Claudia Savickas > Claudia's Quotes

“Expectation is the root of all heartache.”
― William Shakespeare

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
― William Shakespear, Hamlet

“Listen to many, speak to a few.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“To be making books for children is to be in a sort of state of grace.”
― Arnold Lobel

“[...] almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of 'psst' that you usually can't even hear because you're in such a rush to or from something important you've tried to engineer.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“You can be shaped, or you can be broken. There is not much in between. Try to learn. Be coachable. Try to learn from everybody, especially those who fail. This is hard. ... How promising you are as a Student of the Game is a function of what you can pay attention to without running away.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“... That no single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“The next suitable person you’re in light conversation with, you stop suddenly in the middle of the conversation and look at the person closely and say, “What’s wrong?” You say it in a concerned way. He’ll say, “What do you mean?” You say, “Something’s wrong. I can tell. What is it?” And he’ll look stunned and say, “How did you know?” He doesn’t realize something’s always wrong, with everybody. Often more than one thing. He doesn’t know everybody’s always going around all the time with something wrong and believing they’re exerting great willpower and control to keep other people, for whom they think nothing’s ever wrong, from seeing it.”
― David Foster Wallace, The Pale King

“I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“You see, Jude, in life, sometimes nice things happen to good people. You don’t need to worry—they don’t happen as often as they should. But when they do, it’s up to the good people to just say ‘thank you,’ and move on, and maybe consider that the person who’s doing the nice thing gets a bang out of it as well, and really isn’t in the mood to hear all the reasons that the person for whom he’s done the nice thing doesn’t think he deserves it or isn’t worthy of it.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Fuck concepts. Don't be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die, world without end, amen.”
― George Saunders

“In art, and maybe just in general, the idea is to be able to be really comfortable with contradictory ideas. In other words, wisdom might be, seem to be, two contradictory ideas both expressed at their highest level and just let to sit in the same cage sort of, vibrating. So, I think as a writer, I'm really never sure of what I really believe.”
― George Saunders

“Everything was real; inconceivably real, infinitely dear. These and all things started as nothing, latent within a vast energy-broth, but then we named them, and loved them, and, in this way, brought them forth. And now we must lose them.”
― George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo

“What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering and I responded… sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.”
― George Saunders

“It's a big world, and I really like it.”
― George Saunders, The Braindead Megaphone

“Why were we put here, so inclined to love, when end of our story = death? That harsh. That cruel. Do not like.”
― George Saunders, Tenth of December

“And I can't be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
― William Shakespeare, The Tempest

“We know what we are, but not what we may be.”
― William Shakespeare

“Brevity is the soul of wit.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“People are strange, but more than that, they're good. They're good first, then strange.”
― Dave Eggers (Author), How We Are Hungry

“I guess this is what marriage is, or was, or could be. You drop the mask. You allow the fatigue in. You lean across and kiss the years because they're the things that matter.”
― Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

“The repeated lies become history, but they don't necessarily become the truth.”
― Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

“He might have been naive, but he didn't care; he said he's rather die with his heart on his sleeve than end up another cynic.”
― Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

“Good days, they come around the oddest corners.”
― Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

“Rather he consoled himself with the fact that, in the real world, when he looked closely into the darkness he might find the presence of a light, damaged and bruised, but a little light all the same.”
― Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

“Give me a story that just makes me unreasonably vigilant. Keep me up till five only because all your stars are out, and for no other reason.”
― J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

“The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud,if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues.”
― William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well

“‎"Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy.”
― Thomas Merton

“You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you," said the Lion.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair