Thomas Baughman > Thomas's Quotes

“90% of everything is crap.”
― Theodore Sturgeon

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
― Aldous Huxley, Complete Essays, Vol. II: 1926-1929

“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

“It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love.”
― Raymond Carver

“Late Fragment

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.”
― Raymond Carver, A New Path to the Waterfall

“there isn't enough of anything
as long as we live. But at intervals
a sweetness appears and, given a chance
prevails.”
― Raymond Carver, Ultramarine: Poems

“It's possible, in a poem or short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things—a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring—with immense, even startling power.”
― Raymond Carver

“Justice? -You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law.”
― William Gaddis, A Frolic of His Own

“Nothing is always absolutely so”
― Theodore Sturgeon

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“The reason I talk to myself is because I’m the only one whose answers I accept.”
― George Carlin

“I cannot live without books.”
― Thomas Jefferson

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

“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“Reality is shaped by the forces that destroy it.”
― D. Harlan Wilson, The Kyoto Man

“I love mankind ... it's people I can't stand!!”
― Charles M. Schulz

“I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally. ”
― W.C. Fields

“My experience of life is that it is not divided up into genres; it’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky.”
― Alan Moore

“Hell is—other people!”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit

“People shouldn't be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.”
― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

“Science fiction, outside of poetry, is the only literary field which has no limits, no parameters whatsoever.”
― Theodore Sturgeon

“There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?”
― Woody Allen

“You realize there are certain things that you'll never do that you always thought would be part of your future. It's a big relief to discover what you are best suited for, and it's a real advantage to be able then to focus.”
― Richard Hell

“I studied Comparative Literature at Cornell. Structuralism was real big then. The idea of reading and writing as being this language game. There's a lot of appeal to that. It's nice to think of it as this playful kind of thing. But I think that another way to look at it is "Look, I just want to be sincere. I want to write something and make you feel something and maybe you will go out and do something." And it seems that the world is in such bad shape now that we don't have time to do nothing but language games. That's how it seems to me.”
― William T. Vollmann

“It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.”
― Emil Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

“If we could truly see ourselves the way others see us we'd disappear on the spot.”
― Émile Michel Cioran

“More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.”
― Truman Capote, Answered Prayers

“Do you hate people?”

“I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around.”
― Charles Bukowski, Barfly

“I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.”
― Peter De Vries

“There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.”
― Pierre Dos Utt, Tanstaafl: A Plan for a New Economic World Order