John > John's Quotes

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“That I can read and be happy while I am reading, is a great blessing.”
― Anthony Trollope

“There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“One of the many things I love about bound books is their sheer physicality. Electronic books live out of sight and out of mind. But printed books have body, presence. ... I often seek electronic books, but they never come after me. They may make me feel, but I can't feel them. They are all soul with no flesh, no texture, and no weight.”
― Will Schwalbe, The End of Your Life Book Club

“How many of us are happy to be exactly where we are at any moment?...only the completely happy think that they are in the correct place.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Right Attitude to Rain

“I shouldn't think even millionaires could eat anything nicer than new bread and real butter and honey for tea.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“There’s something disturbing about recalling a warm memory and feeling utterly cold.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“The trouble with England, he thinks, is that it's so poor in gesture. We shall have to develop a hand signal for ‘Back off, our prince is fucking this man's daughter.’ He is surprised that the Italians have not done it. Though perhaps they have, and he just never caught on.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“At New Year's he had given Anne a present of silver forks with handles of rock crystal. He hopes she will use them to eat with, not to stick in people.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“He turns to the painting. "I fear Mark was right."
"Who is Mark?"
"A silly little boy who runs after George Boleyn. I once heard him say I looked like a murderer."
Gregory says, "Did you not know?”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.”
― Willa Cather, My Ántonia

“I was thinking, as I watched her, how little it mattered-- about her teeth, for instance. I know so many women who have kept all the things that she had lost, but whose inner glow has faded. Whatever else was gone, Antonia had not lost the fire of life.”
― Willa Cather, My Ántonia

“What ever happened to the passion we all had to improve ourselves, live up to our potential, leave a mark on the world? Our hottest arguments were always about how we could contribute. We did not care about the rewards. We were young and earnest.”
― Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety

“You can plan all you want to. You can lie in your morning bed and fill whole notebooks with schemes and intentions. But within a single afternoon, within hours or minutes, everything you plan and everything you have fought to make yourself can be undone as a slug is undone when salt is poured on him. And right up to the moment when you find yourself dissolving into foam you can still believe you are doing fine.”
― Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety

“Is that the basis of friendship? Is it as reactive as that? Do we respond only to people who seem to find us interesting?... Do we all buzz or ring or light up when people press our vanity buttons, and only then? Can I think of anyone in my whole life whom I have liked without his first showing signs of liking me?”
― Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety

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

“But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it's time for them to be hurt.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Letters are just pieces of paper," I said. "Burn them, and what stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“A man enjoys the happiness he feels, a woman the happiness she gives.”
― Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses

“I willingly allow that money does not guarantee happiness; but it must also be allowed that it makes happiness a great deal easier to achieve.”
― Pierre A.F. Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses

“You may conquer her love of God: you will never overcome her fear of the devil.”
― Pierre A.F. Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses

“What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore, it knows it’s not foolin’ a soul.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“There's never been a true war that wasn't fought between two sets of people who were certain they were in the right. The really dangerous people believe they are doing whatever they are doing solely and only because it is without question the right thing to do. And that is what makes them dangerous.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness.

And God said, "Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done." And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close to mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked. "What is the purpose of all this?" he asked politely.

"Everything must have a purpose?" asked God.

"Certainly," said man.

"Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this," said God.

And He went away.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“The heartbreaking necessity of lying about reality and the heartbreaking impossibilty of lying about it”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“Sometimes I wonder if he wasn't born dead. I never met a man who was less interested in the living. Sometimes I think that's the trouble with the world: too many people in high places who are stone-cold dead.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle