her shoulders. I hate necks.”
― Steve Martin

“If you're a writer, reading is part of your job description.”
― Mark Rubinstein

“I like grit, I like love and death, I'm tired of irony.”
― Jim Harrison

“Quote taken from Chapter 1 of The Corpse Wore Gingham:

"You love to figure out things as much as I do,” Piper said.

“Like what?” Bill asked.

“You fix broken stuff,” Piper replied.

“Repairing a broken toaster or steam iron is far different than unraveling a murder mystery," Bill said.”
― Ed Lynskey, The Corpse Wore Gingham

“I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“You're so beautiful," said Alice. "I'm afraid of looking at you and not knowing who you are."
"I think that even if you don't know who I am someday, you'll still know that I love you."
"What if I see you, and I don't know that you're my daughter, and I don't know that you love me?"
"Then, I'll tell you that I do, and you'll believe me.”
― Lisa Genova, Still Alice

“You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn

“The aim of the Internet and its associated technologies was to “liberate” humanity from the tasks—making things, learning things, remembering things—that had previously given meaning to life and thus had constituted life. Now it seemed as if the only task that meant anything was search-engine optimization.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Purity

“Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like.”
― Lemony Snicket

“Men of few words are the best men."

(3.2.41)”
― William Shakespeare, Henry V

“Nice customs curtsy to great kings.”
― William Shakespeare, Henry V

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!”
― William Shakespeare, Henry V

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest