Benji Carr > Benji's Quotes

“Find out who you are and do it on purpose.”
― Dolly Parton

“We need to make books cool again. If you go home with somebody and they don't have books, don't fuck them.”
― John Waters

“One thing you who had secure or happy childhoods should understand about those of us who did not. We who control our feelings, who avoid conflicts at all costs, or seem to seek them. Who are hypersensitive, self-critical, compulsive, workaholic, and above all survivors. We are not that way from perversity, and we cannot just relax and let it go. We’ve learned to cope in ways you never had to.”
― Piers Anthony

“Heterosexuality is not normal, it's just common.”
― Dorothy Parker

“But then July accepted it and never scolded back, so perhaps that was the way of the world: women scolded, and men kept quiet and stayed out of the way as much as possible.”
― Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove

“Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”
― Mark Twain

“You can’t make a race horse of a pig.” “No,” said Samuel, “but you can make a very fast pig.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Hear “You are boring” as distant white laundry flapping in the breeze. Eventually”
― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“He stared between his knees at the floor. “No,” he said, “that’s not my right. Nobody has the right to remove any single experience from another. Life and death are promised. We have a right to pain.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“How can you get your finger on it, feel that life beating? It was more a torment than a comfort to think about this, because I couldn’t get hold of it at all. I”
― Alice Munro, Selected Stories

“Since you have no choice but to begin in uncertainty, you must learn to tolerate uncertainty and, if possible, to turn it into excitement.”
― Stephen Koch, The Modern Library Writer's Workshop: A Guide to the Craft of Fiction

“Use every mistake. The inarticulate parts point to where you must make the words say exactly what you mean. The ragged parts point to what you must polish. The gaping holes tell you what has to be filled. The dull parts tell you unfailingly what must be cut. The blank spots show exactly what you must go out and find. These are infallible guides, and though they talk tough, they are your friends.”
― Stephen Koch, The Modern Library Writer's Workshop: A Guide to the Craft of Fiction

“Cultivate whatever serves your persistence.”
― Stephen Koch, The Modern Library Writer's Workshop: A Guide to the Craft of Fiction

“You’d be amazed by what people will do. Things they’d never admit to anyone—not even to themselves.”
― Darcey Bell, A Simple Favor

“Stan, sitting beside Zeena, tried to concentrate on the words and guess what the reverend was going to say next. Anything to keep from thinking. It’s not my fault he’s dead. I didn’t mean to kill him. I killed him. There it starts again and all day I wasn’t feeling anything and I thought I’d lost it.”
― William Lindsay Gresham, Nightmare Alley

“There’s only one question to resolve. I’m scared. I feel a little crazy. I’m not lucid. The assumptions are right. I can feel my fear growing. Now is the time for the answer. Just one question. One question to answer.”
― Iain Reid, I'm Thinking of Ending Things

“I’m glad we don’t know everything.” “You’re glad?” “That we don’t know all the answers, that we can’t explain it all, like space. Maybe we’re not supposed to know all the answers. Questions are good. They’re better than answers. If you want to know more about life, how we work, how we progress, it’s questions that are important. That’s what pushes and stretches our intellect. I think questions make us feel less lonely and more connected. It’s not always about knowing. I appreciate not knowing. Not knowing is human. That’s how it should be, like space. It’s unsolvable, and it’s dark,” I say, “but not entirely.”
― Iain Reid, I'm Thinking of Ending Things

“A memory is its own thing each time it’s recalled. It’s not absolute. Stories based on actual events often share more with fiction than fact. Both fictions and memories are recalled and retold. They’re both forms of stories. Stories are the way we learn. Stories are how we understand each other. But reality happens only once.”
― Iain Reid, I'm Thinking of Ending Things

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you’re dead.”
― Tom Stoppard, The Real Thing

“The musical I’ll Do Anything has never been seen by the general public, but I was lucky enough to have a My Year Of Flops operative send me a bootleg DVD of the aborted version for use in this book. I watched the film as test audiences saw it, as a rough assemblage of scenes instead of a polished, finished movie.”
― Nathan Rabin, My Year of Flops: The A.V. Club Presents One Man's Journey Deep into the Heart of Cinematic Failure

“My life now, my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only not meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which it is in my power to put into it!”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Friendship, companionship: it so often defied logic, so often eluded the deserving, so often settled itself on the odd, the bad, the peculiar, the damaged.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Of course, if you’ve made up your mind about it, you’ll find an answer to everything.”
― Agatha Christie, A Murder Is Announced

“I shall not tell you anything at all. Why should I? You are all alike. You persecute and despise poor refugees.”
― Agatha Christie, A Murder Is Announced

“(The main advantage of books over life is that they can be redrafted and redrafted, whereas life, alas, is always a first draft.)”
― Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

“I hope you don’t mind tea in mugs,’ she said, coming in with a tray. ‘I told you I was a slut.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women