Joey Comeau > Joey's Quotes

“All I could think of when I got a look at the place from the outside was what fun it would be to stand out there and watch it burn down.”
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

“What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.”
― Werner Herzog

“Once you have perceived that life is very cruel, the only response is to live with as much humanity, humour and freedom as you can.”
― Sarah Kane

“The optimist sees the future as a rabbit sees the oncoming truck - getting bigger, not closer.”
― Steve Aylett

“I am so wily and feminine that I could live by your side for a lifetime and deceive you afresh each day.”
― Jane Bowles

“To answer your question as honestly as I can, I've wanted since I was very little to not have to worry about money. I've never been poverty-level poor (I mean, there's been years where I've been officially beneath the poverty line, but that wasn't poverty: that was being a student and living the Student Lifestyle), but I've been in a place where you know you can't afford a better-quality food, where you can't do certain things because of money, and I'd prefer not to have those problems if I can. I sort of have troubles with money in general, with how it determines so much of our lives but with how we all try to ignore it, but I would like to be (and stay) in a place where I can pick up some new comics and games and not worry about how much they cost.

This is terrible; you're asking me where I want to be in the future, what I want my life to be like, and the only thing I can tell you is "Man, all I know is I don't want to be POOR.”
― Ryan North

“one blow in anger [would] kill, probably, a child from aged two to eight. Those over eight would take two blows to kill.”
― Patricia Highsmith

“One situation – maybe one alone – could drive me to murder: family life, togetherness.”
― Patricia Highsmith

“Let us forget the past - this is the only way to be genuinely surprised.”
― Steve Aylett, Slaughtermatic

“A key and a strangler - this is all a simple tale requires.”
― Steve Aylett, The Inflatable Volunteer

“What happens when the hitcher and the driver are equally murderous?
”
― Steve Aylett

“A sniper is like a genius - it’s not enough to be one, you have to be one at something.”
― Steve Aylett, Slaughtermatic

“What I sometimes mistake for ecstasy is simply the absence of grief.”
― Sarah Kane, Crave

“Have you made any plans?
Take an overdose, slash my wrists then hang myself.
All those things together?
It couldn't possibly be misconstrued as a cry for help.”
― Sarah Kane, 4.48 Psychosis

“Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.”
― Richard P. Feynman

“You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It's their mistake, not my failing.”
― Richard P. Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character

“The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion.”
― Richard P. Feynman

“I think using animals for food is an ethical thing to do, but we've got to do it right. We've got to give those animals a decent life and we've got to give them a painless death. We owe the animal respect.”
― Temple Grandin

“I delight in what I fear.”
― Shirley Jackson

“I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had.”
― Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

“A pretty sight, a lady with a book.”
― Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

“No, the menace of the supernatural is that it attacks where modern minds are weakest, where we have abandoned our protective armor of superstition and have no substitute defense.”
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

“I've come to realize that
one of the perks of a free society is the inalienable right to debase ourselves in a wide variety of ways...

”
― Steve Purcell

“The justice I have received, I shall give back.”
― Patricia Highsmith, The Glass Cell

“Religion... has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever... If someone votes for a party that you don't agree with, you're free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand if somebody says 'I must [not] move a light switch on a Saturday', you say, 'I respect that'... Yet when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn't be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn't be.”
― Douglas Adams

“True enough,” said Mrs. Copperfield, bringing her fist down on the table and looking very mean. “I have gone to pieces, which is a thing I’ve wanted to do for years. I know I am as guilty as I can be, but I have my happiness, which I guard like a wolf, and I have authority now and a certain amount of daring, which, if you remember correctly, I never had before.”
― Jane Bowles, Two Serious Ladies

“In my sex fantasy, nobody ever loves me for my mind. ”
― Nora Ephron

“Whatever you choose, however many roads you travel, I hope that you choose not to be a lady. I hope you will find some way to break the rules and make a little trouble out there. And I also hope that you will choose to make some of that trouble on behalf of women."

[Commencement Address, Wellesley College, 1996]”
― Nora Ephron

“There is something called the rapture of the deep, and it refers to what happens when a deep-sea diver spends too much time at the bottom of the ocean and can't tell which way is up. When he surfaces, he's liable to have a condition called the bends, where the body can't adapt to the oxygen levels in the atmosphere. All of this happens to me when I surface from a great book.”
― Nora Ephron, I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman

“Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”
― Maya Angelou