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#1

“If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”
― E.B. White

tags: activism, humor, life, pleasure

9220 likes

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#2

“I'm very good at the past. It's the present I can't understand.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

367 likes

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#3

“I've committed to nothing...and that's just suicide...by tiny, tiny increments.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

tags: characterization, dark-humor, fiction, personal-insight, rob-gordon

406 likes

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#4

“I love the relationship that anyone has with music ... because there's something in us that is beyond the reach of words, something that eludes and defies our best attempts to spit it out. ... It's the best part of us probably ...”
― Nick Hornby, Songbook

tags: music

549 likes

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#5

“People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands - literally thousands - of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

tags: music, sad

3482 likes

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#6

“It seems to me now that the plain state of being human is dramatic enough for anyone; you don't need to be a heroin addict or a performance poet to experience extremity. You just have to love someone.”
― Nick Hornby, How to Be Good

tags: heroin, humanity, love, poetry

306 likes

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#7

“All the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal. ... But with each passing year, and with each whimsical purchase, our libraries become more and more able to articulate who we are, whether we read the books or not.”
― Nick Hornby, The Polysyllabic Spree

tags: books, identity, individuality

996 likes

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#8

“It's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party.”
― Nick Hornby

tags: films, music, relationships

2999 likes

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#9

“The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

tags: daydreaming, dreams, fantasy, imagination, life

691 likes

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#10

“When it's gone, you'll know what a gift love was. You'll suffer like this. So go back and fight to keep it.”
― Ian McEwan, Enduring Love

tags: lost-love, love

1779 likes

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#11

“And though you think the world is at your feet, it can rise up and tread on you.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

tags: inexperience, life

381 likes

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#12

“She lay in the dark and knew everything.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

264 likes

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#13

“Finally, you had to measure yourself by other people - there really was nothing else. every now and then, quite unintentionally, someone taught you something about yourself.”
― Ian McEwan

53 likes

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#14

“...falling in love could be achieved in a single word—a glance.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

536 likes

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#15

“It was not generally realized that what children mostly wanted was to be left alone.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

tags: children-alone

177 likes

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#16

“There's a taste in the air, sweet and vaguely antiseptic, that reminds him of his teenage years in these streets, and of a general state of longing, a hunger for life to begin that from this distance seems like happiness.”
― Ian McEwan, Saturday

tags: happiness, hope, longing

92 likes

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#17

“Nothing that can be, can come between me and the full prospect of my hopes.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

98 likes

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#18

“And now she was back in the world, not one she could make, but the one that had made her, and she felt herself shrinking under the early evening sky. She was weary of being outdoors, but she was not ready to go in. Was that really all there was in life, indoors or out? Wasn't there somewhere else for people to go?”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

108 likes

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#19

“It was common enough, to see so much death and want a child. Common, therefore human, and he wanted it all the more. When the wounded were screaming, you dreamed of sharing a little house somewhere, of an ordinary life, a family line, connection.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

37 likes

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#20

“These were everyday sounds magnified by darkness. And darkness was nothing - it was not a substance, it was not a presence, it was no more than an absence of light.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

96 likes

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#21

“Without a revolution of the inner life, however slow, all our big designs are worthless. The work we have to do is with ourselves if we're ever going to be at peace with each other...the good that flows from it will shape our societies in an unprogrammed, unforeseen way, under the control of no single group of people or set of ideas.”
― Ian Mcewan

tags: black-dogs

18 likes

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#22

“The cost of oblivius daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realigment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse.
Her reverie, once rich in plausible details, had become a passing silliness before the hard mass of the actual.
It was difficult to come back.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

tags: atonement, bryoni, daydreams

54 likes

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#23

“The world should take note: not everything is getting worse.”
― Ian McEwan, Saturday

68 likes

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#24

“A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

tags: vulnerability

1909 likes

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#25

“We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read.”
― Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth

tags: books, reading

2132 likes

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#26

“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.”
― Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

tags: reading

1394 likes

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#27

“Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.”
― Walter Cronkite

tags: education, ignorance, intelligence, libraries

3994 likes

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#28

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”
― George Orwell

tags: history, propaganda, rewriting-history

3122 likes

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#29

“...how much savage coarseness is concealed in refined, cultivated manners...”
― Nikolai Gogol

53 likes

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#30

“There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate.”
― Linda Grayson

tags: chocolate, friendship

16489 likes

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Tags From Monique’s Quotes

activism
humor
life
pleasure
characterization
dark-humor
fiction
personal-insight
rob-gordon
music
sad
heroin
humanity
love
poetry
books
identity
individuality
films
relationships
daydreaming
dreams
fantasy
imagination
lost-love
inexperience
children-alone
happiness
hope
longing
black-dogs
atonement
bryoni
daydreams
vulnerability
reading
education
ignorance
intelligence
libraries
history
propaganda
rewriting-history
chocolate
friendship