Doug Dorst > Quotes

“What begins at the water shall end there, and what ends there shall once more begin.”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“-It's extremely cool how the words can stay the same but their meaning can change.
-Because the reader changes.
-EXACTLY”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“Do you always travel with such cumbersome books?" "I don't trust anyone who wouldn't.”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“It was stolen. As most beautiful things eventually are.”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“- I can't make choices like that without knowing who I am. Without knowing all the implications.
- You can't ever know in advance. Big decisions require faith.”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“They all occupied the same space but did not occupy it together. Imagine a thousand leaves of tracing paper, each with one person lightly pencilled on it, all stacked atop a scene of a frozen city block. A thousand discreet and solitary realities that appear to be occurring in the same location.”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“He is a man without a past sailing in a strange sea in a world where the stars have come loose in the firmament.”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“For one moment, it is more important to take in the spectacular than to worry about the pressing business of staying alive.”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“What begins at the water shall end there, and what ends there shall once more begin. Words are a gift to the dead and a warning to the living.”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“-I hate that. I hate that people can't just say what they mean.
-You don't. Not always.
-I never say anything I don't mean. I just avoid saying some things that I do.”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“Find what you love. Then fight like hell when people try to take it away from you.”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“I think it's love.'
'Funny.'
'I'm serious.'
'And your support for this is...?'
'A feeling.'
'You need more than that.”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“Of course there is a monkey. There is always a monkey.”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“There's a spiritual connection between flame and narrative.”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“When you fall in love, friends, let yourself fall.”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“...story is a fragile and ephemeral thing on its own, a thing that is easily effaced or disappeared or destroyed, and it is worth preserving.”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“You might say that S. has only himself to blame, that it is entirely his choice to fight this fight, to live a life of vigilant somnolence or somnolent vigilantism, to allow himself to be satisfied with Sola in the margins of his manuscripts instead of in his arms, and you might be right. But you ought to understand, too, that there's an attrition that takes place inside, one in which options and choices and even desires are ground ever smaller until finally their existence can no longer be confirmed by observation or weight or displacement but only by faith. Until desire is a ghost.”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“The feeling, for those seconds, is glorious—it reminds him that he is human, that he is so insignificant as to be utterly free, and he is being guided along gracefully, lovingly, by the hand of Nature—and it frees him, however transiently, from all worry and fear and fury and grief. 'I enjoyed that,' he says aloud, as much to the stars as to the rower.”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“I know the you who’s in the margins. I know you’re thinking hard about what you want and why– more than some people ever do. I know you can take on a challenge and kick its ass. And I know you’ve tried harder to understand me than anyone has in a long time.”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“I like to think he's in a better place. And besides, when you get older, you want to have something to believe in.”
― Doug Dorst, Alive in Necropolis

“This is what happens, of course: men get lost, men vanish, men are erased and reborn.”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“Everything you do means something about you.”
― Doug Dorst, Alive in Necropolis

“-That's kind of sad.
-I used to think so. Now I think: you're born a certain way. Later you get to decide how much you want to fight/change that. I don't mind being alone.
-You must mind. If you didn't you wouldn't be doing this with me.”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“Something about her in this moment strikes him as being familiar. The motion of her arm? The shape of her hand? The wrinkle of her upper lip? He does not know. Nor does he have any way to tell whether what he is sensing is a fragment of memory, a fragment of an idea of a memory, or something his mind, desperate for connections, has created on its own.”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“-Wow. So what are you living on?
-Not much. I've sold some things. It's not a bad way to live once you let go of the idea that you deserve more.”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“You can't just whistle and summon sense and order back into your mind. All you can do is button your coat, lace your boots, and trudge through the frigid business of being.”
― doug dorst, S.

“They speak little; it is as if the air has been churned up with decade's worth of fruitless pursuit and missed connections and thoughts unspoken, and they are waiting quietly for all this matter — these motes of opportunity forgone — to settle around them.”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“He is terrified, suddenly, that she will vanish again, that they will continue to age, and likely die, apart.”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“When you fall in love, friends, let yourself fall. It is my fondest wish that this note finds you both, happy, healthy and falling.”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“(...) it's the constant churn, the need to keep moving keep doing keep risking and there innt no rest f'the damned, there jus' innt.”
― Doug Dorst, S.