Marc Minnick > Marc's Quotes

“It occurs to me that our survival may depend upon our talking to one another.”
― Dan Simmons, Hyperion

“To my mind, a well-developed sense of humor is the surest indication of a person's humanity, no matter how black and bitter that humor may be.”
― Thomas Ligotti

“He came out of nothingness, took form, was loved, was always bound to return to nothingness. Only I did not think it would be so soon. Or that he would precede us. Two passing temporarinesses developed feelings for one another. Two puffs of smoke became mutually fond. I mistook him for a solidity, and now must pay. I am not stable and Mary not stable and the very buildings and monuments here not stable and the greater city not stable and the wide world not stable. All alter, are altering, in every instant. (Are you comforted?) No. (It”
― George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo

“Only then (nearly out the door, so to speak) did I realize how unspeakably beautiful all of this was, how precisely engineered for our pleasure, and saw that I was on the brink of squandering a wondrous gift, the gift of being allowed, every day, to wander this vast sensual paradise, this grand marketplace lovingly stocked with every sublime thing.”
― George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo

“By nature, a storyteller is a plagiarist. Everything one comes across—each incident, book, novel, life episode, story, person, news clip—is a coffee bean that will be crushed, ground up, mixed with a touch of cardamom, sometimes a tiny pinch of salt, boiled thrice with sugar, and served as a piping-hot tale.”
― Rabih Alameddine, The Hakawati

“What's happening is that we're living in a world full of people who want us to think the way they do and act the way they do and believe the way they do and if we don't, if we don't conform, they destroy us. And you know the irony? They're always in the minority. We ignore them until we wake up one morning and there isn't any Times on the newsstand and our favorite books are gone from the library and they beat up our best friends and drag them off to prison because their hair's the wrong color or their noses don't measure down to their standards. Then it's too late.”
― William Diehl, The Hunt

“Mario, what do you get when you cross an insomniac, an unwilling agnostic and a dyslexic?"

"I give."

"You get someone who stays up all night torturing himself mentally over the question of whether or not there's a dog.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“Every Democrat says he wants to be JFK while insisting that he will do more or less what LBJ did. No Democrat would dream of saying he wanted to emulate Lyndon Johnson, because the myth is what matters most.”
― Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning

“Remember, whatever you focus upon, increases...When you focus on the things you need, you'll find those needs increasing. If you concentrate your thoughts on what you don't have, you will soon be concentrating on other things that you had forgotten you don't have-and feel worse! If you set your mind on loss, you are more likely to lose...But a grateful perspective brings happiness and abundance into a person's life.”
― Andy Andrews, The Noticer: Sometimes, All a Person Needs Is a Little Perspective

“When the situation is hopeless, there's nothing to worry about.”
― Edward Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang

“Somewhere in the depths of solitude, beyond wilderness and freedom, lay the trap of madness.”
― Edward Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it is not open.”
― Frank Zappa

“Jazz isn't dead. It just smells funny.”
― Frank Zappa

“Interviewer: 'So Frank, you have long hair. Does that make you a woman?'
Frank Zappa: 'You have a wooden leg. Does that make you a table?”
― Frank Zappa

“A drug is not bad. A drug is a chemical compound. The problem comes in when people who take drugs treat them like a license to behave like an asshole.”
― Frank Zappa, The Real Frank Zappa Book

“Art is making something out of nothing, and selling it.”
― Frank Zappa

“The United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced.”
― Frank Zappa

“Those who are too lazy and comfortable to think for themselves and be their own judges obey the laws. Others sense their own laws within them.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian

“The things we see are the same things that are within us. There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“If you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“To write is human, to edit is divine.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very;' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”
― Mark Twain

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”
― St. Augustine

“There is no saint without a past, no sinner without a future.”
― St. Augustine

“I am a part of everything that I have read.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.”
― Theodore Roosevelt