Jacob Petersen > Jacob's Quotes

“Somewhere in “The Great Gatsby” (which was my “Tom Sawyer” when I was twelve), the youthful narrator remarks that everybody suspects himself of having at least one of the cardinal virtues, and he goes on to say that he thinks his, bless his heart, is honesty. Mine, I think, is that I know the difference between a mystical story and a love story. I say that my current offering isn’t a mystical story, or a religiously mystify-ing story, at all. I say it’s a compound, or multiple, love story, pure and complicated.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“I was a proper snob in college, as only an old Wise Child alumnus and future lifetime English-major can be, and I didn’t want any degrees if all the ill-read literates and radio announcers and pedagogical dummies I knew had them by the peck.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“Seymour once said to me — in a crosstown bus, of all places — that all legitimate religious study must lead to unlearning the differences, the illusory differences, between boys and girls, animals and stones, day and night, heat and cold.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“When Bobbi talked about me it felt like seeing myself in a mirror for the first time.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“She had an expressive, conspiratorial smile, which I thought she probably gave to all of her subjects, as if to say: you’re no ordinary subject to me, you’re a special favorite. I knew I would enviously practice this smile later in a mirror.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“As far as I knew she had never written creatively at all. She liked to perform dramatic monologues and sing antiwar ballads. Onstage she was the superior performer and I often glanced at her anxiously to remind myself what to do.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“At any time I felt I could do or say anything at all, and only afterward think: oh, so that’s the kind of person I am.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“I had no achievements or possessions that proved I was a serious person.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“I tried to reach out of the bed to shake her shoulder, but I couldn’t, and I felt exhausted by the effort. At the same time I was exhilarated by the seriousness of my pain, like it might change my life in an unforeseen way.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“Though I knew that I would eventually have to enter full-time employment, I certainly never fantasized about a radiant future where I was paid to perform an economic role. Sometimes this felt like a failure to take an interest in my own life, which depressed me.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“Things matter to me more than they do to normal people, I thought. I need to relax and let things go. I should experiment with drugs.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“My ego had always been an issue. I knew that intellectual attainment was morally neutral at best, but when bad things happened to me I made myself feel better by thinking about how smart I was.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“I was aware of the fact that he could pretend to be anyone he wanted to be, and I wondered if he also lacked a “real personality” the same way I did.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“While I let myself into the apartment I thought about Nick entering the room while everybody applauded. This now felt perfect to me, so perfect that I was glad he had missed the performance. Maybe having him witness how much others approved of me, without taking any of the risks necessary to earn Nick’s personal approval, made me feel capable of speaking to him again, as if I also was an important person with lots of admirers like he was, as if there was nothing inferior about me. But the acclaim also felt like part of the performance itself, the best part, and the most pure expression of what I was trying to do, which was to make myself into this kind of person: someone worthy of praise, worthy of love.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“He was the first person I had met since Bobbi who made me enjoy conversation, in the same irrational and sensuous way I enjoyed coffee or loud music.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“I ran my finger along his collarbone and said: I can’t remember if I thought about this at the beginning. How it was doomed to end unhappily. He nodded, looking at me. I did, he said. I just thought it would be worth it.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“I wasn’t used to being attacked like this and it was frightening. I thought of myself as an independent person, so independent that the opinions of others were irrelevant to me. Now I was afraid that Nick was right. I isolated myself from criticism so I could behave badly without losing my sense of righteousness.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“Everyone’s always going through something, aren’t they? That’s life, basically. It’s just more and more things to go through.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“The girl wriggled around to get his attention, so her light-up sneakers pushed against my handbag and then my arm. When her father finally turned around he said: Rebecca, look what you’re doing! You’re kicking that woman’s arm! I tried to catch his eye and say: it’s fine, it’s no problem. But he didn’t look at me. To him, my arm was not important. He was only concerned with making his child feel bad, making her feel ashamed.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“People were always wanting me to show some weakness so they could reassure me. It made them feel worthy, I knew all about that.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“On the way to the station that evening my mother kept glancing at me, as if something about my behavior was off-putting, and she wanted to reprimand me for it but couldn’t decide what it was. Eventually she told me to take my feet off the dashboard, which I did.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“Gradually the waiting began to feel less like waiting and more like this was simply what life was: the distracting tasks undertaken while the thing you are waiting for continues not to happen.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“It’s possible to feel so grateful that you can’t get to sleep at night.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“You live through certain things before you understand them. You can’t always take the analytical position.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis promises safety of principal and an adequate return. Operations not meeting these requirements are speculative.”
― Benjamin Graham, The Intelligent Investor

“Americans are getting stronger. Twenty years ago, it took two people to carry ten dollars’ worth of groceries. Today, a five-year-old can do it. —Henny Youngman”
― Benjamin Graham, The Intelligent Investor

“The intelligent investor will remember the wise words of financial analyst Mark Schweber: “The one question never to ask a bureaucrat is ‘Why?”
― Benjamin Graham, The Intelligent Investor

“For most investors, allocating at least 10% of your retirement assets to TIPS is an intelligent way to keep a portion of your money absolutely safe—and entirely beyond the reach of the long, invisible claws of inflation.”
― Benjamin Graham, The Intelligent Investor

“From this there has developed the general notion that the rate of return which the investor should aim for is more or less proportionate to the degree of risk he is ready to run. Our view is different. The rate of return sought should be dependent, rather, on the amount of intelligent effort the investor is willing and able to bring to bear on his task. The minimum return goes to our passive investor, who wants both safety and freedom from concern. The maximum return would be realized by the alert and enterprising investor who exercises maximum intelligence and skill.”
― Benjamin Graham, The Intelligent Investor

“Thus, in strict logic, all investment-grade preferred stocks should be bought by corporations, just as all tax-exempt bonds should be bought by investors who pay income tax.”
― Benjamin Graham, The Intelligent Investor