Useful Things Quotes (page 9)
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There is nothing more terrible, I learned, than having to face the objects of a dead man. Things are inert: that have meaning only in function of the life that makes use of them. When that life ends, the things change, even though they remain the same. […] they say something to us, standing there not as objects but as remnants of thought, of consciousness, emblems of the solitude in which a man comes to make decisions about himself.
Paul Auster
The poetic impulse is distinct from ideas about things or feelings about things, though it may use these. It's more like a desire to separate a piece of one's experience & set it up on its own, an isolated object never to trouble you again, at least not for a bit. In the absence of this impulse nothing stirs.
Philip Larkin
There was a language in the world that everyone understood, a language the boy had used throughout the time that he was trying to improve things at the shop. It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired.
Paulo Coelho
Leah: "That is easily the freakin’ grossest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Yuck. If there was anything in my stomach, it would be coming back."
Seth: "They are vampires, I guess. I mean, it makes sense, and if it helps Bella, it’s a good thing, right?"
Leah and Jake stare at Seth.
Seth: "What?"
Leah: "Mom dropped him a lot when he was a baby."
Jake: "On his head apparently."
Leah: "He used to gnaw on the crib bars, too."
Jake: "Lead paint?"
Leah: "Looks like it."
Seth: "Funny. Why don’t...
Stephenie Meyer
It's just because I have picked a little about mystics that I have no use for mystagogues. Real mystics don't hide mysteries, they reveal them. They set a thing up in broad daylight, and when you've seen it it's still a mystery. But the mystagogues hide a thing in darkness and secrecy, and when you find it, it's a platitude.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
How many times in life can we make decisions that are important but will not hurt anyone? Are we obligated- maybe we are- to say yes to any choice when no one will be hurt? We use the word hurt when talking about things like this because when these things go wrong it can feel as if you were hit in the sternum by a huge animal that's run for miles just to strike you.
Dave Eggers
I'm used to keeping things to myself, it's habit. And then... And then I kept things from you because the harder I fell in love with you, the more terrified I was. Look, damn it, I didn't want to depend on anyone for-" He broke off to drag a hand through his hair."For what?"For being there when I needed them," he said on a long breath.
Nora Roberts
I can’t believe THAT!” said Alice.
Can’t you?” said the Queen in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said, “one can’t believe impossible things.”
I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why sometimes I believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!
Lewis Carroll
We are so used to the notion of our own inevitability as life's dominant species that it is hard to grasp that we are here only because of timely extraterrestrial bangs and other random flukes. The one thing we have in common with all other living things is that for nearly four billions years our ancestors have managed to slip through a series of closing doors every time we needed them to.
Bill Bryson
I know, somewhere in me, that it's not her that's being stupid. I understand, on one level, that she doesn't know, that everything's up in the air. But that's no use to me. You know the worst thing about being rejected? The lack of control. If you could only control the when and how of being dumped by somebody, then it wouldn't seem as bad. But then, of course, it wouldn't be rejection, would it? It would be by mutual consent. It would be musical differences. I would be leaving to pursue a...
Nick Hornby
When the police arrived and found no lion, no broken wall, and no convicts, and the Head behaving like a lunatic, there was an inquiry into the whole thing. And in the inquiry all sorts of things about Experiment House came out, and about ten people got expelled. After that, the Head's friends saw that the Head was no use as a Head, so they got her made an Inspector to interfere with other Heads. And when they found she wasn't much good even at that, they got her into Parliament where she...
C. S. Lewis
Words are things. You must be careful, careful about calling people out of their names, using racial pejoratives and sexual pejoratives and all that ignorance. Don’t do that. Some day we’ll be able to measure the power of words. I think they are things. They get on the walls. They get in your wallpaper. They get in your rugs, in your upholstery, and your clothes, and finally in to you.
Maya Angelou
Siobhan said that when you are writing a book you have to include some descriptions of things. I said that I could take photographs and put them in the book. But she said the idea of a book was to describe things using words so that people could read them and make a picture in their own head.
Mark Haddon