Bob > Bob's Quotes

“Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.”
― Wendell Berry

“Who are we but the stories we tell ourselves, about ourselves, and believe?”
― Scott Turow, Ordinary Heroes

“…God is a giant quiltmaker. With an infinite variety of designs. And the quilt is grown so big and confusing, the pattern is impossible to see, the squares and diamonds and triangles don’t fit well together anymore, it’s all become meaningless. So He has abandoned it.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
― H. Jackson Brown Jr., P.S. I Love You

“What sense did the world make? Where was God, the Bloody Fool? Did He have no notion of fair and unfair? Couldn't He read a simple balance sheet? He would have been sacked long ago if He were managing a corporation, the things he allowed to happen...”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“If you can read and have more imagination than a doorknob, what need do you have for a 'movie version' of a novel?”
― Wendell Berry, What Matters?: Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth

“Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.”
― Wendell Berry

“This massive ascendancy of corporate power over democratic process is probably the most ominous development since the end of World War II, and for the most part "the free world" seems to be regarding it as merely normal.”
― Wendell Berry, Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
― Edward Abbey

“As one who appreciated the tragic side of eating, it seemed to him that anything other than fruit for dessert implied a reprehensible frivolity, and cakes in particular ended up annihilating the flavour of quiet sadness that must be allowed to linger at the end of a great culinary performance.”
― Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, La soledad del manager

“We’ve built a world too complicated and dangerous for our quarrelsome natures to manage. In such hopelessness, the general vote will be for the supernatural. It’s dusk in the second Age of Reason. We were wonderful, but now we are doomed.”
― Ian McEwan, Nutshell

“You may never have experienced, or you will have forgotten, a good burgundy (her favourite) or a good Sancerre (also her favourite) decanted through a healthy placenta.”
― Ian McEwan, Nutshell

“Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves, Confucius said. Revenge unstitches civilisation.”
― Ian McEwan, Nutshell

“Pessimism is too easy, even delicious, the badge and plume of intellectuals everywhere. It absolves the thinking classes of solutions. We excite ourselves with dark thoughts in plays, poems, novels, movies.”
― Ian McEwan, Nutshell

“There are not many options for the evening that follows an afternoon of drinking. Only two in fact; remorse, or more drinking and then remorse.”
― Ian McEwan, Nutshell

“When love dies and marriage lies in ruins, the first casualty is honest memory, decent, impartial recall of the past. Too inconvenient, too damning of the present. It's the spectre of old happiness at the feast of failure and desolation. So, against that headwind of forgetfulness I want to place my little candle of truth and see how far it throws its light.”
― Ian McEwan, Nutshell

“Vilami na vode pisano, the future is written with a pitchfork on flowing water. No one knows what’s going to happen.”
― Jason Matthews, Palace of Treason

“Russians. They hate foreigners only a little less than they hate themselves, and they’re born conspirators. Oh, they know very well they’re superior, but your Russki is insecure, wants to be respected, to be feared like the old Soviet Union. They need recognition, and they hate their second-tier status in the superpower stakes. That’s why Putin’s putting together USSR 2.0, and no one is going to stand in his way.”
― Jason Matthews, Red Sparrow

“synesthete. Someone who perceives sounds, or letters, or numbers as colors.”
― Jason Matthews, Red Sparrow

“Perhaps I will have a bakery someday named Dominika’s, she thought. Idiot you don’t know how to bake.”
― Jason Matthews, The Kremlin's Candidate

“Every American is from somewhere else. Each is hated for what he brings that is different from the rest. We live in uneasy peace. But it is peace, for the most part. ”
― Scott Turow, Ordinary Heroes

“Q: Why write about slavery? Haven’t we had enough stories about slavery? Why do we need another one?

A: I could have written about upper middle class white people who feel sad sometimes, but there’s a lot of competition.”
― Colson Whitehead

“Happiness is not a goal...it's a by-product of a life well lived.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong it is until it's in hot water.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“When you're writing you're trying to find out something which you don't know.”
― James Baldwin

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
― Groucho Marx

“A house that does not have one worn, comfy chair in it is soulless.”
― May Sarton

“Do not deprive me of my age. I have earned it.”
― May Sarton, The Poet and the Donkey