em_wemily > em_wemily's Quotes

“He was the only one of the four who had a beard. It was a random, bristly beard, and some of the bristles were white, even though Billy was only twenty-one years old. He was also going bald. Wind and cold and violent exercise had turned his face crimson. He didn't look like a soldier at all. He looked like a filthy flamingo.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five

“Billy coughed when the door was opened, and when he coughed he shit thin gruel. This was in accordance with the Third Law of Motion according to Sir Isaac Newton. This law tells us that for every action there is a reaction and opposite in direction.

This can be useful in rocketry.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their letters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who himself is poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five

“And even if these scenes of our youth were given back to us, we would hardly know what to do. The tender, secret influence that passed from them into us could not rise again. We might be amongst them and move in them and be stirred by the sight of them. But it would be like gazing at the photograph of a dead comrade; those are his features, it is his face, and the days spent together take on a mournful life in the memory; but the man himself it is not.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“My only regret," Dr. Jones said to the boss G-man there on the cellar stairs, "is that I have but one life to give to my country."
"We'll see if we can dig up some other regrets for you too," said the boss.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Mother Night

“There are plenty of good reasons for fighting...but no good reason to ever hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It's that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive....it's that part of an imbecile that punishes and vilifies and makes war gladly.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“And I propose to you that if we are to pay our sincere respects to the hundred lost children of San Lorenzo, that we might best spend the day despising what killed them; which is to say, the stupidity and viciousness of all mankind...
...Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our clothes and grunt like pigs. That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and shows of flags and well-oiled guns.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Cat’s Cradle

“I hate Gucci,' said Francis.

'Do you?' said Henry, glancing up from his reverie. 'Really? I think it's rather grand.'

'Come on, Henry.'

'Well, it's so expensive, but it's so ugly too, isn't it? I think they make it ugly on purpose. And yet people buy it out of sheer perversity.'

'I don't see what you think is grand about that.'

'Anything is grand if it's done on a large enough scale,' said Henry.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“To fool a judge, feign fascination, but to bamboozle the whole court, feign boredom.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Time had no meaning; life had no meaning. The fierce struggle for survival in the abyss of Peleliu eroded the veneer of civilization and made savages of us all.”
― Eugene B. Sledge, With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa

“As I looked at the stains on the coral, I recalled some of the eloquent phrases of politicians and newsmen about how "gallant" it is for a man to "shed his blood for his country," and "to give his life's blood as a sacrifice," and so on. The words seemed ridiculous. Only the flies benefited.”
― Eugene B. Sledge

“The conflict between corporations and activists is that of narcolepsy versus remembrance. The corporations have money, power, and influence. Our sole weapon is public outrage. Outrage blocked the Yuccan Dam, ousted Nixon, and in part, terminated the monstrosities in Vietnam. But outrage is unwieldy to manufacture and handle. First, you need scrutiny; second, widespread awareness; only when this reaches a critical mass does public outrage explode into being. Any stage may be sabotaged. The world’s Alberto Grimaldis can fight scrutiny by burying truth in committees, dullness, and misinformation, or by intimidating the scrutinizers. They can extinguish awareness by dumbing down education, owning TV stations, paying ‘guest fees’ to leader writers, or just buying the media up. The media—and not just The Washington Post—is where democracies conduct their civil wars.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

“... in a cycle as old as tribalism, ignorance of the Other engenders fear; fear engenders hatred; hatred engenders violence; violence engenders further violence until the only "rights", the only law, are whatever is willed by the most powerful.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Oh, once you’ve been initiated into the Elderly, the world doesn’t want you back.” Veronica settled herself in a rattan chair and adjusted her hat just so. “We—by whom I mean anyone over sixty—commit two offenses just by existing. One is Lack of Velocity. We drive too slowly, walk too slowly, talk too slowly. The world will do business with dictators, perverts, and drug barons of all stripes, but being slowed down it cannot abide. Our second offence is being Everyman’s memento mori. The world can only get comfy in shiny-eyed denial if we are out of sight.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“I am certain there is too much certainty in the world.”
― Michael Crichton

“It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy - that's the time that seems long in memory. And this is right when you think about it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Life sucks, then you die”
― Stephen King, Pet Sematary

“But 'Thou mayest!'! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.”
― John Steinbeck, شرق بهشت

“A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

“It was strange that a society which hid the facts of sex from children made no effort to shield them from death.”
― Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place

“Not everyone from How Company of the 2nd Battalion of the First Marines made roll call on the first morning oat the Melbourne Cricket Grounds. The first sergeant looked out to see maybe thirty guys in formation, somewhat less than the two hundred or so he had on his muster roll. For every marine name he called, though, he heard an answer. He decided to call out a few names of men who had been buried on Guadalcanal and, lo and behold, they answered aye as well. On this lovely morning First Sergeant McGrath did not care. He was drunk, too.”
― Hugh Ambrose, The Pacific

“In the Airmada audiences were people who had come from all over the world to chase the good life in the United States of America. They had found a country more to their liking than the ones they had left, but they bridled at the barriers they had found to their advancement: their religions and ethnicities. The U.S. Treasury Department made sure the members of all ethnic groups equated buying bonds with proving their loyalty.”
― Hugh Ambrose, The Pacific

“A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking, Hman, as if pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing... what you call remembrance is the last part of pleasure.”
― C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet

“Fiction must stick to facts, and the truer the facts the better the fiction.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“Possibly when the professor insisted a little too emphatically upon the inferiority of women, he was concerned not with their inferiority, but with his own superiority. That was what he was protecting rather hot-headedly and with too much emphasis, because it was a jewel to him of the rarest price.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“Life for both sexes... is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion as we are, it calls for confidence in oneself. And how can we generate this imponderable quality, which is yet so invaluable, most quickly? By thinking that other people are inferior to oneself. By feeling that one has some innate superiority ... over other people.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own