Natalie > Natalie's Quotes

“A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“I talk about going to [George W. Bush's] Inauguration and crying when he took the oath, 'cause I was so afraid he was going to wreck the economy and muck up the drinking water'... the failure of my pessimistic imagination at that moment boggles my mind now.”
― Sarah Vowell

“I no longer drink nearly as much as I used to but, still, my motto is Sine coffea nihil sum. Without coffee, I'm nothing.”
― Sarah Vowell

“Just the other day, I was in my neighborhood Starbucks, waiting for the post office to open. I was enjoying a chocolatey cafe mocha when it occurred to me that to drink a mocha is to gulp down the entire history of the New World. From the Spanish exportation of Aztec cacao, and the Dutch invention of the chemical process for making cocoa, on down to the capitalist empire of Hershey, PA, and the lifestyle marketing of Seattle's Starbucks, the modern mocha is a bittersweet concoction of imperialism, genocide, invention, and consumerism served with whipped cream on top.”
― Sarah Vowell

“If you show someone something you've written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in your coffin, and say, ‘When you’re ready’.”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

“The single best thing about coming out of the closet is that nobody can insult you by telling you what you've just told them.”
― Rachel Maddow

“I'm a fan of the volcanic imagination. It bubbles and boils below the surface; it rumbles. When it erupts, continents are born.”
― C. Alexander London

“I am still a bit mad at you for kidnapping me and putting our children's lives in danger."

"There's no how-to manual for parenting, Oggie. I'm doing the best I can.”
― C. Alexander London, We Dine With Cannibals

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

[Kung Fu Monkey -- Ephemera, blog post, March 19, 2009]”
― John Rogers

“It doesn't matter who you are or what you look like, so long as somebody loves you.”
― Roald Dahl, The Witches

“The plays should have the half-life of plutonium.”
― Suzan-Lori Parks

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”
― Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
― Plato

“There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.”
― Leonard Cohen, Selected Poems, 1956-1968

“Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

“When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“In the light, we read the inventions of others; in the darkness we invent our own stories. ”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“Annie taught me that orphanages were a blast and being rich is the only thing that matters. Grease taught me being in a gang is nonstop fun and you need to dress sexier to have any chance of keeping a guy interested.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“If you don't like Cinderella because she seems so "naive" and "weak," listen to this quote from the Walt himself: "She believed in dreams, all right, but she also believed in doing something about them. When Prince Charming didn't come along, she went over to the palace and got him.”
― Walt Disney

“Because there’s nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it’s sent away.”
― Sarah Kay

“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

“Like Lincoln, I would like to believe the ballot is stronger than the bullet. Then again, he said that before he got shot.”
― Sarah Vowell, Assassination Vacation

“However, displayed right alongside all the Confederate flag paraphernalia is a bunch of American flag merch – American flag place mats, patriotic “body crystals,” flag stickers you attach to your skin. Personally, I’m small-minded and literal enough that I see the two symbols as contradictory, especially in a time of war. But I fear that the consumer who buys a Confederate flag coffee cup, which she will then put on her American flag place mat, is the sort of sophisticated thinker who is open-minded enough that she is capable of hating blacks and Arabs at the same time.”
― Sarah Vowell, Assassination Vacation

“Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice.”
― Henry Louis Gates Jr

“We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.”
― Ray Bradbury

“I want a dyke for president. I want a person with AIDS for president and I want a fag for vice president and I want someone with no health insurance and I want someone who grew up in a place where the earth is so saturated with toxic waste that they didn’t have a choice about getting leukemia. I want a president that had an abortion at sixteen and I want a candidate who isn’t the lesser of two evils and I want a president who lost their last lover to AIDS, who still sees that in their eyes every time they lay down to rest, who held their lover in their arms and knew they were dying. I want a president with no air-conditioning, a president who has stood in line at the clinic, at the DMV, at the welfare office, and has been unemployed and laid off and sexually harassed and gaybashed and deported. I want someone who has spent the night in the tombs and had a cross burned on their lawn and survived rape. I want someone who has been in love and been hurt, who respects sex, who has made mistakes and learned from them. I want a Black woman for president. I want someone with bad teeth and an attitude, someone who has eaten that nasty hospital food, someone who crossdresses and has done drugs and been in therapy. I want someone who has committed civil disobedience. And I want to know why this isn’t possible. I want to know why we started learning somewhere down the line that a president is always a clown. Always a john and never a hooker. Always a boss and never a worker. Always a liar, always a thief, and never caught.”
― Zoe Leonard