L.S. Popovich > L.S.'s Quotes

“Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, like diamonds we are cut with our own dust.”
― John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
― Mark Twain

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“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

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
― Mark Twain

“Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
― Anton Chekhov

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
― Anonymous, Holy Bible: New International Version

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books.”
― Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

“Woke up this morning with a terrific urge to lie in bed all day and read.”
― Raymond Carver

“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”
― haruki murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

“Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.
Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.”
― William Faulkner

“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”
― William Faulkner

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“If you spend enough time reading or writing, you find a voice, but you also find certain tastes. You find certain writers who when they write, it makes your own brain voice like a tuning fork, and you just resonate with them. And when that happens, reading those writers—not all of whom are modern . . . I mean, if you are willing to make allowances for the way English has changed, you can go way, way back with this— becomes a source of unbelievable joy. It’s like eating candy for the soul. So probably the smart thing to say is that lucky people develop a relationship with a certain kind of art that becomes spiritual, almost religious, and doesn’t mean, you know, church stuff, but it means you’re just never the same.”
― David Foster Wallace, Quack This Way

“There is no friend as loyal as a book.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“This is a work of fiction.
If certain characters resemble people in real life, it is because certain people in real life resemble characters from a novel.
Nobody, therefore, is entitled to feel included in this book.
Nobody, by the same token, to feel excluded.”
― Fernando Del Paso, Palinuro de México

“Life is short and the number of books is appalling.”
― John Cowper Powys

“I have nothing but respect for you -- and not much of that.”
― Groucho Marx

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Q: Why write about slavery? Haven’t we had enough stories about slavery? Why do we need another one?

A: I could have written about upper middle class white people who feel sad sometimes, but there’s a lot of competition.”
― Colson Whitehead

“Unbeing dead isn't being alive.”
― E. E. Cummings

“Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.”
― William Gibson

“Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always To be blest.
The soul, uneasy, and confin'd from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.”
― Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man

“A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor — such is my idea of happiness.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Семейное счастие

“Books are finite, sexual encounters are finite, but the desire to read and to fuck is infinite; it surpasses our own deaths, our fears, our hopes for peace.”
― Roberto Bolano