Joey > Joey's Quotes

“Whatever relationships you have attracted in your life at this moment, are precisely the ones you need in your life at this moment. There is a hidden meaning behind all events, and this hidden meaning is serving your own evolution.”
― Deepak Chopra

“According to Vedanta, there are only two symptoms of enlightenment, just two indications that a transformation is taking place within you toward a higher consciousness. The first symptom is that you stop worrying. Things don't bother you anymore. You become light-hearted and full of joy. The second symptom is that you encounter more and more meaningful coincidences in your life, more and more synchronicities. And this accelerates to the point where you actually experience the miraculous. (quoted by Carol Lynn Pearson in Consider the Butterfly)”
― Deepak Chopra, SynchroDestiny: Harnessing the Infinite Power of Coincidence to Create Miracles

“The Ego, however, is not who you really are. The ego is your self-image; it is your social mask; it is the role you are playing. Your social mask thrives on approval. It wants control, and it is sustained by power, because it lives in fear.”
― Deepak Chopra, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams

“I just find it interesting that kids apparently used to cry when Bambi's mother died. George and I both held our breaths, and then cheered when she didn't reanimate and try to eat her son.”
― Mira Grant, Deadline

“I feel the closest to crazy when I'm disagreeing with the voice in my head”
― Mira Grant, Deadline

“A martyr's just a casualty with really good PR.”
― Mira Grant, Deadline

“I suggest it’s time we head off to see the Wizard. The wonderful Wizard of Jesus We Are All So Fucked.”
― Mira Grant, Deadline

“If we're going to die horribly, we're all going to do it together.”
― Mira Grant, Deadline

“...If there’s a God, there are plenty of people who know where he is.” I shrugged, still watching the sky. ... “I just want to know that he’s there, so that I can die knowing there’s going to be someone I can punch in the mouth on the other end.”
― Mira Grant, Deadline

“She really talks to you, doesn't she?" She asked. "it's not just you talking to her. She talks BACK."
"hel, half the time she starts it." I said, half-defensively. "I know it's weird."
"Well, yes, it's weird. Technically, I think it's insane. But who am I to judge?" Maggie shrugged. "I live in a house most people view as the setting of a horror movie waiting to happen, with an army of security ninjas and a couple dozen epileptic dogs for company. I don't think I'm qualified to pass judgement on 'weird'.”
― Mira Grant, Deadline

“Marry, don't marry,' Auntie Aya says as we unfold layers of dough to make an apple strudel.

Just don't have your babies unless it's absolutely necessary.'

How do I know if it's necessary?'

She stops and stares ahead, her hands gloved in flour. 'Ask yourself, Do I want a baby or do I want to make a cake? The answer will come to you like bells ringing.' She flickers her fingers in the air by her ear. 'For me, almost always, the answer was cake.”
― Diana Abu-Jaber, The Language of Baklava: A Memoir

“When Matussem Ramoud opened his eyes each morning, his wife would still not be there. ”
― Diana Abu-Jaber, Arabian Jazz

“The streets of Aqaba are shell spirals and, on summer nights, crowded and complicated as a woman's heart.”
― Diana Abu-Jaber, Crescent

“He tells about his Sudanese roommate at Georgetown who owned a prayer rug with a compass to find Mecca built right into it. "After a few weeks in America, he rolled it up and used the compass to go camping," Han says.”
― Diana Abu-Jaber, Crescent

“What about Danny Thomas?" Uncle Hal asks. "What happened to him?

"Dead," Uncle Abdelhafiz says. "Nice Lebanese boy."
"Never mind about Danny Thomas, look what happened to your whole family! Look at your cousin Farouq, Great Uncle Ziad, Auntie Seena and Jimmy's son Jalal," Aunt Jean cuts in disapprovingly.
"Dead, dead, dead, and in jail.”
― Diana Abu-Jaber, The Language of Baklava: A Memoir

“I’m in my junior year but I can’t take it anymore. The beige walls, the scent of linoleum and used lockers, the shrill bell between classes. High school is sucking the life out of me.”
― Diana Abu-Jaber, The Language of Baklava: A Memoir

