Maren Hald Bjørgum > Maren's Quotes

“But people do things to survive, and then after they survive, they can't live with what they've done.”
― Adam Johnson, The Orphan Master's Son

“The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true.”
― Alain de Botton, Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion

“One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.”
― Luciano Pavarotti

“If Korea were a person, it would be diagnosed as a neurotic, with both an inferiority and a superiority complex.”
― Euny Hong, The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

“In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed.”
― Edgar Allen Poe

“But we would do well to meditate daily, rather as the religious do on their God, on the 9.5 trillion kilometres which comprise a single light year, or perhaps on the luminosity of the largest known star in our galaxy, Eta Carinae, 7,500 light years distant, 400 times the size of the sun and 4 million times as bright. We should punctuate our calendars with celebrations in honour of VY Canis Majoris, a red hypergiant in the constellation Canis Major, 5,000 light years from earth and 2,100 times bigger than our sun. Nightly – perhaps after the main news bulletin – we might observe a moment of silence in order to contemplate the 200 to 400 billion stars in our galaxy, the 100 billion galaxies and the 3 septillion stars in the universe. Whatever their value may be to science, the stars are in the end no less valuable to mankind as solutions to our megalomania, self-pity and anxiety. To answer our need to be repeatedly connected through our senses to ideas of transcendence, we should insist that a percentage of all prominently positioned television screens on public view be hooked up to live feeds from the transponders of our extraplanetary telescopes. We would then be able to ensure that our frustrations, our broken hearts, our hatred of those who haven’t called us and our regrets over opportunities that have passed us by would continuously be rubbed up against, and salved by, images of galaxies such as Messier 101, a spiral structure which sits towards the bottom left corner of the constellation Ursa Major, 23 million light years away, majestically unaware of everything we are and consolingly unaffected by all that tears us apart.”
― Alain de Botton, Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion

“When you re-read a classic you do not see in the book more than you did before. You see more in you than there was before.”
― Clifton Fadiman, Any Number Can Play

“Time's the thief of memory”
― Stephen King, The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, #1) separate

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
― Mae West

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch.”
― Orson Welles

“Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.”
― Billy Sunday, "Billy" Sunday, the man and his message: with his own words which have won thousands for Christ

“Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.”
― Phyllis Diller

“Everyone should be able to do one card trick, tell two jokes, and recite three poems, in case they are ever trapped in an elevator.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

“Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.”
― Albert Einstein

“If you're too open-minded; your brains will fall out.”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti

“Don't gobblefunk around with words.”
― Roald Dahl, The BFG

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

“To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“But, you see, if being an intellectual means you like to learn, that you're curious and attentive and can admire things and be moved by them and try to understand how it all hangs together, and try to go to bed a bit less stupid than the day before, well, then yes: not only am I an intellectual but I'm proud to be one. Really proud, even.”
― Anna Gavalda, Hunting and Gathering

“You think they're like your pencils? That they get worn down if you use them?"
"What?"
"Feelings.”
― Anna Gavalda, Hunting and Gathering

“At the end of the afternoon she tore herself away from the story to go and buy some tobacco. This would be tricky on a holiday, but never mind, it was mainly a pretext so the story could settle and she'd have the pleasure of meeting up with her new friend again a bit later on.”
― Anna Gavalda, Hunting and Gathering

“Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings?”
― Diogenes of Sinope