John Karrys > John's Quotes

“Or at school you might have been prodded to come “out of your shell”—that noxious expression which fails to appreciate that some animals naturally carry shelter everywhere they go, and that some humans are just the same.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“...I also believe that introversion is my greatest strength. I have such a strong inner life that I’m never bored and only occasionally lonely. No matter what mayhem is happening around me, I know I can always turn inward.”
― Susan Cain

“It's as if they have thinner boundaries separating them from other people's emotions and from the tragedies and cruelties of the world.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“I hate when people ask what a book is about. People who read for plot, people who suck out the story like the cream filling in an Oreo, should stick to comic strips and soap operas. . . . Every book worth a damn is about emotions and love and death and pain. It's about words. It's about a man dealing with life. Okay?”
― J.R. Moehringer

“I don't know. Sometimes I try to say what's on my mind and it comes out sounding like I ate a dictionary and I'm shitting pages. Sorry”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar: A Memoir

“While I fear that we're drawn to what abandons us, and to what seems most likely to abandon us, in the end I believe we're defined by what embraces us.”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar: A Memoir

“I began dividing life in absolutes... Things and people were either perfectly bad, or perfectly good, and when life didn't obey this black-and-white rule, when things or people were complex or contradictory, I pretended otherwise. I turned every defeat into a disaster, every success into an epic triumph, and separated all people into heroes or villains. Unable to bear ambiguity, I built a barricade of delusions against it. ”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar: A Memoir

“Your best is whatever you can do comfortably without having a breakdown.”
― J R Moehringer, The Tender Bar

“Of course many bars in Manhasset, like bars everywhere, were nasty places, full of pickled people marinating in regret.”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar: A Memoir

“History is the narrative of people searching for a place to go.”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar: A Memoir

“Do you know why God invented writers? Because he loves a good story. And he doesn't give a damn about the words. Words are the curain we've hung between him and our true selves. Try not to think about the words. Don't strin for the perfect sentence. There's no such thing. Writing si guesswork. Every sentence is an educated guess, the readers as much as yours.”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar: A Memoir

“It takes just as many men to build a sturdy man, son, as it does to build a tower. You will look back on this time and remember remarkably little of it, excpt the extent to which I tried or did not try.”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar: A Memoir

“Everyone looks retarded once you set your mind to it.”
― David Sedaris

“I haven't the slightest idea how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out.”
― David Sedaris, Naked

“Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings”
― David Sedaris, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

“We were not a hugging people. In terms of emotional comfort it was our belief that no amount of physical contact could match the healing powers of a well made cocktail.”
― David Sedaris, Naked

“Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don't blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being "in love", which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.”
― Shawn Slovo, Captain Corelli's Mandolin filmscript

“I don't have to agree with you to like you or respect you.”
― Anthony Bourdain

“Those who know don't tell and those who tell don't know.”
― Michael Lewis, Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street

“The men on the trading floor may not have been to school, but they have Ph.D.’s in man’s ignorance.”
― Michael M. Lewis, Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street