Jaycob > Jaycob's Quotes

“He was going to live forever, or die in the attempt.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“Can one drown in one's element... If fish can drown in water, can human beings suffocate in air?”
― Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

“Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.”
― Joseph Heller

“...[A]nything worth dying for ... is certainly worth living for.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“The half-life of love is forever.”
― Junot Díaz, This Is How You Lose Her

“How many times had those awful words - "I know what I'm doing" - been uttered throughout history as prelude to disaster? ”
― Christopher Buckley, Supreme Courtship

“Whenever someone who knows you disappears, you lose one version of yourself. Yourself as you were seen, as you were judged to be. Lover or enemy, mother or friend, those who know us construct us, and their several knowings slant the different facets of our characters like diamond-cutter's tools. Each such loss is a step leading to the grave, where all versions blend and end.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet

“You can't really be strong until you can see a funny side to things.”
― Ken Kesey

“Don't gobblefunk around with words.”
― Roald Dahl, The BFG

“I mingle with my peers or no one, and since I have no peers, I mingle with no one.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“...sometimes a start is all we ever get.”
― Junot Díaz, This Is How You Lose Her

“Between notes, he had contemplated means of destroying Myrna Minkoff but had reached no satisfactory conclusion. His most promising scheme had involved getting a book on munitions from the library, constructing a bomb, and mailing it in plain paper to Myrna. Then he remembered that his library card had been revoked.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“... I tried to end our little duel. I called out pacifying words; I entreated; I finally surrendered. Still Clyde came, my pirate costume so great a success that it had apparently convinced him that we were back in the golden days of romantic old New Orleans when gentlemen decided matters of hot dog honor at twenty paces”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“Like a bitch in heat, I seem to attract a coterie of policemen and sanitation officials. ”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“Success, after all, loves a witness, but failure can't exist without one.”
― Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

“For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“He fought because he actually felt safer fighting than running.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“You know how you let yourself think that everything will be all right if you can only get to a certain place or do a certain thing. But when you get there you find it's not that simple.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“But how can one be warm alone?”
― Joseph Heller, God Knows

“Do you know how long a year takes when it's going away?' Dunbar repeated to Clevinger. 'This long.' He snapped his fingers. 'A second ago you were stepping into college with your lungs full of fresh air. Today you're an old man.'

'Old?' asked Clevinger with surprise. 'What are you talking about?'

'Old.'

'I'm not old.'

'You're inches away from death every time you go on a mission. How much older can you be at your age? A half minute before that you were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before that you were a small kid with a ten-week summer vacation that lasted a hundred thousand years and still ended too soon. Zip! They go rocketing by so fast. How the hell else are you ever going to slow down?' Dunbar was almost angry when he finished.

'Well, maybe it is true,' Clevinger conceded unwillingly in a subdued tone. 'Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it's to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?'

'I do,' Dunbar told him.

'Why?' Clevinger asked.

'What else is there?”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“In history there are no control groups. There is no one to tell us what might have been. We weep over the might have been, but there is no might have been. There never was. It is supposed to be true that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. I don't believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood and this is a thing that even God--who knows all that can be known--seems powerless to change.”
― Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

“Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.”
― Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

“No one can tell you what your life is goin to be, can they?

No.

It's never like what you expected.

Quijada nodded. If people knew the story of their lives how many would then elect to live them?”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing

“He asked her out and she told him she wouldnt go out with a man that drank. He looked her straight in the eye and told her he didnt drink. She like to fell over backwards. I guess it come as somethin of a shock to her to meet a even bigger liear than what she was. But he told the naked truth. Of course she called hishand on it. Said she knew for a fact he drank. Said everbody in Jeff Davis County knew he drank and drank plenty and was wild as a buck. He never batted a eye. Said he used to but he quit. She asked him when did he quit and he said I just now did. And she went out with him. And as far as I know he never took another drink. Till she quit him of course. By then he had a lot of catchin up to do. Tell me about the evils of liquor. Liquor aint nothin. But he was changed from that day.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Cities of the Plain

“The martyr who longs for the flames can be no right candidate for them.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Cities of the Plain

“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“The master says it’s a glorious thing to die for the Faith and Dad says it’s a glorious thing to die for Ireland and I wonder if there’s anyone in the world who would like us to live.”
― Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes

“When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.”
― Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes

“I am for who i was in the beginning but now is present and i exist in the future.”
― Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes