Things Learned Quotes (page 22)
I attributed their behavior to the fact that they didn't have a TV, but television didn't teach you everything. Asking for candy on Halloween was called trick-or-treating, but asking for candy on November first was called begging, and it made people uncomfortable. This was one of the things you were supposed to learn simply by being alive, and it angered me that the Tomkeys did not understand it.
David Sedaris
. . . What do you wish to be? What would you like to become?”
I did not know, and I told her so, but the question worried me. Should I know?
“There is time,” she said, “but the sooner you know, the sooner you can plan. To have a goal is the important thing, and to work toward it. Then, if you decide you wish to do something different, you will at least have been moving, you will have been going somewhere, you will have been learning.
Louis L'Amour
At that time, he was satisfying a sensual curiosity by experiencing the pleasures of people who live for love. He had believed he could stop there, that he would not be obliged to learn their sorrows; how small a thing her charm was for him now compared with the astounding terror that extended out from it like a murky halo, the immense anguish of not knowing at every moment what she had been doing, of not possessing her everywhere and always!
Marcel Proust
Psychoanalysis provides truth in an infantile, that is, a schoolboy fashion: we learn from it, roughly and hurriedly, things that scandalize us and thereby command our attention. It sometimes happens, and such is the case here, that a simplification touching upon the truth, but cheaply, is of no more value than a lie. Once again we are shown the demon and the angel, the beast and the god locked in Manichean embrace, and once again man has been pronounced, by himself, not culpable.
Stanislaw Lem
A mountain is a strange and awful thing. In old times, without knowingso much of their strangeness and awfulness as we do, people were yetmore afraid of mountains. But then somehow they had not come to seehow beautiful they are as well as awful, and they hated them--and whatpeople hate they must fear. Now that we have learned to look at themwith admiration, perhaps we do not feel quite awe enough of them. Tome they are beautiful terrors.
George MacDonald
Books lie, he said.God dont lie.No, said the judge. He does not. And these are his words.He held up a chunk of rock.He speaks in stones and trees, the bones of things.The squatters in their rags nodded among themselves and were soon reckoning him correct, this man of learning, in all his speculations, and this the judge encouraged until they were right proselytes of the new order whereupon he laughed at them for fools.
Cormac McCarthy
My favorite six letter word is
always
because it promises
so much.
My favorite five letter word is
never
because it insists on contradicting
the promise.
My favorite four letter word is
once
because it says it
happened then.
My favorite three letter word is
yes
because I’m just now learning
to say it
to my heart.
My favorite two letter word is
if
because it makes
all things possible
like this:
If not always
If not never
Then once.
Yes.
Kate DiCamillo
I never ask my wife about my flaws. Instead I try to get her to ignore them and concentrate on my sense of humor. You don't want any woman to look under the carpet, guys, because there's lots of flaws underneath. Joanne believes my character in a film we did together, 'Mr. and Mrs. Bridge' comes closest to who I really am. I personally don't think there's one character who comes close . . . but I learned a long time ago not to disagree on things that I don't have a solid opinion about.
Paul Newman