Supposing Quotes (page 59)
If I’d found out that Norman Mailer liked me, I’d have killed myself. I think he was too hung up. I’m glad Kurt Vonnegut didn’t like me either. He had problems, terrible problems. He couldn’t see the world the way I see it. I suppose I’m too much Pollyanna, he was too much Cassandra. Actually I prefer to see myself as the Janus, the two-faced god who is half Pollyanna and half Cassandra, warning of the future and perhaps living too much in the past—a combination of both. But I don’t think I’m...
Ray Bradbury
You cling so tightly to your purity, my lad! How terrified you are of sullying
your hands. Well, go ahead then, stay pure! What good will it do, and why
even bother coming here among us? Purity is a concept of fakirs and friars.
But you, the intellectuals, the bourgeois anarchists, you invoke purity as
your rationalization for doing nothing. Do nothing, don’t move, wrap your
arms tight around your body, put on your gloves. As for myself, my hands
are dirty. I have plunged my arms up to the...
Jean-Paul Sartre
Want a sugar cube? [...] They're supposed to be for the horses, but who cares? They've got years to eat sugar, whereas you and I . . . well, if we see something sweet we better grab it quick. [...] You're absolutely terrifying me in that get-up. What happened to the pretty little-girl dresses?
Suzanne Collins
I may not know the weight of those things, but I could feel the weight of that one, so I kept it to myself. You know that things aren't going well for you when you can't even tell people the simplest fact about your life, just because they'll presume you're asking them to feel sorry for you. I suppose it's why you feel so far away from everyone, in the end; anything you can think of to tell them just ends up making them feel terrible.
Nick Hornby