Jason > Jason's Quotes

“I care not for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”
― Abigail Adams, The Letters of John and Abigail Adams

“Ghosts don't haunt us. That's not how it works. They're present among us because we won't let go of them.”
― Sue Grafton, M is for Malice

“A sociopath is one who sees others as impersonal objects to be manipulated to fulfill their own narcissistic needs without any regard for the hurtful consequences of their selfish actions.”
― R. Alan Woods, The Journey Is the Destination: A Book of Quotes With Commentaries

“You are a man of extreme passion, a hungry man not quite sure where his appetite lies, a deeply frustrated man striving to project his individuality against a backdrop of rigid conformity. You exist in a half-world suspended between two superstructures, one self-expression and the other self-destruction. You are strong, but there is a flaw in your strength, and unless you learn to control it the flaw will prove stronger than your strength and defeat you. The flaw? Explosive emotional reaction out of all proportion to the occasion. Why? Why this unreasonable anger at the sight of others who are happy or content, this growing contempt for people and the desire to hurt them? All right, you think they're fools, you despise them because their morals, their happiness is the source of your frustration and resentment. But these are dreadful enemies you carry within yourself--in time destructive as bullets. Mercifully, a bullet kills its victim. This other bacteria, permitted to age, does not kill a man but leaves in its wake the hulk of a creature torn and twisted; there is still fire within his being but it is kept alive by casting upon it faggots of scorn and hate. He may successfully accumulate, but he does not accumulate success, for he is his own enemy and is kept from truly enjoying his achievements.”
― Truman Capote, In Cold Blood

“No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.”
― Aristotle

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

“Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...”
― Peter Benchley, Jaws

“You're gonna need a bigger boat.”
― Peter Benchley

“I have consistently loved books that I've read when I've been sick in bed.”
― Tracy Chevalier

“from Bill Clinton speech-
People are more impressed by the power of our example rather than the example of our power...”
― Bill Clinton

“Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“I often wonder what I'd do if there weren't any books in the world.”
― James Baldwin , Giovanni’s Room

“Jealousy knows no logic, nor does it respect reciprocity.”
― Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace

“He lifted himself from a wheelchair to lift the nation from its knees.”
― Jean Edward Smith, FDR

“Sorrow is better than fear. Fear is a journey, a terrible journey. But, sorrow is at least an arriving. ”
― Alan Paton

“We had been through so much together, mrs. Kennedy and me. More than anyone can imagine. More than anyone can ever know.”
― Clint Hill, Mrs. Kennedy and Me: An Intimate Memoir

“I am the son of a murdered woman—anybody who'd call my books misogynistic is, frankly, out of their fucking mind.
”
― James Ellroy

“It is wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago”
― Dan Quayle

“We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live alone in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep. It's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out windows, or drown themselves, or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us are slowly devoured by some disease, or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) know these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more. Heaven only knows why we love it so...”
― Michael Cunningham, The Hours

“[F]or when you get in love you are made all over again. The person who loves you has picked you out of the great mass of uncreated clay which is humanity to make something out of, and the poor lumpish clay which is you wants to find out what it has been made into. But at the same time, you, in the act of loving somebody, become real, cease to be a part of the continuum of the uncreated clay and get the breath of life in you and rise up. So you create yourself by creating another person, who, however, has also created you, picked up the you-chunk of clay out of the mass. So there are two you's, the one you create by loving and the one the beloved creates by loving you. The farther those two you's are apart the more the world grinds and grudges on its axis. But if you loved and were loved perfectly then there wouldn't be any difference between the two you's or any distance between them. They would coincide perfectly, there would be perfect focus, as when a stereoscope gets the twin images on the card into perfect alignment.”
― Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men

“That was my first instinct -- to protect him. It never occurred to me that there was a greater need to protect myself. Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.”
― Graham Greene, The Quiet American

“Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes it'll on'y be one.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”
― John Muir

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
― Socrates

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“I think being a liberal, in the true sense, is being nondoctrinaire, nondogmatic, non-committed to a cause - but examining each case on its merits. Being left of center is another thing; it's a political position. I think most newspapermen by definition have to be liberal; if they're not liberal, by my definition of it, then they can hardly be good newspapermen. If they're preordained dogmatists for a cause, then they can't be very good journalists; that is, if they carry it into their journalism."

[Interview with Ron Powers (Chicago Sun Times) for Playboy, 1973]”
― Walter Cronkite

“I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat.”
― Will Rogers

“Let the wild rumpus start!”
― Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are

“I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.”
― Marilyn Monroe