Matt Gile > Matt's Quotes

“Fiction’s about what it is to be a fucking human being.”
― David Foster Wallace

“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata

“To enter into your own mind you need to be armed to the teeth.”
― Paul Valery

“Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“When smashing monuments, save the pedestals. They always come in handy.”
― Stanislaw Lem

“Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

“All we can ever know about are the portraits of each other inside our own skulls.”
― Greg Egan, Axiomatic

“A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.”
― William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

“Romance takes place in the middle distance. Romance is looking in at yourself through a window clouded with dew. Romance means leaving things out: where life grunts and shuffles, romance only sighs.”
― Margaret Atwood

“Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Conquering the Galaxy is what bacteria with spaceships would do – knowing no better, having no choice.”
― Greg Egan

“Nothing is more natural than mutual misunderstanding; the contrary is always surprising. I believe that one never agrees on anything except by mistake, and that all harmony among human beings is the happy fruit of an error.”
― Paul Valery, The Art of Poetry

“The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“Death never gave meaning to life: it was always the other way round.”
― Greg Egan, Oceanic

“Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“When does a fake Mohawk become a real Mohawk? Who decides? How do you know if it's happened?”
― Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

“Poems are never finished - just abandoned”
― Paul Valery

“Kathy was a Republican, one of those people who used the unforgivable phrase "meant to be"--usually when describing her own good fortune or the disasters that had befallen other people.”
― Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

“Power without abuse loses its charm.”
― Paul Valery

“Politics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves with what is their own business.”
― Paul Valery

“Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.”
― David Foster Wallace

“There is no theory that is not a fragment, carefully prepared, of some autobiography.”
― Paul Valery

“You are in love with intelligence, until it frightens you. For your ideas are terrifying and your hearts are faint. Your acts of pity and cruelty are absurd, committed with no calm, as if they were irresistible. Finally, you fear blood more and more. Blood and time.”
― Paul Valéry, Selected Writings

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“These days I just can't seem to say what I mean [...]. I just can't. Every time I try to say something, it misses the point. Either that or I end up saying the opposite of what I mean. The more I try to get it right the more mixed up it gets. Sometimes I can't even remember what I was trying to say in the first place. It's like my body's split in two and one of me is chasing the other me around a big pillar. We're running circles around it. The other me has the right words, but I can never catch her.”
― Haruki Murakami, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 24 Stories