Ask Quotes (page 14)
What is bad? What is good? What should one love, what hate? Why live, and what am I? What is lie, what is death? What power rules over everything?" he asked himself. And there was no answer to any of these questions except one, which was not logical and was not at all an answer to these questions. This answer was: "You will die--and everything will end. You will die and learn everything--or stop asking.
Leo Tolstoy
Can you draw a picture on the blackboard when somebody doesn't want you to? asked the rooster promptly."Yes," answered Kenny," if you write them a very nice poem."What is an only goat?" "A lonely goat," answered Kenny. The rooster shut one eye and looked at Kenny."can you hear a horse on the roof?" he asked."If you know how to listen in the night," said Kenny."Can you fix a broken promise?"Yes," said Kenny,"if it only looks broken, but really isn't."The rooster drew his head back into his...
Maurice Sendak
Cheshire Cat: If I were looking for a white rabbit, I'd ask the Mad Hatter. Alice: The Mad Hatter? Oh, no no no... Cheshire Cat: Or, you could ask the March Hare, in that direction. Alice: Oh, thank you. I think I'll see him... Cheshire Cat: Of course, he's mad, too. Alice: But I don't want to go among mad people. Cheshire Cat: Oh, you can't help that. Most everyone's mad here. [laughs maniacally; starts to disappear] Cheshire Cat: You may have noticed that I'm not all there myself.
Lewis Carroll
A guy's calling to say he's failing algebra II.
Just as a point of practice, I say, Kill yourself.
A woman calls and says her kids won't behave.
Without missing a beat, I tell her, Kill yourself.
A man calls to say his car won't start.
Kill yourself.
A woman calls to ask what time the late movie starts.
Kill yourself.
She asks, "Isn't this 555-1327? Is this the Moorehouse CinePlex?
I say, Kill yourself. Kill yourself. Kill yourself.
Chuck Palahniuk
I can’t explain why, I just know. Do you remember the first question I ever asked you?”
“Yes, you asked me if I knew what being crazy meant.”
“Exactly. This time I’m not going to tell you a story. I’ll just say that insanity is the inability to communicate your ideas. It’s as if you were in a foreign country, able to see and understand everything that’s going on around you but incapable of explaining what you need to know or of being helped, because you don’t understand the language they...
Paulo Coelho
You like to tell true stories, don't you?' he asked, and I answered, 'Yes, I like to tell stories that are true.'
Then he asked, 'After you have finished your true stories sometime, why don't you make up a story and the people to go with it?
Only then will you understand what happened and why.
It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.
Norman Maclean
The days went by for him, all different and all the same. The boy was happy, and yet he didn't know that he was happy, exactly: he couldn't remember having been unhappy. If one day as he played at the edge of the forest some talking bird had flown down and asked him: "Do you like your life" he would not have known what to say, but would have asked the bird: "Can you not like it?
Randall Jarrell