Joy > Joy's Quotes

“Being mortal is about the struggle to cope with the constraints of our biology, with the limits set by genes and cells and flesh and bone. Medical science has given us remarkable power to push against these limits, and the potential value of this power was a central reason I became a doctor. But again and again, I have seen the damage we in medicine do when we fail to acknowledge that such power is finite and always will be. We’ve been wrong about what our job is in medicine. We think our job is to ensure health and survival. But really it is larger than that. It is to enable well-being. And well-being is about the reasons one wishes to be alive. Those reasons matter not just at the end of life, or when debility comes, but all along the way. Whenever serious sickness or injury strikes and your body or mind breaks down, the vital questions are the same: What is your understanding of the situation and its potential outcomes? What are your fears and what are your hopes? What are the trade-offs you are willing to make and not willing to make? And what is the course of action that best serves this understanding?”
― Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

“She didn't remember the story, she was terrible with details, but she remembered the way it made her feel. It had this kind of warm, magical quality about it.”
― Sara Nisha Adams, The Reading List

“It’s strange how we always want other people to feel what we feel. It must be a basic human drive. Misery loves company, right? Or when you see a movie that you love, don’t you want to drag all your friends to see it as well? Because it’s only good the second time if it’s the first time for somebody else—as if their experience somehow resonates inside of you. The power of shared experiences. Maybe it’s a way to remind ourselves that on some level we’re all connected.”
― Neal Shusterman, Bruiser

“There are no wrong turnings. Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana

“Stuff your eyes with wonder, he said, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.”
― H.L. Mencken

“I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want, an adorable pancreas?”
― Jean Kerr

“Never say 'no' to adventures. Always say 'yes,' otherwise you'll lead a very dull life.”
― Ian Fleming

“John Ronald Reuel Tolkien wrote his first story aged seven. It was about a “green great dragon.” He showed it to his mother who told him that you absolutely couldn’t have a green great dragon, and that it had to be a great green one instead. Tolkien was so disheartened that he never wrote another story for years.
The reason for Tolkien’s mistake, since you ask, is that adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac. It’s an odd thing that every English speaker uses that list, but almost none of us could write it out. And as size comes before colour, green great dragons can’t exist.”
― Mark Forsyth, The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase

“Try not to sing too many sad songs for yourself. The universe already hates you. Self-pity isn't going to help.”
― Richard Kadrey, Sandman Slim

“When you're facing down multiple attackers, you always want to make the first move. It lets them know that you're ready to fight and that you're crazy enough to get the party started. One rule of thumb in fighting is that crazy can often overcome skill and numbers, because, while a trained fighter might actually enjoy going up against another trained fighter, no one really wants to wrestle with crazy. Crazy doesn't know when it's winning. And crazy doesn't know when to stop. If you can't pull off crazy, if, for instance, you're handcuffed in a small van with six armed assailants, stupid is a decent substitute for crazy.”
― Richard Kadrey, Sandman Slim

“There’s the opposite of love at first sight. There are people walking the earth that the moment you meet them, you want to punch them and keep punching them.”
― Richard Kadrey, Sandman Slim

“If Mason wasn’t crazy before, he’s definitely joined the banana army now.”
― Richard Kadrey, Sandman Slim

“The place was packed as we flooded in, all the patrons freezing at the sight of an armed sheriff, two deputies, an Indian, and a construction worker; we probably looked like the Village People.”
― Craig Johnson, Death Without Company

“...cahoots being a legal term in Wyoming, see cahooting in the first degree, intent to cahoot, and so on.”
― Craig Johnson, Death Without Company

“My medical students. Two cups of human misery in short white coats. One is male and the other one female, and they both have names. That's all I can ever remember about them.”
― Josh Bazell, Beat the Reaper

“I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“This is the only advice I can offer. Each time something like this happens, take a breath and ask yourself, honestly: Am I dead? Did I die? Is the world different? Has my soul splintered into a thousand shards and scattered to the winds? I think you’ll find, in nearly every case, that you are fine. Life rolls on. No one cares. Very few things—apart from death and crime—have real, irreversible stakes, and when something with real stakes happens, humiliation is the least of your worries.”
― Lindy West, Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

“Every human being is a wet, gassy katamari of triumphs, traumas, scars, coping mechanisms, parental baggage, weird stuff you saw on the Internet too young, pressure from your grandma to take over the bodega when what you really want to do is dance, and all the other fertilizer that makes a smear of DNA grow into a fully formed toxic avenger.”
― Lindy West, Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

“We can talk and talk and talk about what the pain is like, but we can never manage to convey what it is.”
― John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

“I can only know my pain, and you can only know yours.”
― John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

“When you have the microphone, what you say matters, even when you're just kidding.”
― John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

“I just read a list of the hundred things you should do before you die. I was kind of surprised to see that shouting for help wasn’t in there.”
― M.R. Carey, The Book of Koli

“Please try to remember that books aren’t always an escape; sometimes books teach us things. They show us the world; they don’t hide it.”
― Sara Nisha Adams, The Reading List

“So, if I can’t look back, and I can’t look forward, I’m forced to live here, right now. Today I can sit around a campfire and talk to my friends. Today I can watch the sunset, even if the outline is getting hazy. Today I have made a new friend and I’m enjoying her company and her vibrant conversation.” He makes a single, slow nod in my direction. “The Roman poet Horace said: ‘Don’t hope or fear, but seize today, you must! And in tomorrow put complete mistrust.’ All any of us have is today.”
― Sophie Cousens, Just Haven't Met You Yet

“Niceness is all about what we do when other people are looking. Kindness, on the other hand, runs deep. Kindness is what happens when no one’s looking.”
― Sangu Mandanna, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches