Nathan > Nathan's Quotes

“All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.”
― Aristotle

“The greatest enemy of clear language is insincerity.”
― George Orwell

“those who have endured some misfortune will always be set apart but that it is just that misfortune which is their gift and which is their strength and that they must make their way back into the common enterprise of man for without they do so it cannot go forward and they themselves will wither in bitterness”
― Cormac McCarthy

“Time has its revenges, but revenge seems so often sour. Wouldn’t we all do better not trying to understand, accepting the fact that no human being will ever understand another, not a wife with a husband, nor a parent a child? Perhaps that’s why men have invented God – a being capable of understanding. ”
― Graham Greene, The Quiet American

“There is one thing Margaret Thatcher said that I agree with: if you have to tell people you're important, you're not.”
― Nicola Griffith, The Blue Place

“She’d been unable to forgive her for soaring alone over a boundary she herself could never bring herself to cross, unable to forgive that magnificent irresponsibility that had enabled Yeong-hye to shuck off social constraints and leave her behind, still a prisoner. And before Yeong-hye had broken those bars, she’d never even known they were there.”
― Han Kang, The Vegetarian

“All love stories,” Maya’s father had told her many years ago, “end in tragedy.” Maya had shaken her head and said, “God, Dad, that’s grim.” “Yes, but think about it: You either fall out of love, or, if you’re really one of the lucky ones, you live long enough to watch your soul mate die.”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once

“Things can always be said later, but things can never be unheard.”
― Harlan Coben, Fool Me Once

“Every classroom is equipped with computers at every single seat, something the school brags about in all the marketing materials sent to parents: Wired campus! Preparing students for the twenty-first century! But it seems to Samuel that all the school is preparing them for is to sit quietly and fake that they’re working.”
― Nathan Hill, The Nix

“Everyone loves a prodigy,” his mother said, herself also standing and clapping. “Prodigies get us off the hook for living ordinary lives. We can tell ourselves we’re not special because we weren’t born with it, which is a great excuse.”
― Nathan Hill, The Nix

“It’s like when you’re at the dentist and they give you some really serious painkillers. You feel fine, but you’re pretty sure underneath it all you still hurt. The hurt is simply not registering. That’s how life has felt.”
― Nathan Hill, The Nix

“about eighty percent of what you believe about yourself when you’re twenty turns out to be wrong. The problem is you don’t know what your small true part is until much later.”
― Nathan Hill, The Nix

“It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises