Matthew > Matthew's Quotes

“If you're crazy, there's two things you can do to make yourself feel better: One is to get yourself cured. The other is to make everyone you have to deal with crazy.”
― Alan Dean Foster

“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., A Man Without a Country

“I am not sure I trust you."
"You can trust me with your life, My King."
"But not with my wine, obviously. Give it back.”
― Megan Whalen Turner, The King of Attolia

“When I am asked
how I began writing poems,
I talk about the indifference of nature.”
― Lisel Mueller, Alive Together

“Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.”
― Khalil Gibran, Kahlil Gibran, The Collected Works

“He held her like a new woman

and what she felt
felt almost as good as love had,
and each of them called it love
because precision didn’t matter anymore.”
― Stephen Dunn

“Hard to find anything lovelier than a tree. They grow at right angles to a tangent of the nominal sphere of the Earth.”
― Bill Nye

“So books are real to me, too; they link me not just with other minds but with the vision of other minds, what those minds understand and see. I see their worlds as well as I see my own.”
― Philip K. Dick, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

“Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good”
― Ezra Pound

“Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“I learn a great deal by merely observing you, and letting you talk as long as you please, and taking note of what you do not say.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Considering the ways in which so many of us waste our time, what would be wrong with a world in which everybody were writing poems? After all, there’s a significant service to humanity in spending time doing no harm. While you’re writing your poem, there’s one less scoundrel in the world. And I’d like a world, wouldn’t you, in which people actually took time to think about what they were saying? It would be, I’m certain, a more peaceful, more reasonable place. I don’t think there could ever be too many poets. By writing poetry, even those poems that fail and fail miserably, we honor and affirm life. We say ‘We loved the earth but could not stay.”
― Ted Kooser, The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets

“This is one moment, / But know that another / Shall pierce you with a sudden painful joy.”
― T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral

“I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

“Woke up this morning with a terrific urge to lie in bed all day and read.”
― Raymond Carver

“All was forgiven.

All living things were brothers, and all dead things were even more so.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

“Im haunted a little this evening by feelings that have no vocabulary and events that should be explained in dimensions of lint rather than words.

Ive been examining half-scraps of my childhood. They are pieces of distant life that have no form or meaning. They are things that just happened like lint.”
― Richard Brautigan

“Late Fragment

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.”
― Raymond Carver, A New Path to the Waterfall

“The dog’s agenda is simple, fathomable, overt: I want. “I want to go out, come in, eat something, lie here, play with that, kiss you. There are no ulterior motives with a dog, no mind games, no second-guessing, no complicated negotiations or bargains, and no guilt trips or grudges if a request is denied.”
― Caroline Knapp

“The dog is the most faithful of animals and would be much esteemed were it not so common. Our Lord God has made His greatest gifts the commonest.”
― Martin Luther

“When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.”
― Mary Oliver

“Charles is going to be fine," said Annie.
"Yep," said Jack with a smile. "He never even knew that it was us who helped him."
"That's the best way to help someone, I think," said Annie.
"Why?" asked Jack.
"Then you know you're not helping them just to get a lot of credit," said Annie. "You're helping because it's the right thing to do.”
― Mary Pope Osborne, A Ghost Tale for Christmas Time

“Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Said the river: imagine everything you can imagine, then keep on going.”
― Mary Oliver

“I’ve written this poem before but always through a window, never through an open door.”
― Andrea Gibson

“I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed.”
― Mary Oliver

“it never happened
but it seemed like
there were times when rot
stopped
waited like a streetcar
at a signal.”
― Charles Bukowski, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame