Retta Oldfield > Retta's Quotes

“She’d worn anxiety like a thick robe for so long that it was hard for her to take it off.”
― Pernell Plath Meier, In Our Bones

“The mind is an incredibly complex machine, Stuart. Nobody fully understands the workings of it. Everyone has their own perception of the lives they lead and the environment in which they live them. For most of us, the perceptions are complimentary, so we accept reality as a collective experience. For instance, who is to say you see the colour of this t-shirt in the same way I do. We both perceive it as green, but whether or not we see the same colour, we can’t say. It doesn’t matter though as long as we all agree. Nevertheless, if a person comes in and says my t-shirt is red and everyone else says it is green then we have to question his or her perception of my t-shirt. There has to be a reason why their perception is different to ours. Of course, in that case, we would suspect colour blindness, a condition in which the receptors in the eye send erroneous signals to the brain. For whatever reason, Stuart, we are all seeing green, but you see red. We need to find out what is causing your brain to do that.”
― D.S. Smith, Unparalleled

“Monique bit at the side of lip. “He’s pretty active, I don’t want to impose…”
Tony stood and scooped up the puppy. “No, seriously, I’d love a little company.”
― Kirsten Fullmer, Problems at the Pub

“Your house, being the place in which you read, can tell us the position books occupy in your life, if they are a defense you set up to keep the outside world at a distance, if they are a dream into which you sink as if into a drug, or bridges you cast toward the outside, toward the world that interests you so much that you want to multiply and extend its dimensions through books.”
― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

“Self respect is something that can't be killed. The worst thing is to kill a man's pretense at it.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“The best luck always happens to people who don't need it.”
― Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men

“There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who believe there are two kinds of people in this world and those who are smart enough to know better.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

“has dropped into the river," said Hurry, after looking carefully along”
― James Fenimore Cooper, The Deerslayer

“When the conventional wisdom of physics seemed to conflict with an elegant theory of his, Einstein was inclined to question that wisdom rather than his theory, often to have his stubbornness rewarded.”
― Walter Isaacson

“The dead at Nyarubuye were, I'm afraid, beautiful. There was no getting around it. The skeleton is a beautiful thing. The randomness of the fallen forms, the strange tranquillity of their rude exposure, the skull here, the arm bent in some uninterpretable gesture there - these things were beautiful, and their beauty only added to the affront of the place. I couldn't settle on any meaningful response: revulsion, alarm, sorrow, grief, shame, incomprehension, sure, but nothing truly meaningful.”
― Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families

“Our spouse will usually interpret our message based on our tone of voice, not the words we use.”
― Gary Chapman, The Five Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts

“Аз съм"… Това е трудното. "Аз съм". Наистина, опитайте се да си го кажете, и вече сте си вкъщи. Кажете го с мисъл, и вече сте пълни, вече сте само вътре. Не е нужно да искате неща отвън, които да запълват празнините отвътре.”
― Fynn, Mister God, This is Anna

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest