Gretchen > Gretchen's Quotes

“No two persons ever read the same book.”
― Edmund Wilson

“The first duty of the novelist is to entertain. It is a moral duty. People who read your books are sick, sad, traveling, in the hospital waiting room while someone is dying. Books are written by the alone for the alone.”
― Donna Tartt

“My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people.”
― Patricia Highsmith

“If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?”
― Rumi

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.”
― Helen Keller, The Open Door

“A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effert.”
― Herm Albright

“Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the 'Titanic' who waved off the dessert cart.”
― Erma Bombeck

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain

“That is the motto women should constantly repeat over and over again. Good for her! Not for me.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“There is no real security except for whatever you build inside yourself.”
― Gilda Radner

“Do your thing and don't care if they like it.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“Some people have a way with words, and other people...oh, uh, not have way.”
― Steve Martin

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
― Mae West

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou

“Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like.”
― Lemony Snicket

“If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.”
― W.C. Fields

“Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.”
― H.G. Wells, The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman

“Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”
― Will Rogers

“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”
― Voltaire

“A friend said to me, “Hey you need to grow a pair. Grow a pair, Bro.” It’s when someone calls you weak, but they associate it with a lack of testicles. Which is weird, because testicles are the most sensitive things in the world. If you suddenly just grew a pair, you’d be a lot more vulnerable. If you want to be tough, you should lose a pair. If you want to be real tough, you should grow a vagina. Those things can take a pounding.”
― Sheng Wang

“I worship you, but I loathe marriage. I hate its smugness, its safety, its compromise and the thought of you interfering with my work, hindering me; what would you answer? ”
― Virginia Woolf

“You own everything that happend to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.
-- Anne Lamott”
― Doreen Carvajal

“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”
― Lewis Carroll

“Too many people have become self-appointed privilege police, patrolling the halls of discourse, ready to remind people of their privilege whether those people have denied that privilege or not. In online discourse, in particular, the specter of privilege is always looming darkly. When someone writes from experience, there is often someone else, at the ready, pointing a trembling finger, accusing that writer of having various kinds of privilege. How dare someone speak to a personal experience without accounting for every possible configuration of privilege or the lack thereof? We would live in a world of silence if the only people who were allowed to write or speak from experience or about difference were those absolutely without privilege.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist: Essays

“The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.”
― Thomas Wolfe

“Don't look at me in that tone of voice.”
― Dorothy Parker