Hector > Hector's Quotes

“Happiness doesn't lie in conspicuous consumption and the relentless amassing of useless crap. Happiness lies in the person sitting beside you and your ability to talk to them. Happiness is clear-headed human interaction and empathy. Happiness is home. And home is not a house-home is a mythological conceit. It is a state of mind. A place of communion and unconditional love. It is where, when you cross its threshold, you finally feel at peace.”
― Dennis Lehane

“I normally can't stand vice-free people. They conflate a narcissistic instinct for self-preservation with moral superiority. Plus they suck the life right out of a party.”
― Dennis Lehane, Moonlight Mile

“We are wanderers, place shifters, the cosmic homeless. This is not a modern truth, and Achilles is not some new kind of existentialist hero. It is the oldest truth of all, surviving uncomfortably into the modern world of cities and overkings, diplomacy and accommodation, the power structures and the proliferation of stuff which the Mediterranean world provides.”
― Adam Nicolson

“No generation is ever spontaneous. We are none of us our own kind.”
― Elizabeth McCracken, Bowlaway

“Hazel was old, but with children still little: she had an exhausted air of experience, someone who thought a lot of things but actually knew very few.”
― Elizabeth McCracken, Bowlaway

“Maybe better that way, to not know our parents, to love them as we move away from them--they're on the shore and we're on a ship, moving away; later we will switch places as they sail away from us, and we say to them, a little longer.”
― Elizabeth McCracken, Bowlaway

“When he was a young man the mysteries of the world seemed like generosity--you can think anything you want! Now the universe withheld things. It was like luck. Luck once meant anything could happen. Now it meant he was doomed. But maybe it didn't need to.”
― Elizabeth McCracken, Bowlaway

“Unsupervised reading is a blessing for a certain kind of child”
― Victor LaValle, The Changeling

“And they lived happily ever after,” Apollo whispered. Emma leaned into him. “Today,” she said. “And they lived happily today.” “Is that enough?” he asked, looking at Brian, looking at her. “That’s everything, my love.”
― Victor LaValle, The Changeling

“Even if you choose to ignore the truth, the truth still changes you.”
― Victor LaValle, The Changeling

“What lengths will people stretch to believe they’re still good?”
― Victor LaValle, The Changeling

“It was the chuckle of ultimate truth, the smile of an actress right after the director says cut, the intimate joy of seeing the other's soul naked and acknowledging yours is naked too.”
― Edgar Cantero, This Body's Not Big Enough for Both of Us

“When you send away someone you love, you fantasize about the front door. You sense their familiar shoulders fill its frame when your back is turned; every creak of the screen sticks in your throat. You lie in bed not wondering if you locked up the house but willing someone you're not sure you'll recognize to enter it.”
― Jessica Pearce Rotondi, What We Inherit: A Secret War and a Family's Search for Answers

“Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind or change with the weather. It is your inner image of yourself, and if you look in there and see a man who won't cheat, then you know he never will. Integrity is not a search for the rewards of integrity. Maybe all you ever get for it is the largest kick in the ass the world can provide. It is not supposed to be a productive asset.”
― John D. MacDonald

“Memories are by their nature fragmented, isolated, and arbitrary as glimpses one has at night through lighted windows.”
― Marilynne Robinson

“Because, once alone, it is impossible to believe that one could ever have been otherwise. Loneliness is an absolute discovery.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

“It is our suffering that brings us together. It is not love. Love does not obey the mind, and turns to hate when forced. The bond that binds us is beyond choice. We are brothers. We are brothers in what we share. In pain, which each of us must suffer alone, in hunger, in poverty, in hope, we know our brotherhood. We know it, because we have had to learn it. We know that there is no help for us but from one another, that no hand will save us if we do not reach out our hand. And the hand that you reach out is empty, as mine is. You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

“For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

“To make a thief, make an owner; to create crime, create laws.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia