Avoidance Quotes (page 17)
If one is to deal with people on a large scale and say what one thinks, how can one avoid melancholy? I don’t admit to being hopeless, though: only the spectacle is a profoundly strange one; and as the current answers don’t do, one has to grope for a new one, and the process of discarding the old, when one is by no means certain what to put in their place, is a sad one.
Virginia Woolf
The dwarf bread was brought out for inspection. But it was miraculous, the dwarf bread. No one ever went hungry when they had some dwarf bread to avoid. You only had to look at it for a moment, and instantly you could think of dozens of things you'd rather eat. You're boots, for example. Mountains. Raw sheep. Your own foot.
Terry Prachett
The states of birth, suffering, love, and death, are extreme states: extreme, universal, and inescapable. We all know this, but we would rather not know it. The artist is present to correct the delusions to which we are all prey in our attempts to avoid this knowledge." - James Baldwin, "The Creative Process
James Baldwin
I'm extremely profane, unconsciously so, when I see something great for the first time; I don't know why, but beauty and profanity are related to me in the same way. It may be that I want to think of art in the vernacular, but I have no control over what comes out of my mouth when my eyes take in great beauty...it might just be the reason I avoid going to museums with elderly ladies.
Vincent Price
In reality the world is made of thousands of groups of about five hundred people, all of whom will spend their lives bumping into each other, trying to avoid each other, and discovering each other in the same unlikely teashop in Vancouver. There is an unavoidability to this process. It's not even coincidence. It's just the way the world works, with no regard for individuals or propriety.
Neil Gaiman
In addition to calling each other standard names like bitch and whore, the Finches incorporated Freud's stages of psycho-sexual development into their arsenal of invectives."You're so oral. You'll never make it to genital! The most you can ever hope for is to reach anal, you immature, frigid old maid," Natalie yelled."Stop antagonizing me," Hope shouted. "Just stop transfering all this anger onto me."Your avoidance tactics are not giong to work, Miss Hope," Natalie warned. "I'm not going...
Augusten Burroughs
I don't mean to be insolent. I'm truthful. I tell the truth and the truth sometimes hurts. For instance, you have bad breath, Lieutenant. I can smell it from here. It must offend a lot of people. That's the truth. But how many people have told you that? Instead, they either lie or try to avoid your company.
Robert Cormier