Michael > Michael's Quotes

“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
― Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades

“An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.”
― Aldous Huxley

“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?”
― Albert Camus

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
― William Shakespeare, The Tempest

“I write of the wish that comes true--for some reason, a terrifying thought.”
― James M. Cain

“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“A writer who is afraid to overreach himself is as useless as a general who is afraid to be wrong.”
― Raymond Chandler, Pearls are a Nuisance

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“How will I ever get out of this labyrinth?”
― Simon Bolivar

“The best way out is always through.”
― Robert Frost

“I had killed a man, for money and a woman. I didn't have the money and I didn't have the woman.”
― James M. Cain, Double Indemnity

“Reader's Bill of Rights

1. The right to not read

2. The right to skip pages

3. The right to not finish

4. The right to reread

5. The right to read anything

6. The right to escapism

7. The right to read anywhere

8. The right to browse

9. The right to read out loud

10. The right to not defend your tastes”
― Daniel Pennac

“We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.”
― Franz Kafka

“You're not a man, you're a mushroom!”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“Yes?’ he asked, looking at me over the sheet.
‘I’m a writer temporarily down on my inspirations.’
‘Oh, a writer, eh?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘What do you write?’
‘Short stories mostly. And I’m halfway through a novel.’
‘A novel, eh?’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s the name of it?’
‘”The Leaky Faucet of My Doom.”‘
‘Oh, I like that. What’s it about?’
‘Everything.’
‘Everything? You mean, for instance, it’s about cancer?’
‘Yes.’
‘How about my wife?’
‘She’s in there too.”
― Charles Bukowski, Factotum

“I am no man, I am dynamite.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

“Books may well be the only true magic.”
― Alice Hoffman

“I am the man who comes and goes between the bar and the telephone booth. Or, rather:that man is called 'I' and you know nothing else about him, just as this station is called only 'station' and beyond it there exists nothing except the unanswered signal of a telephone ringing in a dark room of a distant city.”
― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler

“Sections in the bookstore

- Books You Haven't Read
- Books You Needn't Read
- Books Made for Purposes Other Than Reading
- Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong to the Category of Books Read Before Being Written
- Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered
- Books You Mean to Read But There Are Others You Must Read First
- Books Too Expensive Now and You'll Wait 'Til They're Remaindered
- Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback
- Books You Can Borrow from Somebody
- Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too
- Books You've Been Planning to Read for Ages
- Books You've Been Hunting for Years Without Success
- Books Dealing with Something You're Working on at the Moment
- Books You Want to Own So They'll Be Handy Just in Case
- Books You Could Put Aside Maybe to Read This Summer
- Books You Need to Go with Other Books on Your Shelves
- Books That Fill You with Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified
- Books Read Long Ago Which It's Now Time to Re-read
- Books You've Always Pretended to Have Read and Now It's Time to Sit Down and Really Read Them”
― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler

“This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
― Sid Ziff

“I think; therefore I am.”
― Rene Descartes

“I am proud of my heart alone, it is the sole source of everything, all our strength, happiness and misery. All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own”
― Goethe Wolfgang, The Sorrows of Young Werther

“Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them; but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Counsels and Maxims

“The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

“That the question of likability even exists in literary conversations is odd. It implies that we are engaging in a courtship. When characters are unlikable, they don’t meet our mutable, varying standards. Certainly we can find kinship in fiction, but literary merit shouldn’t be dictated by whether we want to be friends or lovers with those about whom we read.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist: Essays

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”
― Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca

“Saying 'I notice you're a nerd' is like saying, 'Hey, I notice that you'd rather be intelligent than be stupid, that you'd rather be thoughtful than be vapid, that you believe that there are things that matter more than the arrest record of Lindsay Lohan. Why is that?' In fact, it seems to me that most contemporary insults are pretty lame. Even 'lame' is kind of lame. Saying 'You're lame' is like saying 'You walk with a limp.' Yeah, whatever, so does 50 Cent, and he's done all right for himself.”
― John Green

“You show me what someone listens to, I’ll tell you everything you want to know about his soul. (For instance, a bunch of Nickelback albums would have indicated he never had a soul in the first place.)”
― Tad Williams, The Dirty Streets of Heaven

“Instead of playing Draw Something, fucking draw something”
― Nick Offerman, Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man's Fundamentals for Delicious Living