John Box > John's Quotes

“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“I recognized the handwriting, and my heart gave a skip; when I opened it I got a turn, for it began, 'To my beloved Hector,' and I thought, by God she's cheating on me, and has sent me the wrong letter by mistake. But in the second line was a reference to Achilles, and another to Ajax, so I understood she was just addressing me in terms which she accounted fitting for a martial paladin; she knew no better. It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whore-mongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not far off the mark.”
― George MacDonald Fraser, Flashman

“Suffering doesn’t concern itself with the scale of other sufferings.”
― Martin Amis, Money

“Pain is nature’s way of telling us that something is wrong. Patiently, pain goes on telling us this, long after we’ve got the message.”
― Martin Amis, Money

“Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies, all they signified was that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“You know, that might be the answer – to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That’s a trick that never seems to fail.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“Oh my God, you are a child. If we leave you alone here, you’ll freeze to death, you’ll starve to death.' And so on. It was very exciting for her, taking his dignity away in the name of love.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“I try not to hate anybody. "Hate is a four-letter word," like the bumper sticker says. But I hate book reviewers.

Book reviewers are the most despicable, loathsome order of swine that ever rooted about the earth. They are sniveling, revolting creatures who feed their own appetites for bile by gnawing apart other people's work. They are human garbage. They all deserve to be struck down by awful diseases described in the most obscure dermatology journals.

Book reviewers live in tiny studios that stink of mothballs and rotting paper. Their breath reeks of stale coffee. From time to time they put on too-tight shirts and pants with buckles and shuffle out of their lairs to shove heaping mayonnaise-laden sandwiches into their faces, which are worn in to permanent snarls. Then they go back to their computers and with fat stubby fingers they hammer out "reviews." Periodically they are halted as they burst into porcine squeals, gleefully rejoicing in their cruelty.

Even when being "kindly," book reviewers reveal their true nature as condescending jerks. "We look forward to hearing more from the author," a book reviewer might say. The prissy tones sound like a second-grade piano teacher, offering you a piece of years-old strawberry hard candy and telling you to practice more.

But a bad book review is just disgusting.

Ask yourself: of all the jobs available to literate people, what monster chooses the job of "telling people how bad different books are"? What twisted fetishist chooses such a life?”
― Steve Hely, How I Became a Famous Novelist

“People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“A pissant is somebody who thinks he’s so damn smart, he can never keep his mouth shut. No matter what anybody says, he’s got to argue with it. You say you like something, and, by God, he’ll tell you why you’re wrong to like it. A pissant does his best to make you feel like a boob all the time. No matter what you say, he knows better.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Vomiting profusely is exhausting.”
― E L James

“Kids are simple creatures, ruled by greed and fear and an eternal reluctance to go to the toilet.”
― Niels Saunders, Grand Theft Octo

“The best way to coerce people is through guilt and fear. It’s why religion’s done such smashing business for thousands of years.”
― Niels Saunders, Grand Theft Octo

“Life’s not a performance, it’s a dress rehearsal: people on an unfinished stage who don’t quite know what they’re doing, getting their lines wrong and never fully in character. Everyone’s an amateur, an understudy, we just get better at hiding it.”
― Niels Saunders, Grand Theft Octo

“Inappropriate laughter is the universal first sign of madness.”
― David Wong, John Dies at the End / This Book Is Full Of Spiders / What the Hell Did I Just Read

“That ability to see the right choice, but not until several hours have passed since making the wrong one? That’s what makes a person a dumbass, folks.”
― David Wong, John Dies at the End

“White lies, in fact, are like a grease that makes society run smoothly.”
― Michio Kaku, The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind

“when we love, we always strive to become better than we are.”
― Paulo Coelho

“it takes two people to hurt you,” I said. “The one who does it and the one who tells you.”
― Nora Ephron, Heartburn

“You know how old you have to be before you stop wanting to fuck strangers?’ said Arthur. ‘Dead, that’s how old. It doesn’t stop. It doesn’t go away. You put all this energy into suppressing it and telling yourself it’s worth it because of what you get in exchange, and then one day someone brushes up against you and you’re fourteen years old again and all you want to do is go to a drive-in movie and fuck her brains out in the back seat. But you don’t do it because you’re not going to be that kind of person, so you go home, and there’s your wife, and she wears socks to bed.”
― Nora Ephron, Heartburn

“I contemplated suicide. Every so often I contemplate suicide merely to remind myself of my complete lack of interest in it as a solution to anything at all. There was a time when I worried about this, when I thought galloping neurosis was wildly romantic, when I longed to be the sort of girl who knew the names of wildflowers and fed baby birds with eyedroppers and rescued bugs from swimming pools and wanted from time to time to end it all. Now, in my golden years, I have come to accept the fact that there is not a neurasthenic drop of blood in my body, and I have become very impatient with it in others. Show me a woman who cries when the trees lose their leaves in autumn and I’ll show you a real asshole.”
― Nora Ephron, Heartburn

“As I approached my fiftieth birthday, I had become more and more enraged and mystified by the idiot decisions made by my countrymen. And then I had come suddenly to pity them, for I understood how innocent and natural it was for them to behave so abominably, and with such abominable results: They were doing their best to live like people invented in story books. This was the reason Americans shot each other so often: It was a convenient literary device for ending short stories and books.
Why were so many Americans treated by their government as though their lives were as disposable as paper facial tis-sues? Because that was the way authors customarily treated bit-part players in their made-up tales.
And so on.Once I understood what was making America such a dangerous, unhappy nation of people who had nothing to do with real life, I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would also be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order, instead, which I think I have done. If all writers would do that, then perhaps citizens not in the literary trades will understand that there is no order in the world around us, that we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead. It is hard to adapt to chaos, but it can be done. I am living proof of that: It can be done.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

“I can't tell if you're serious or not,' said the driver.
I won't know myself until I find out if life is serious or not,' said Trout. 'It's dangerous, I know, and it can hurt a lot. That doesn't necessarily mean it's serious, too.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

“I had no respect whatsoever for the creative works of either the painter or the novelist. I thought Karabekian with his meaningless pictures had entered into a conspiracy with millionaires to make poor people feel stupid. I thought Beatrice Keedsler had joined hands with other old-fashioned storytellers to make people believe that life had leading characters, minor characters, significant details, insignificant details, that it had lessons to be learned, tests to be passed, and a beginning, a middle, and an end.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

“Oh, the holy satisfaction of the godly—when it comes to delight in cruelty I’m just a child compared to them”
― George MacDonald Fraser, Flash for Freedom

“You run the risk of losing anyone who is worth spending time with, unless you are so paranoid about loss that you choose someone unlosable, somebody who could not possibly appeal to anybody else at all.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“Sentimental music has this great way of taking you back somewhere at the same time that it takes you forward, so you feel nostagic and hopeful all at the same time.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“Self-consciousness is a man’s worst enemy.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“If done right, kidnapping can be a positive experience for everyone.”
― Jim Carrey, Memoirs and Misinformation

“Excuses are the refuge of cowards.”
― William Goldsmith