Try Me Quotes (page 45)
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I don’t have the heart to tell my sons that the older one gets, the less funny literature becomes—and they would refuse to believe me if I tried to explain that some people don’t think jokes even belong in proper books. I won’t bother breaking the news that, if they remain readers, they will insist on depressing themselves for about a decade of their lives, in a concerted search of gravitas through literature.
Nick Hornby
What have you done to it, Monkeyman? - he breathed. - Well, - said Arthur, - nothing in fact. It's just that I think ashort while ago it was trying to work out how to... - Yes? - Make me some tea. - That's right guys, - the computer sang out suddenly, - just copingwith that problem right now, and wow, it's a biggy. Be with you in awhile." It lapsed back into a silence that was only matched for sheerintensity by the silence of the three people staring at Arthur...
Douglas Adams
He gave me the key, which I later discovered would open practically every door in the hotel. I thanked him, and I made a small mistake we irony collectors often make: I tried to share an irony with a stranger. It can’t be done. I told him I had been in the Arapahoe before—in Nineteen-hundred and Thirty-one. He was not interested.
Kurt Vonnegut
When I tried this morning, after an hour or so of unhappy thinking, to dip back into my meditation, I took a new idea with me: compassion. I asked my heart if it could please infuse my soul with a more generous perspective on my mind's workings. Instead of thinking that I was a failure, could I perhaps accept that I am only a human being--and a normal one, at that?
Elizabeth Gilbert
I delight to come to my bearings,—not walk in procession with pomp and parade, in a conspicuous place, but to walk even with the Builder of the universe, if I may,—not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by. What are men celebrating? They are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a speech from somebody. God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator. I love to weigh, to settle, to...
Henry David Thoreau
And I felt like my heart had been so thoroughly and irreparably broken that there could be no real joy again, that at best there might eventually be a little contentment. Everyone wanted me to get help and rejoin life, pick up the pieces and move on, and I tried to, I wanted to, but I just had to lie in the mud with my arms wrapped around myself, eyes closed, grieving, until I didn’t have to anymore.
Anne Lamott
The land belongs to the future, Carl; that's the way it seems to me. How many of the names on the county clerk's plat will be there in fifty years? I might as well try to will the sunset over there to my brother's children. We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it--for a little while.
Willa Cather
Obstinate are the trammels, but my heart aches when I try to break them. Freedom is all I want, but to hope for it I feel ashamed. I am certain that priceless wealth is in thee, and that thou art my best friend, but I have not the heart to sweep away the tinsel that fills my room. The shroud that covers me is a shroud of dust and death; I hate it, yet hug it in love. My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet when I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my...
Rabindranath Tagore
R wrote Delahaye about all that had happened to him and about what he, R, wanted:
My friend,
You’re eating white flour and mud in your pigsty. I don’t miss Charleville. I don’t miss being a bored pig where the sun dries up all brains but sloth. Your brains or feelings’re being dried up: dead pig Delahaye.
Emotions are the movers of this world.
Me: I’m thirsty. What I’m thirsty for—whom I’m thirsty for—I can’t get so I drink poisons. I’ve got to free myself. From what? Pain? Oh—for more...
Kathy Acker
It started embarrassing me. I began to feel like such a nasty little egomaniac." She reflected. "I don't know. It seemed like such poor taste, sort of, to want to act in the first place. I mean all the ego. And I used to hate myself so, when I was in a play, to be backstage after the play was over. All those egos running around feeling terribly charitable and warm. Kissing everybody and wearing their makeup all over the place, and then trying to be horribly natural and friendly when your...
J. D. Salinger