Carrie > Carrie's Quotes

“Because quitting might be easier, but it wouldn’t be better”
― Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

“Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.”
― Maurice Sendak

“I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow; but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”
― Agatha Christie

“Being a nerd, which is to say going too far and caring too much about a subject, is the best way to make friends I know.”
― Sarah Vowell, The Partly Cloudy Patriot

“If your heart beats like a drum, and your legs a little wet, it’s because the Reaper’s come to collect a little debt.”
― Pierce Brown, Morning Star

“What is pride without honor? What is honor without truth? Honor is not what you say. It is not what you read.” Romulus thumps his chest. “Honor is what you do.”
― Pierce Brown, Morning Star

“You know a people have given up when they stop teaching their children.”
― Pierce Brown, Morning Star

“I will give Eo your love. I will make a house for you in the Vale of your fathers. It will be beside my own. Join me there when you die.” He grins. “But I am no builder. So take your time. We will wait.”
― Pierce Brown, Morning Star

“You are defined not by life's imperfect moments, but by your reaction to them.”
― Jenny Lawson, Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“In San Antonio the crowd was small because it was the same day as the huge local Fiesta celebration. A man stepped out of the crowd to tell me that he had read the book and the blog and felt very sorry for my husband. I told him that Victor was sitting right around the corner if he'd prefer to have him sign the book. He did, and as he left I think I saw him give my husband the victory sign, as if Victor was some sort of POW. In a way, I saw his point.”
― Jenny Lawson, Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

“In the dark you find yourself, all bones and exhaustion and helplessness. In the dark you find your basest self. In the dark you find the bottom of watery trenches the rest of the world only sees the surface of.”
― Jenny Lawson

“Pretend you’re good at it.”
― Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

“I wish someone had told me this simple but confusing truth: Even when everything’s going your way you can still be sad. Or anxious. Or uncomfortably numb. Because you can’t always control your brain or your emotions even when things are perfect.”
― Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

“But the real world doesn't go away. Racism exists. People are getting hurt. And just because it's not happening to you, doesn't mean it's not happening. And at some point you have to choose; black or white, pick a side. You can try to hide from it. You can say, oh I don't take sides, but at some point, life will force you to pick a side.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“Trevor, remember a man is not determined by how much he earns. You can still be a man of the house and earn less than your woman. Being a man is not what you have, it's who you are. Being more of a man doesn't mean your woman has to be less than you.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“People thought my mom was crazy. Ice rinks and drive-ins and suburbs, these things were izinto zabelungu -- the things of white people. So many people had internalized the logic of apartheid and made it their own. Why teach a black child white things? Neighbors and relatives used to pester my mom: 'Why do this? Why show him the world when he's never going to leave the ghetto?'

'Because,' she would say, 'even if he never leaves the ghetto, he will know that the ghetto is not the world. If that is all I accomplish, I've done enough.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“You do not write your life with words...You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Don't let the bastards grind you down.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore, it knows it’s not foolin’ a soul.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“You and I keep looking for light in the darkness, expecting it to appear. But it already has.” I touch his shoulder. “We’re it, boyo. Broken and cracked and stupid as we are, we’re the light, and we’re spreading.”
― Pierce Brown, Morning Star

“You don't run,' he corrected me. 'But you're more than able.' There was no shadow of doubt in his voice. Hearing it from someone else made me realize: there was nothing stopping me from running but me.”
― Alexandra Heminsley, Running Like a Girl

“I enjoyed having my body praised for what it could do rather than how it looked.”
― Alexandra Heminsley, Running Like a Girl: Notes on Learning to Run

“No one tells you it's all about to change, to be taken away. There's no proximity alert, no indication that you're standing on the precipice. And maybe that's what makes tragedy so tragic. Not just what happens, but how it happens: a sucker punch that comes at you out of nowhere, when you're least expecting it. No time to flinch or brace.”
― Blake Crouch, Dark Matter

“People like me know that there is no magic. There is only the grind. Work looks like magic to those unwilling to do it.”
― David Wong, Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits

“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

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”
― Elie Wiesel

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft