Julia > Julia's Quotes

“It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“In Wenceslaus Square, in Prague, a guy is throwing up. Another guy comes up to him, pulls a long face, shakes his head, and says: "I know just what you mean.”
― Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

“In theory these mementos serve to bring back the moment.
In fact they serve only to make clear how inadequately I appreciated the moment when it was here.
How inadequately I appreciated the moment when it was here is something else I could never afford to see.”
― Joan Didion, Blue Nights

“That was what made travelling appeal to him - he always made new friends,and he didn't need to spend all of his time with them. When someone sees the same people every day, as had happened with him at the seminary, they wind up becoming a part of that person's life.And then they want the person to change. If someone isn't what others want them to be,the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives,but none about his or her own.”
― Paulo Coelho , The Alchemist

“When each day is the same as the next, it’s because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“making a decision was only the beginning of things. When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“When you are in love, things make even more sense, he thought.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“Listen to your heart. It knows all things, because it came from the Soul of the World and it will one day return there.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“When something evolves, everything around that thing evolves as well.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“But it isn’t silly, this preoccupation with small time units. One thing late or early can disrupt everything around it, and the disturbance tuns outward in bands like the waves from a dropped stone in a quiet pool.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Old Sam Hamilton saw this coming. He said there couldn’t be any more universal philosophers. The weight of knowledge is too great for one mind to absorb. He saw a time when one man would know only one little fragment, but he would know it well.”

“Yes,” Lee said from the doorway, “and he deplored it. He hated it.”

“Did he, now?” Adam asked...

“Now you question it, I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know whether he hated it or I hate it for him... Maybe the knowledge is too great and maybe men are growing too small... Maybe kneeling down to atoms, they’re becoming atom-sized in their souls. Maybe a specialist is only a coward, afraid to look out of his little cage. And think what any specialist misses! The whole world over his fence!”

“We’re only talking about making a living.”

“A living? Or money?” Lee said excitedly. “Money’s easy to make if it’s money you want. But with a few exceptions people don’t want money. They want luxury, and they want love, and they want admiration.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“He remembered hearing a doctor say, "I love to deliver a baby, because if I do my work well, there's joy at the end of it."
The sheriff had thought often of that remark. It seemed to him that if he did his work well there was sorrow at the end of it for somebody. The fact that it was necessary was losing its weight with him. He would be retiring soon whether he wanted to or not.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Everything is only for a day, both that which remembers and that which is remembered.
"Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the universe loves nothing so much as to change things which are and to make new things like them. For everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“We're a violent people, Cal. Does it seem strange to you that I include myself? Maybe it's true, that we are all descendants of the restless, the nervous, the criminals, the arguers, and brawlers. But also the brave, and independent, and generous. If our ancestors hadn't been that, they would've stayed in their home plots in the other world and starved over the squeezed-out soil.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Lately I never felt good enough. I always wanted to explain to him that I was not good."

"And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good. Is that it?"

"I guess so. Maybe that's it.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Why wasn’t friendship as good as a relationship? Why wasn’t it even better? It was two people who remained together, day after day, bound not by sex or physical attraction or money or children or property, but only by the shared agreement to keep going, the mutual dedication to a union that could never be codified.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life