Michael > Michael's Quotes

“And when the event, the big change in your life, is simply an insight—isn't that a strange thing? That absolutely nothing changes except that you see things differently and you're less fearful and less anxious and generally stronger as a result: isn't it amazing that a completely invisible thing in your head can feel realer than anything you've experienced before? You see things more clearly and you know that you're seeing them more clearly. And it comes to you that this is what it means to love life, this is all anybody who talks seriously about God is ever talking about. Moments like this.”
― Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections

“Without privacy there was no point in being an individual.”
― Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections

“What man ain't the honestest cove in his own eyes?" Grote's round face is a bronze moon in the dark. "'Tain't good intentions what paves the road to hell: it's self-justifyin's.”
― David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

“Law requires details, not gist. Details beget facts and facts and facts, judiciously set forth, become assassins.”
― David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

“We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love.”
― David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

“The truth of a myth...is not in its words but its patterns.”
― David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

“So little is actually worthy of belief or disbelief. Better to strive to coexist than seek to disapprove . . .”
― David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

“Creation never ceased on the sixth evening, it occurs to the young man. Creation unfolds around us, despite us and through us at the speed of days and nights. And we call it love.”
― David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

“Hell is hell because, there, evil passes unremarked upon.”
― David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

“History has failed us, but no matter.”
― Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

“Patriotism is just an idea, so is capitalism or communism. But ideas can make men forget their own interests. And the guys in charge will exploit men who believe in ideas too much.”
― Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

“I've met plenty of fancy people. They're too scared to have any real ambition”
― Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

“His Presbyterian minster father had believed in a divine design, and Mozasu believed that life was like this game where the player could adjust the dials yet also expect the uncertainty of factors he couldn't control. He understood why his customers wanted to play something that looked fixed but which also left room for randomness and hope.”
― Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

“For the past two weeks he's been feeling so superior and smart because of all the things he knows from the war, but forget it, they are the ones in charge, these saps, these innocents, their homeland dream is the dominant force. His reality is their reality's bitch; what they don't know is more powerful than all the things he knows, and yet he's lived what he's lived and knows what he knows, which means what, something terrible and possibly fatal, he suspects. To learn what you have to learn at the war, to do what you have to do, does this make you the enemy of all that sent you to the war?

Their reality dominates, except for this: It can't save you. It won't stop any bombs or bullets. He wonders if there's a saturation point, a body count that will finally blow the homeland dream to smithereens. How much reality can unreality take?”
― Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”
― Plato