Rini Cobbey > Rini's Quotes

“Bad liars always think they're good at it. (quoting Michael Moynihan)”
― Jon Ronson, So You've Been Publicly Shamed

“People mostly did not know enough when they were living life that they were living it.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“People could not get enough of what they had lost, even if they no longer wanted it.”
― Meg Wolitzer, The Interestings

“Sometimes she worried that she was too happy. . . And her joy would become a restless thing, flapping its wings inside her, as though looking for an opening to fly away.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

“Rhetoric is what shapes history, if not truth.”
― Anna Deavere Smith, Letters to a Young Artist

“Art requires that you make something else exist that is a representation of what your feeling is, or your idea.”
― Anna Deavere Smith, Letters to a Young Artist

“Anyone who started a quarrel had to atone for it by buying a dish of coffee for everyone present.”
― Tom Standage, A History of the World in 6 Glasses

“Coffeehouses were centers of self-education, literary and philosophical speculation, commercial innovation, and, in some cases, political fermentation. But above all they were clearinghouses for news and gossip, linked by the circulation of customers, publications, and information from one establishment to the next. Collectively, Europe's coffeehouses functioned as the Internet of the Age of Reason.”
― Tom Standage, A History of the World in 6 Glasses

“When coffee became popular in Oxford and the coffee houses selling it began to multiply, the university authorities tried to clamp down, worrying that coffee houses promoted idleness and distracted members of the university from their studies”
― Tom Standage, A History of the World in 6 Glasses

“He presented justice as a psychological relief...”
― Jill Leovy, Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America

“On the wall of Amshad's office there was a poster that made me laugh: DO NOT GIVE ME A BANGLE, GIVE ME A PEN. Well-meaning charities often train illiterate slum women to make cheap trinkets.”
― Edward Luce

“Young would-be novelists and poets believe that art is eternal. Au contraire: we are in the business of ephemera, the era of floating islands of trash, and most of the things we feel deeply and inscribe on the page will disappear.”
― Julie Schumacher, Dear Committee Members

“The thing about Americans,” she said, “is that you’re very concerned about everything all the time.”
― Will Schwalbe, The End of Your Life Book Club

“Always we learn things and then we forget them.”
― Dave Eggers, You Shall Know Our Velocity!

“At the heart of her bad nature, like many bad natures, was probably envy. And at the heart of envy was possibly hope - that the good fortune of others might one day be hers”
― Katherine Boo

“At the heart of her bad nature, like many bad natures, was probably envy. And at the heart of envy was possibly hope—that the good fortune of others might one day be hers.”
― Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity

“He wanted to go home to the place that he hated.”
― Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity

“In a short time a group of commissioners arrived to begin organization of a new Indian agency in the valley. One of them mentioned the advantages of schools for Joseph’s people. Joseph replied that the Nez Percés did not want the white man’s schools. “Why do you not want schools?” the commissioner asked. “They will teach us to have churches,” Joseph answered. “Do you not want churches?” “No, we do not want churches.” “Why do you not want churches?” “They will teach us to quarrel about God,” Joseph said. “We do not want to learn that. We may quarrel with men sometimes about things on this earth, but we never quarrel about God. We do not want to learn that.”
― Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West

“A head can be beaten small enough until it fits the hat.”
― G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World

“smiling a smile full of things restrained”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

“It could be said of him that while others chased happiness, he was happy with being content.”
― Neel Mukherjee, The Lives of Others

“In saying no one knew about the ideas implicit in the telegraph, I am not quite accurate. Thoreau knew. Or so one may surmise. It is alleged that upon being told that through the telegraph a man in Maine could instantly send a message to a man in Texas, Thoreau asked, "But what do they have to say to each other?" In asking this question, to which no serious interest was paid, Thoreau was directing attention to the psychological and social meaning of the telegraph, and in particular to its capacity to change the character of information -- from the personal and regional to the impersonal and global.”
― Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood

“There’s no standard career path to becoming a deconstructor of wrongness,”
― David H. Freedman, Wrong: Why Experts Keep Failing Us and How to Know When Not to Trust Them

“What I hadn't expected was to be blindsided by a history lesson that betrayed every hard-won experience I'd had as a player and now a coach at the same school I'd attended. . . Whoever was responsible for sending a championship team into virtual obscurity was either a serious egomaniac or just plain mean. It stung.

After all, wasn't the story told at today's funeral the stuff of legacies? Of school lore passed on to the next class, and the next, building institutional pride as well as magical identities that made every kid in the state want to play there?”
― Jo Kadlecek, When Girls Became Lions

“I couldn’t even tell if I had any sadness of my own, because I was so full of Abuelita’s sadness.”
― Sonia Sotomayor, My Beloved World

“There is nothing typical about my profession.’ Suddenly I did not want to talk about it any longer. ‘I don’t want to talk about it any longer.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“We must understand the need for perfectionism is a corrosive waste of time, because nothing is ever beyond criticism. No matter how many hours you spend to render something flawless, somebody will always be able to find fault with it.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

“Since a good behavior change strategy must be able to succeed in the worst circumstances, it’s best to design a strategy that works in low willpower situations.”
― Stephen Guise, Mini Habits for Weight Loss: Stop Dieting. Form New Habits. Change Your Lifestyle Without Suffering.

“There in the course of one hour, a little elderly woman who embodied the spirit of nonviolence single-handedly prevented loss of life, and a preppie young man with fast fists flying also prevented violence. I would not presume to judge who was doing the will of God on that snowy February afternoon.”
― Lawrence Wright, Saints and Sinners: Walker Railey, Jimmy Swaggart, Madalyn Murray O'Hair, Anton LaVey, Will Campbell , Matthew Fox

“A person should have as our goal complete agape (self-sacrificial love). The most we can expect from a society is to institute simple justice.”
― Jimmy Carter, Faith: A Journey for All