JenniferAustin > JenniferAustin's Quotes

“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

“With their backs to the sunrise they worship the night.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, Individuality From 'The Gods and Other Lectures'

“There will come a time when it isn't 'They're spying on me through my phone' anymore. Eventually, it will be 'My phone is spying on me'.”
― Philip K. Dick

“Where there are bees there are flowers, and wherever there are flowers there is new life and hope.”
― Christy Lefteri, The Beekeeper of Aleppo

“No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.”
― Socrates

“In math, the backwards E, ∃, means there exists. ∈ means part of a set. A line through that ∉ means excluded from. Everyone ∃, but not everyone ∈. We all feel that, unless we ∈, we do not ∃.”
― Katrina Vandenberg, The Alphabet Not Unlike the World: Poems

“The fact that you can only do a little is no excuse for doing nothing.”
― John le Carré, A Most Wanted Man”
― John le Carré

“I convinced [Dick Cheney] that the greatest terrorist was nature itself," Fauci said.
quoted in Nightmare Scenario by Yasmeen Abutaleb, Damian Paletta”
― Anthony Fauci

“When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. As far as I can tell so far, it seems to involve lots of foreign travel and not having to get up too early in the morning.”
― Neil Gaiman, Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fiction and Illusions

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
― Ira Glass

“Because I decided not to read the book by Mr. Cellini. I mean it was quite amuseing in spots because it was really quite riskay but the spots were not so close together and I never seem to like to always be hunting clear through a book for the spots I am looking for, especially when there are really not so many spots that seem to be so amuseing after all.”
― Anita Loos, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

“Let us work,” said Martin, “without disputing; it is the only way to render life tolerable.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.”
― Plato

“Where flowers bloom so does hope.”
― Lady Bird Johnson

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

“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“Properly cared for, a Savile Row suit can be handed down the generations—like gout.”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the King of Clubs

“Of course, I have known for a long time that we have inherited a mad fear of being slighted or scorned, an exacerbated "honor." It is not quite the duelist's madness of a hundred years ago, but we are a people of tantrums nevertheless. A word exchanged in a movie or some other crowd, and we are ready to fly at one another.”
― Saul Bellow, Dangling Man

“People have the right to call themselves whatever they like. That doesn't bother me. It's other people doing the calling that bothers me.”
― Octavia E. Butler

“We'd already had sex enough times for my body to feel like his and his mine, really nothing new there, but we both had low self-esteem, regularly felt suicidal compulsions, were bullied as kids, and pretentiously enjoyed arty films and books while hating basic crap like Haruki Murakami, Hong Sangsoo, French literature, and Audis, all of which made us end up thinking we were something special as a pair.”
― Sang Young Park, Love in the Big City

“Parents existed to be used by their children.”
― Alex Berenson, The Night Ranger

“Indeed, during such times the laboratory was transformed into a purgatory of freaks.”
― Edogawa Rampo, Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination

“What was the stupid thing he had said? That no one is innocent; that everyone is guilty.
The mistake always she was made was to worry too much about what other people thought of her. She knew what it was they thought, and she also knew that they were wrong. A woman clinging to a vanished youth, trying to buy it back. The pain and wretchedness that they called sin. The specters of approaching age; the demons of the afternoon.”
― Sébastien Japrisot, 10:30 From Marseille

“There are very few moments in a man's existence when he experiences so much ludicrous distress, or meets with so little charitable commiseration, as when he is in pursuit of his own hat.”
― Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

“what was over couldn't be begun, and what couldn't be cured must be endured;”
― Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

“Hush. Don't ask any questions. It's always best on these occasions to do what the mob do."
"But suppose there are two mobs?" suggested Mr. Snodgrass.
"Shout with the largest," replied Mr. Pickwick.
Volumes could not have said more.”
― Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

“Mr. Pickwick gazed through his spectacles for an instant on the advancing mass, and then fairly turned his back and -- we will not say fled; firstly because it is an ignoble term, and, secondly, because Mr. Pickwick's figure was by no means adapted for that mode of retreat...”
― Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

“Today is Jesus's birthday. Just pointing that out, brother, on account that some folks get a bit confused this time of year." He put a light hand on Santa's arm and grinned. "They think it's Santa Claus Day."
Santa met his eye and held it.
"Reverend," the lady said. "Don't you even start." She looked at Santa apologetically. "Just ignore him. He's a bit impractical when it comes to Christmas."
"Darn straight I am. Santa Claus and all his little presents get in the way of God's message."
"As can religion," Santa replied.”
― Brom, Krampus: The Yule Lord

“I should absolutely act on this email, which means I'll let it age like fine wine in my inbox instead, adding a layer of guilt each day.”
― Jesse J. Anderson

“What greater gift than the love of a cat.”
― Charles Dickens