Carmen > Carmen's Quotes

“The trouble with most forms of transport, he thought, is basically one of them not being worth all the bother. On Earth — when there had been an Earth, before it was demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass — the problem had been with cars. The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm's way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another — particularly when the place you arrived at had probably become, as a result of this, very similar to the place you had left, i.e. covered with tar, full of smoke and short of fish.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Reacher said, "So here's the thing Brett. Either you take your hand off my chest, or I'll take it off your wrist.”
― Lee Child, Worth Dying For

“Don't get it right - get it WRITTEN!”
― Lee Child

“I'm a rich man. To have everything you need is the definition of affluence.”
― Lee Child, Gone Tomorrow

“A person less fortunate than yourself deserves the best you can give. Because of duty, and honor, and service. You understand those words? You should do your job right, and you should do it well, simply because you can, without looking for notice or reward.”
― Lee Child, Nothing to Lose

“Now they broke my toothbrush, I don't own anything.”
― Lee Child, Bad Luck and Trouble

“Evaluate. Long experience had taught me to evaluate and assess. When the unexpected gets dumped on you, don’t waste time. Don’t figure out how or why it happened. Don’t recriminate. Don’t figure out whose fault it is. Don’t work out how to avoid the same mistake next time. All of that you do later. If you survive.”
― Lee Child, Killing Floor

“To fill a small bag means selecting,and choosing, and evaluating. There's no logicial end to that process. Pretty soon I would have a big bag, and then two or three. A month later I'd be like the rest of you.”
― Lee Child, 61 Hours

“Evil has an ordinary face. It laughs, it cries, it deflects, it rationalizes, it makes great pasta.”
― James B. Comey, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership

“Ethical leaders do not run from criticism, especially self-criticism, and they don’t hide from uncomfortable questions. They welcome them.”
― James B. Comey, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership

“Doubt, I’ve learned, is wisdom. And the older I get, the less I know for certain. Those leaders who never think they are wrong, who never question their judgments or perspectives, are a danger to the organizations and people they lead. In some cases, they are a danger to the nation and the world.”
― James B. Comey, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership

“Speaking uphill takes courage. It takes overcoming a universal human affliction—the impostor complex. All of us labor, to one degree or another, under the belief that if other people really knew us, if they knew us the way we know ourselves, they would think less of us. That’s the impostor complex—the fear that by showing ourselves we will be exposed as the flawed person we are. If you don’t have this, in some measure, you are an incredible jerk and should stop reading immediately.”
― James B. Comey, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership

“Effective leaders almost never need to yell. The leader will have created an environment where disappointing him causes his people to be disappointed in themselves. Guilt and affection are far more powerful motivators than fear. The great coaches of team sports are almost always people who simply need to say, in a quiet voice, “That wasn’t our best, now was it?” and his players melt. They love this man, know he loves them, and will work tirelessly not to disappoint him. People are drawn to this kind of leader, as I was drawn all those years ago to Harry Howell, the grocer. A leader who screams at his employees or belittles them will not attract and retain great talent over the long term.”
― James B. Comey, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership

“We all have a tendency to surrender our moral authority to “the group,” to still our own voices and assume that the group will handle whatever difficult issue we face. We imagine that the group is making thoughtful decisions, and if the crowd is moving in a certain direction, we follow, as if the group is some moral entity larger than ourselves. In the face of the herd, our tendency is to go quiet and let the group’s brain and soul handle things. Of course, the group has no brain or soul separate from each of ours. But by imagining that the group has these centers, we abdicate responsibility, which allows all groups to be hijacked by the loudest voice, the person who knows how brainless groups really are and uses that to his advantage.”
― James Comey, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership

“I was preoccupied about keeping a healthy distance from Trump. So I figured out which way the president would likely enter the room and mingled my way to the opposite end, by the windows looking over the South Lawn toward the Washington Monument. I couldn’t get farther away without climbing out of the window, an option that would begin to look more appealing as time went by.”
― James B. Comey, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership

“Dad’s problem was that he couldn’t understand why everyone else wasn’t as diligent about their duties as he was with his. He was intolerant of other people’s mistakes. As a city building inspector, he was a major pain in the ass to every Promise Falls contractor and developer. Behind his back they called him Don Hardass. When he got wind of that, he had some business cards made up with his new nickname.”
― Linwood Barclay, Never Look Away

“When you leave the spoons to dry like this without turning them over, the water ends up leaving a mark,” he’d say to my mother, holding up one of the offensive items of cutlery.”
― Linwood Barclay, Never Look Away

“Jan and I knew, when we left Ethan with his grandparents, as we did through the week when we both went to work, that he wasn’t going to be exposed to any hazards. No frayed light cords, no poisonous chemicals left where he could get his hands on them, no upturned carpet edges he could run and trip on. And their rates just happened to be more reasonable than any nursery schools in the area.”
― Linwood Barclay, Never Look Away

“What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly . . . it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“To know which path to take, it helps to take a few wrong ones.”
― Matt Haig, The Comfort Book

“I used to worry about fitting in until I realized the reason I didn't fit in was because I didn't want to.”
― Matt Haig, The Comfort Book

“The hardest dream of all is the dream of not being tormented by our unlived dreams. To cope with and accept unfulfillment as a natural human condition. To be complete in our incompleteness. To be free from the shackles of memory, and ambition, to be free from comparison to other people and other hypothetical selves, and to meet the moment without any other agenda, to exist as freely as time itself.”
― Matt Haig, The Comfort Book

“If we demand the future be free from suffering in order to be happy; we can't be happy.”
― Matt Haig, The Comfort Book

“The present is known. The future is unknown. The present is solid. The future is abstract. Ruining the present by worrying about the future is like burning your most treasured possession simply because you might one day lose other possessions that you don't own yet.”
― Matt Haig, The Comfort Book