Eric > Eric's Quotes

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

“When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

“Did you ever want to be a writer?” “No,” she said, and she would have told him. “I only wanted to be a reader.”
― Ann Patchett, Commonwealth

“But books, like people, die. They die in fires or floods or in the mouths of worms or at the whims of tyrants. If they are not safeguarded, they go out of the world. And when a book goes out of the world, the memory dies a second death.”
― Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land

“Sometimes the things we think are lost are only hidden, waiting to be rediscovered.”
― Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land

“The things that look fixed in the world, child—mountains, wealth, empires—their permanence is only an illusion. We believe they will last, but that is only because of the brevity of our own lives. From the perspective of God, cities like this come and go like anthills.”
― Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart.
...live in the question.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“In forty years of medical practice, I have found only two types of non-pharmaceutical ‘therapy’ to be vitally important for patients with chronic neurological diseases: music and gardens.”
― Oliver Sacks, Everything in Its Place: First Loves and Last Tales

“My father called swimming “the elixir of life,” and certainly it seemed to be so for him: he swam daily, slowing down only slightly with time, until the grand age of ninety-four. I hope I can follow him, and swim till I die.”
― Oliver Sacks, Everything in Its Place: First Loves and Last Tales

“He said that he had learned Transcendental Meditation as a way of dealing with otherwise uncontrollable ticcing in public places.“It’s just autohypnosis,” he explained. “You have a mantra, a little word or phrase repeating slowly in your mind, and you soon get into a sort of trance and become oblivious to everything. It calms me down.” He remained almost tic-free for the rest of the evening.”
― Oliver Sacks, Everything in Its Place: First Loves and Last Tales

“The hardest thing about writing is getting in every day, breaking through the membrane.The second-hardest thing is getting out. Sometimes I sink down too deep and come up too fast. Afterward I feel wide open and skinless. The whole world feels moist and pliable.”
― Lily King, Writers & Lovers

“It's a particular kind of pleasure, of intimacy, loving a book with someone.”
― Lily King, Writers & Lovers

“It’s a particular kind of pleasure, of intimacy, loving a book with someone.”
― Lily King, Writers & Lovers

“All problems with writing and performing come from fear. Fear of exposure, fear of weakness, fear of lack of talent, fear of looking like a fool for trying, for even thinking you could write in the first place. It's all fear. If we didn't have fear, imagine the creativity in the world. Fear holds us back every step of the way. A lot of studies say that despite all our fears in this country - death, war, guns, illness - our biggest fear is public speaking. What I am doing right now. And when people are asked to identify which kind of public speaking they are most afraid of, they check the improvisation box. So improvisation is the number-one fear in America. Forget a nuclear winter or an eight-point nine earthquake or another Hitler. It's improv. Which is funny, because aren't we just improvising all day long? Isn't our whole life just one long improvisation? What are we so scared of?”
― Lily King, Writers & Lovers

“It's always a choice between fireworks and coffee in bed,' Fabiana says. 'It always is.”
― Lily King, Writers & Lovers

“Fitzgerald said that the sign of genius is being able to hold two contradictory ideas in your head at the same time. But what if you hold two contradictory fears? Are you still some kind of a genius?”
― Lily King, Writers & Lovers

“I've forgotten what gets revealed right after you break up with someone.”
― Lily King, Writers & Lovers

“There’s a particular feeling in your body when something goes right after a long time of things going wrong. It feels warm and sweet and loose. I feel all that as I hold the phone and listen to Manolo talk about W-4s and the study hall schedule and my mailbox combination and faculty parking. For a moment all my bees have turned to honey.”
― Lily King, Writers & Lovers

“Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.”
― John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

“A guy needs somebody―to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he's with you. I tell ya, I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an' he gets sick.”
― John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

“But we are all mythologies, mysterious. We are all mysteries, is what I mean.

This may be the only thing in this world I know to be true.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“Grief is such a—oh, it is such a solitary thing; this is the terror of it, I think. It is like sliding down the outside of a really long glass building while nobody sees you.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

“People are lonely, is my point here. Many people can’t say to those they know well what it is they feel they might want to say.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!