Matthew > Matthew's Quotes

“Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.”
― Hermann Hesse

“Only two things matter in the reproductive health debate: the medical opinions of doctors, and the will of women. Also, feminism is intricately connected with all aspects of our society, including health, but also labor and the economy. A woman can't be an equal player in our society until she has total autonomy, and that includes determining the destiny of her own body.”
― Allison Kilkenny Jamie Kilstein

“The media's job is to serve as society's referee, throwing down truth flags when uninformed bigots are shouting their opinions into the wind.”
― Allison Kilkenny Jamie Kilstein

“Your gun may be able to mow down a bunch of elementary school kids, but it can't stop a tank.”
― Allison Kilkenny Jamie Kilstein

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“There is a certain kind of person who, when insulted, will assume you have something they need.”
― Catherine Lacey, Nobody Is Ever Missing

“There's nothing better about living in a farm than living in a city. You can't just go sit in a pretty landscape and bet on it changing you into a better person.”
― Catherine Lacey, Nobody Is Ever Missing

“That's the thing about fiction, that you live in it totally for a little while, but you must forget it, sometimes totally forget it, in order to go about the rest of your day.”
― Catherine Lacey, Nobody Is Ever Missing

“It's disappointing enough to know that the people we love will sometimes lie, but it is almost worse when we remember that strangers do this too, and this is why it is best not to admit our lies to strangers because it is not pleasant to learn that someone will lie even when there is little to nothing at stake.”
― Catherine Lacey, Nobody Is Ever Missing

“I'm not a person who needs people, but I am the kind of person who needs to be near people who don't need me.”
― Catherine Lacey, Nobody Is Ever Missing

“Everyone wants to feel like they could destroy a small-to-medium-to-large part of someone who loves them.”
― Catherine Lacey, Nobody Is Ever Missing

“Moments never stay, whether or not you ask them, they do not care, no moment cares, and the ones you wish could stretch out like a hammock for you to lie in, well, those moments leave the quickest and take everything good with them, little burglars, those moments, those hours, those days you loved the most.”
― Catherine Lacey, Nobody Is Ever Missing

“Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson in His Journals

“Every single one of us possesses the strength to attempt something he isn't sure he can accomplish. It can be running a mile, or a 10K race, or 100 miles. It can be changing a career, losing 5 pounds, or telling someone you love her (or him).”
― Scott Jurek, Eat & Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness

“We all lose sometimes. We fail to get what we want. Friends and loved ones leave. We make a decision we regret. We try our hardest and come up short. It’s not the losing that defines us. It’s how we lose. It’s what we do afterward.”
― Scott Jurek, Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness

“Run for 20 minutes and you’ll feel better. Run another 20 and you might tire. Add on 3 hours and you’ll hurt, but keep going and you’ll see—and hear and smell and taste—the world with a vividness that will make your former life pale.”
― Scott Jurek, Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness

“Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“That's what mild television fame is like: it's like walking through the world with your fly down.”
― Dave Holmes

“In my life, I have been told that as a gay man I am a threat to the American family. I have been told that to accept me as an equal is an insult to God. I have been told that I am no better than a pedophile. I have been told that I cannot serve in the military because my presence will undermine unit cohesion. I have had bottles thrown at me when I gathered with others to protest for marriage equality. I have been told that I am sick, that I am damaged, and that I am damage and sickness incarnate.

Let the record show that what finally made me snap is the suggestion that I was supposed to have chemistry with Tori Spelling.”
― Dave Holmes

“Maybe real love is being able to ask, Do I have greens in my teeth?”
― Francine Prose, Mister Monkey

“She emerges from the station directly across from the restaurant. And she's right on time. Like magic, Sonya thinks, briefly saddened to realize that this is what magic means now: not being late, not getting lost on the subway. Whatever happened to the fairy godmothers, to all those bunnies yanked out of hats?”
― Francine Prose

“Who would you rather live with, a bunch of bonobos feeling good? Or chimpanzees eating each other's babies? Or humans waterboarding each other and destroying the planet?”
― Francine Prose, Mister Monkey

“Why shouldn’t loving puppets be a revolutionary act, in a world where so many people love drone warfare?”
― Nell Zink, Nicotine

“It’s a digital e-cigarette.” “What’s digital about it?” “You hold it in your fingers, like this.” “I’m serious. Is it part of the Internet of things? Do they know when you’re smoking it?” “I don’t think so. I think they just mean it works on electricity.”
― Nell Zink, Nicotine

“it’s the stories we tell ourselves that cause all the problems. If you look reality straight in the eye, you end up a lot less confused.”
― Nell Zink, Nicotine

“For jobs and men, it’s a seller’s market. There are no other fish in the sea.”
― Nell Zink, Nicotine

“Not everybody wants to get out and see the world. Nothing wrong with that. Sometimes you just want to figure out how to fit yourself into the world you already know.”
― John Darnielle, Universal Harvester

“The wind comes across the plains not howling but singing. It's the difference between this wind and its big-city cousins: the full-throated wind of the plains has leeway to seek out the hidden registers of its voice. Where immigrant farmers planted windbreaks a hundred and fifty years ago. it keens in protest; where the young corn shoots up, it whispers as it passes, crossing field after field in its own time, following eastward trends but in no hurry to find open water. You can't usually see it in paintings, but it's an important part of the scenery.”
― John Darnielle, Universal Harvester

“It's in the nature of the landscape to change, and it's in the nature of people to help the process along...”
― John Darnielle, Universal Harvester

“I don't know why people say sorry when they havent done the thing they are saying sorry for. It is like everyone in the world is a little bit to blame for everything.”
― Matt Haig, The Dead Fathers Club