Erin Sullivan > Erin's Quotes

“That's what spending time with the young can do—it's the big payoff for all the pain. The young can exasperate, of course, and frighten, and condescend, and insult, and cut you with their still unrounded edges. But they can also drag you, as you protest and scold and try to pull away, right up to the window of the future, and even push you through.”
― Laura Moriarty, The Chaperone

“You cannot wait for an untroubled world to have an untroubled moment.”
― Lemony Snicket, Shouldn't You Be in School?

“On the other hand, dogs eat with gusto, play with exuberance, work happily when given the opportunity, surrender themselves to the wonder and the mystery of their world, and love extravagantly.”
― Dean Koontz, A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog

“On the other hand, dogs eat with gusto, play with exuberance, work happily when given the opportunity, surrender themselves to the wonder and the mystery of their world, and love extravagantly. Envy infects the human heart; if we envy, next we covet, and what we covet becomes the object of our all-consuming avarice. If we live without envy, with the humility and the joyful gratitude of dogs—nachos! ball! cuddle time!—we will be ready even for Death when he comes for us, content that we have made good use of the gift of life.”
― Dean Koontz, A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog

“Sometimes, when someone has led a nearly perfect life but is not yet worthy of nirvana, that person is reincarnated as a very beautiful dog. When the life as the dog comes to an end, the person is reincarnated one last time as a human being, and lives a perfect life. Your dog is a person who has almost arrived at complete enlightenment and will in the next life be perfect and blameless, a very great person. You have been given stewardship of what you in your faith might call a holy soul.”
― Dean Koontz, A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog

“Good morning!

Give your time, give your heart, give your talent, give someone something new.

It feels incredible.

Good night!

Give your time, give your heart, give your service, give someone something you made.

It feels incredible.”
― Lin-Manuel Miranda, Gmorning, Gnight!: Little Pep Talks for Me & You

“You want to know what weakness is? Weakness is treating someone as though they belong to you. Strength is knowing that everyone belongs to themselves.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

“There's more at stake here than just slavery, my brother. It's a question of who will own the land, the people, the power. You cannot stick a knife in a goat and then say, Now I will remove my knife slowly, so let things be easy and clean, let there be no mess. There will always be blood.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

“I am often thought of as being remarkably bright, and yet my brains, more often than not, are busily devising new and interesting ways of bringing my enemies to sudden, gagging, writhing, agonizing death.”
― Alan Bradley, The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

“I was me, I was Flavia. And I loved myself, even if no one else did.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

“As I stood outside in Cow Lane, it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

No ... eight days a week.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

“If I believe that only bad people are racist, I will feel hurt, offended, and shamed when an unaware racist assumption of mine is pointed out. If I instead believe that having racist assumptions is inevitable (but possible to change), I will feel gratitude when an unaware racist assumption is pointed out; now I am aware of and can change that assumption.”
― Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

“Never underestimate the big importance of small things”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“The prison wasn't the place, but the perspective.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“Granddad asks, “Why does it matter if he’s black? The other flamingos don’t care.” And I’m certain what he’s saying is “I love you.”
― Dean Atta, The Black Flamingo

“Make them pay you what they would pay a white man.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“Do you think I'm a whore?” Harry pulled over to the side of the road and turned to me. “I think you're brilliant. I think you're tough. And I think the word whore is something ignorant people throw around when they have nothing else.

… “Isn't it awfully convenient,” Harry added, “that when men make the rules, the one thing that's looked down on the most is the one thing that would bear them the greatest threat? Imagine if every single woman on the planet wanted something in exchange when she gave up her body. You'd all be ruling the place. An armed populace. Only men like me would stand a chance against you. And that's the last thing those assholes want, a world run by people like you and me.”

I laughed, my eyes still puffy and tired from crying. “So am I a whore or not?” “Who knows?” he said. “We're all whores, really, in some way or another. At least in Hollywood.” … “But I like you this way. I like you impure and scrappy and formidable. I like the Evelyn Hugo who sees the world for what it is and then goes out there and wrestles what she wants out of it. So, you know, put whatever label you want on it, just don't change. That would be the real tragedy.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“In fairness, my mother suffers from Giant Irish Family Syndrome, where she can’t even remember her own children’s names without cycling through multiple cousins first. “Hey…Sean, I mean Patrick, I mean Colin!” It could be worse. She often gets to the dog’s name before my brother, Casey.”
― Colin Jost, A Very Punchable Face

“You can’t get over things you do to other people as easily as you get over things they do to you.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Sentence

“Maybe this was what being in a pandemic brought forth. When everything big is out of control, you start taking charge of small things.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Sentence

“What I’m trying to say is that a certain sentence of the book—a written sentence, a very powerful sentence—killed Flora.’ Louise was silent. After a few moments she spoke. ‘I wish I could write a sentence like that.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Sentence

“Pollux’s grandma had once told him dogs are so close with people that sometimes, when death shows up, the dog will step in and take the hit. Meaning, the dog would go off with death, taking their person’s place. I was pretty sure that Gary had done this for Roland and then visited the store to let me know.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Sentence

“The first snow of the new year lifted my burdensome thoughts. The snow brightened and cleaned and filled the air with oxygen.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Sentence

“It’s unfortunate, I thought, how some of the world’s most productive conversations are breakup conversations. People think, “If only we could have talked like this the whole time, things would’ve been different.” But you couldn’t have. That level of honesty requires a resoluteness achievable only by being within spitting distance of the exit.”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“Love is agreeing to live in someone else's narrative.”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“Romance may be the world’s oldest cult. It hooks you when you’re vulnerable, scares the shit out of you, hold your deepest fears as collateral, renames you something like ‘baby,’ brainwashes you, then makes you think that your soul will wither and die if you let go of a person who loved you. So you better have a good goddamn reason for saying ‘nah, not enough.’ The love lobby is worse than the fun lobby. More misery, more addiction, more heads on spikes. And for what?”
― Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic

“People love to say, “Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” What they don’t say is, “And it would be nice if you gave him a fishing rod.” That’s the part of the analogy that’s missing.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood

“In the future, there will be a word for the specific kind of nostalgia that we feel for living things.”
― Scott Kelly

“The thing about grace is that you don’t deserve it. You can’t earn it. You can only accept it. Or not.”
― Kimi Cunningham Grant, These Silent Woods

“It is no respecter of persons, war. Even if it doesn’t damage your body, it damages your soul.”
― Kimi Cunningham Grant, These Silent Woods