“Dad says that everyone invented baklava.” It occurs to me now to wonder what that means. Aunt Aya rolls her eyes.
“Your father? He is the worst of the worst. He thinks he cooks and eats Arabic food but these walnuts were not grown from Jordanian earth and this butter was not made from Jordanian lambs. He is eating the shadow of a memory. He cooks to remember but the more he eats, the more he forgets.”
― Diana Abu-Jaber, The Language of Baklava: A Memoir

“My mind flashed back to the Cultural Revolution, when a group of Red Guards pulled our neighbor, Granny Li, out of the opera company’s dormitory block and ordered the rest of us to bring out our thermos flasks. We then had to stand and watch as the Red Guards poured ten flasks of boiling water over Granny Li’s head.”
― Ma Jian, Beijing Coma

“Before the counter-culture revolutionary Li Lian was executed in 1971 for criticising the Cultural Revolution, pour policemen pushed her face against the window of a truck, lifted her shirt and cut out her kidneys with a surgical knife,’ Mau Sen said, his face stony and white. ‘I think that removing the organs of convicts while they are still alive is too much. It completely contravenes medical ethics.’ ‘This is a dissection class, not a political meeting,’ Sun Chunlin said.”
― Ma Jian, Beijing Coma

“On July 3, 1968, Chairman Mao issued an order calling for the ruthless suppression of class enemies. He wanted all members of the Five Black Categories to be eliminated, together with TWENTY THREE NEW TYPES of enemy , which included anyone who had ever served as a policeman before the Liberation, or who had been sent to prison or labor camp. And not only them but their family and distant relatives as well.
That’s a lot of people.

Yes. Just think, the literal meaning of the Chinese characters for “revolution” is “elimination of life”
― Ma Jian, Beijing Coma

“Before the sparrow arrived, you had almost stopped thinking about flight. Then, last winter, it soared through the sky and landed in front of you, or more precisely on the windowsill of the covered balcony adjoining your bedroom. You knew the grimy window panes were caked with dead ants and dust, and smelt as sour as the curtains. But the sparrow wasn’t put off. It jumped inside the covered balcony and ruffled its feathers, releasing a sweet smell of tree bark into the air. Then it flew into your bedroom, landed on your chest and stayed there like a cold egg.”
― Ma Jian, Beijing Coma

“I see my skeleton walking down the street now. I’m walking behind it. Our feet touch the ground at the same time. I am my own shadow. The road we’re walking along looks familiar. The trees lining the pavement have been bleached by the sun. There are stone steps on my left. I climb them. This is the route I used to take after school. It’s very dark. The skeleton has disappeared.”
― Ma Jian, Beijing Coma

“If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“Naturally Shirley had known, as they slid stock words and phrases back and forth between them like beads on an abacus, that Howard must be as brimful of ecstasy as she was; but to express these feelings out loud, when the news of death was still fresh in the air, would have been tantamount to dancing naked and shrieking obscenities, and Howard and Shirley were clothed, always, in an invisible layer of decorum that they never laid aside.”
― J.K. Rowling, The Casual Vacancy

“Secrets have power. And that power diminishes when they are shared, so they are best kept and kept well. Sharing secrets, real secrets, important ones, with even one other person, will change them. Writing them down is worse, because who can tell how many eyes might see them inscribed on paper, no matter how careful you might be with it. So it's really best to keep your secrets when you have them, for their own good, as well as yours.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“Only the ship is made of books, its sails thousands of overlapping pages, and the sea it floats upon is dark black ink.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“I do not mourn the loss of my sister because she will always be with me, in my heart," she says. "I am, however, rather annoyed that my Tara has left me to suffer you lot alone. I do not see as well without her. I do not hear as well without her. I do not feel as well without her. I would be better off without a hand or a leg than without my sister. Then at least she would be here to mock my appearance and claim to be the pretty one for a change. We have all lost our Tara, but I have lost a part of myself as well.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“And there are never really endings, happy or otherwise. Things keep going on, they overlap and blur, your story is part of your sister's story is part of many other stories, and there is no telling where any of them may lead.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“Good and evil are a great deal more complex than a princess and a dragon . . . is not the dragon the hero of his own story?”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus