Bob > Bob's Quotes

“There are plenty of people, in need of our attention, who have very little with which to repay us. But I feel that we are well within our rights if we cultivate the acquaintance of persons whom we have discovered to be in possession of specialized talents in the field of character-building. One such acquaintance may serve as a stimulant to us; another a sedative. One man laughs his fears and frets away and another growls at them. It is fortunate for us if we can recognize the exact effect that other people have on us. Then we know when to seek or avoid them.”
― Lloyd C. Douglas

“[A] pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant.”
― Rex Stout, Fer-de-Lance

“They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.”
― Tom Bodett

“It's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party.”
― Nick Hornby

“The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.”
― Ernest Hemingway, Men Without Women

“But luxury has never appealed to me, I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands.”
― Daphne du Maurier

“Sometimes books don't find us until the right time.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“They had only ever discussed books but what, in this life, is more personal than books?”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“Someday, you may think of marrying. Pick someone who thinks you're the only person in the room.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“The words you can't find, you borrow.
We read to know we're not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“A question I've thought about a great deal is why it is so much easier to write about the things we dislike/hate/acknowledge to be flawed than the things we love.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“The difficulty of living alone is that any mess he makes he is forced to clean up himself.

No, the real difficulty of living alone is that no one cares if you are upset.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“A.J. nods out of politeness, but he doesn’t believe in random acts. He is a reader, and what he believes in is narrative construction. If a gun appears in act one, that gun had better go off by act three.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry