Samuel > Samuel's Quotes

“Rule number one: Always stick around for one more drink. That's when things happen. That's when you find out everything you want to know.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“If you go to Atlanta, the first question people ask you is, "What's your business?" In Macon they ask, "Where do you go to church?" In Augusta they ask your grandmother's maiden name. But in Savannah the first question people ask you is "What would you like to drink?”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“There's a saying about ranch women. When they're 30, they look 50. When they're 80, they look 50.”
― Craig Lancaster, The Summer Son

“For everything I wished were different about the old man, I found comfort in just as many things that never changed.”
― Craig Lancaster, The Summer Son

“Someone once wrote that musicians are touched on the shoulder by God, and I think it's true. You can make other people happy with music, but you can make yourself happy too. Because of my music, I have never known loneliness and never been depressed.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“I don't believe in fate, though, because fate isn't as much fun as freewill. But I do believe that everything is exactly as it should be.”
― Mel Bosworth, Freight

“Helping is good, but too many helpings make us fat. We forget then. We forget to exercise.”
― Mel Bosworth, Freight

“Death is a cure to a lot of things like cancer and disease and happiness, although I'm not sure anyone would want to be cured of happiness. And some might not want to be cured from cancer if that cure means death, because then they aren't alive anymore and being alive with cancer is something.”
― Mel Bosworth, Freight

“I think people believe in heaven because they don't like the idea of dying, because they want to carry on living and they don't like the idea that other people will move into their house and put their things into the rubbish.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“Gay people don’t actually try to convert people. That’s Jehovah’s Witnesses you’re thinking of.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“The wildly drunk man from the cabin next door to ours is in front of me in the crowd. He's so drunk that he's standing in the women-and-children section. He complains loudly that this is boring and that we are a bunch of assholes. When a clearly terrified woman blurts out, "Please, sir, be quiet," he sways for a second and then lets out a long "Shuuuuut uuuuuuuup" that is funny not just because of its Jackie Gleason-style delivery but also because of its inappropriateness in a situation where we're all probably going to die.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“I prefer the retro chic of spending Christmas just like Joseph and Mary did - Traveling arduously back to the place of your birth to be counted, with no guarantee of a bed when you get there.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“I learned quickly that trying to force Country Folk to love the Big City is like telling your gay cousin, "You just haven't met the right girl yet.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“It is an impressively arrogant move to conclude that just because you don’t like something, it is empirically not good. I don’t like Chinese food, but I don’t write articles trying to prove it doesn’t exist.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“Every time a crime was committed by a Muslim, that person's faith was mentioned, regardless of its relevance. When a crime is committed by a Christian, do they mention his religion? ... When a crime is committed by a black man, it's mentioned in the first breath: 'An African American man was arrested today...' But what about German Americans? Anglo Americans? A white man robs a convenience store and do we hear he's of Scottish descent? In no other instance is the ancestry mentioned.”
― Dave Eggers, Zeitoun

“If your hand doesn't work for it, your heart doesn't feel sorry for it.”
― Dave Eggers, Zeitoun

“Everyone thinks at some time or other that in a hundred years no one now alive will be on earth - the overwhelming force will sweep the place clean.”
― Philip Roth, Everyman

“He tends to trust pictures more than he trusts words. Not because pictures cannot lie but because, once they leave the darkroom, they are fixed, immutable.”
― J.M. Coetzee, Slow Man

“Our lies reveal as much about us as our truths”
― J.M. Coetzee, Slow Man

“...So that someone might want to put you in a book...So that you may be worth putting in a book...Live like a hero...Be a main character. Otherwise, what is life for?”
― J.M. Coetzee, Slow Man

“Age is a terrible thief. Just when you're getting the hang of life, it knocks your legs out from under you and stoops your back.”
― Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants

“I've decided it's not about me at all. It's a protective mechanism for them, a way of buffering themselves against my future death, like when teenagers distance themselves from their parents in preparation for leaving home.”
― Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants

“When will people learn that just because you can make something doesn’t mean you should?”
― Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants

“She slid her boot soles onto the surface and nearly laughed at her own absurdity - to be careful not to slip even as she prayed to fall through.”
― Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child

“To believe, perhaps you had to cease looking for explanations and instead hold the little thing in your hands as long as your were able before it slipped like water between your fingers.”
― Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child

“In my old age, I see that life itself is often more fantastic and terrible than the stories we believed as children, and that perhaps there is no harm in finding magic among the trees.”
― Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child