Eric Franklin > Eric's Quotes

“Ironic people always dissolve when confronted with earnestness, it's their kryptonite”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“...there is nothing the wise man does reluctantly. He escapes necessity because he wills what necessity is going to force on him.”
― Seneca

“Soft living imposes on us the penalty of debility; we cease to be able to do the things we've long been grudging about doing.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

“You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocket ship underpants don't help.”
― Bill Watterson

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“what matters most is how well you walk through the fire”
― Charles Bukowski

“There is no past or future. Using tenses to divide time is like making chalk marks on water.”
― Janet Frame

“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.”
― Euripides, The Bacchae

“Jun Do remembered that he had no one that mattered to him, which was why his tattoo would be of an actress he’d never seen, taken from a calendar at the helm of a fishing boat.”
― Adam Johnson, The Orphan Master's Son

“Everybody out on the sidewalk is a pedestrian Mercedes, wallowing in entitlement—colliding, snarling, shoving ahead without even the hollow-to-begin-with local euphemism “Excuse me.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Bleeding Edge

“A war doesn’t merely kill off a few thousand or a few hundred thousand young men. It kills off something in a people that can never be brought back. And if a people goes through enough wars, pretty soon all that’s left is the brute, the creature that we—you and I and others like us—have brought up from the slime.”
― John Williams, Stoner

“He continued, “I just want to say that your paper was the best discussion I know of the subject, and I’m grateful that you volunteered to give it.”
― John Williams, Stoner

“You know how you finish a bag of chips and you hate yourself? You know you’ve done nothing good for yourself. That’s the same feeling, and you know it is, after some digital binge. You feel wasted and hollow and diminished.”
― Dave Eggers, The Circle

“He who has learned not to intrude his emotions upon his fellows has also learned not to intrude them upon himself.”
― Geoffrey Household, Rogue Male

“You try every trick in the book to keep her. You write her letters. You drive her to work. You quote Neruda.”
― Junot Díaz, This Is How You Lose Her

“I don't think life is absurd. I think we are all here for a huge purpose. I think we shrink from the immensity of the purpose we are here for.”
― Norman Mailer

“Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.”
― Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
― Anais Nin

“What people want to read often seems incongruous. A pair of biker-types taking away Thoughts of the Dalai Lama. People without access to instruments requesting sheet music. Aspiring poets sharing their work and then borrowing horror stories.”
― Alan Bennett, The Library Book

“The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness. ”
― Michel de Montaigne

“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

“If you love what you do and are willing to do what it takes, it's within your reach. And it'll be worth every minute you spend alone at night, thinking and thinking about what it is you want to design or build. It'll be worth it, I promise.”
― Steve Wozniak

“These woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”
― Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

“listen: there’s a hell of a good universe next door; let’s go. — E. E. CUMMINGS”
― Steven Kotler, The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

“Writers, in essence, are professional word tamers; if the words walking down the lines were living creatures, they would surely fear and hate the pen’s nib as tamed animals do the raised whip.”
― Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, The Letter Killers Club

“Stood awhile watching, thinking, praying: Lord, give us more. Give us enough. Help us not fall behind peers. Help us not, that is, fall further behind peers. For kids’ sake. Do not want them scarred by how far behind we are. That is all I ask.”
― George Saunders, Tenth of December

“The United States is in a tough spot.”
― Steven Kotler, The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

“Despite my ghoulish reputation, I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk.”
― Robert Bloch

“We went down into the silent garden. Dawn is the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence. Everything is transfixed, only the light moves.”
― Leonora Carrington