Amy > Amy's Quotes

“All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster's autobiography.”
― Federico Fellini

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
― Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked

“But we were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments? Or our treaties whatever they may be worth; our symphonies however seldom they may be played; our peaceful acres, however frequently they may be converted into battlefields; our dreams however rarely they may be accomplished. The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen. We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses.”
― Robert Ardrey, African Genesis: A Personal Investigation Into the Animal Origins and nature of Man

“Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“This country is founded on some very noble ideals but also some very big lies. One is that everyone has a fair chance at success. Another is that rich people have to be smart and hardworking or else they would´t be rich. Another is that if you´re not rich, don´t worry about it, because rich people aren´t really happy. I am the white male living proof that all of that is garbage. The vast degree to which my mental health improved once I had the smallest measure of economic security immediately unmasked this shameful fiction to me. Money cannot buy happiness, but it buys the conditions for happiness: time, occasional freedom from constantly worry, a moment of breath to plan for the future, and the ability to be generous.”
― John Hodgman, Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches

“There are transitions in life whether we want them or not. You get older. You lose jobs and loves and people. The story of your life may change dramatically, tragically, or so quietly you don´t even notice. It´s never any fun, but it can´t be avoided. Sometimes you just have to walk into the cold dark water of the unfamiliar and suffer for a while. You have to go slow, breathe, don´t stop, get your head under, and then wait. And soon you get used to it. Soon the pain is gone and you have forgotten it because you are swimming, way out here where it´s hard and where you were scared to go, swimming sleekly through the new.”
― John Hodgman

“Wine, on the other hand, is like religion: it’s mysterious, sometimes literally opaque, and there are too many kinds of it. You never really know if a particular wine is good or bad; you just have to take it on faith from some judgy wine priest, an initiate to its mysteries. And wine is also like religion because the people who really get into it tend to be fucking unbearable.”
― John Hodgman, Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches

“Moxie’s own medicinal cred derived from a bitter slap of gentian root, giving it a flavor profile somewhere between Dr Pepper and witch hazel. It is difficult to enjoy even ironically, and so it has largely stayed within the confines of Massachusetts and Maine, where it is sometimes mixed with coffee brandy, as the people of Maine have a punishing streak of self-hatred that makes Bostonians seem like lighthearted imps.”
― John Hodgman, Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches

“Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all.”
― Neil Gaiman, The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline