Sarah Winckler > Sarah's Quotes

“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. ... Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“We don’t have children to fulfill our dreams. Children allow us to let go of the dreams we were never meant to fulfill.”
― Abraham Verghese, The Covenant of Water

“The problem with knowledge, is its inexhaustible craving. the more of it you have, the less you feel you know”
― Olivie Blake, The Atlas Six

“Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance. If the individual so resisted be of a not inhumane temper, and the resisting one perfectly harmless in his passivity, then, in the better moods of the former, he will endeavor charitably to construe to his imagination what proves impossible to be solved by his judgment.”
― Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener

“I’m just an honest person, but if I’m truly being honest, sometimes blunt is just mean. Honesty can be an excuse for bullying.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Spellshop

“She didn’t really know anything about running a shop or magic or jam… But I do know books - and that meant there was nothing she couldn’t know, eventually. That was magic in and of itself.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Spellshop

“Our very idea of productivity is premised on the idea of producing something new, whereas we do not tend to see maintenance and care as productive in the same way.”
― Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

“Even with the problem of the filter bubble aside, the platforms that we use to communicate with each other do not encourage listening. Instead they reward shouting and oversimple reaction: of having a take after having read a single headline.”
― Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

“What does it mean to construct digital worlds while the actual world is crumbling before our eyes?”
― Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

“In the face of the increasingly materialist and pragmatic orientation of our age … it would not be eccentric in future to contemplate a society in which those who live for the pleasures of the mind will no longer have the right to demand their place in the sun. The writer, the thinker, the dreamer, the poet, the metaphysician, the observer … he who tries to solve a riddle or to pass judgement will become an anachronistic figure, destined to disappear from the face of the earth like the ichthyosaur and the mammoth.”
― Giorgio de Chirico

“Political ritual requires repetition, consistency, tradition, in order to be reliable. For actions to take meaning everyone has to understand what that meaning is.”
― Matthew Gabriele, Oathbreakers: The War of Brothers That Shattered an Empire and Made Medieval Europe

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
― C.S. Lewis

“If you aim to be something you are not, you will always fail. Aim to be you. Aim to look and act and think like you. Aim to be the truest version of you. Embrace that you-ness. Endorse it. Love it. Work hard at it. And don't give a second thought when people mock it or ridicule it. Most gossip is envy in disguise.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“You don’t have to understand life. You just have to live it.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“If there was only one tree like that in the world, you would think it was beautiful. But because there are so many, you just can't see how beautiful it really is.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Fiction is the great lie that tells the truth about how the world lives!”
― Abraham Verghese, The Covenant of Water

“In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
― Abraham Verghese, The Covenant of Water

“The water she first stepped into minutes ago is long gone and yet it is here, past and present and future inexorably coupled, like time made incarnate. This is the covenant of water: that they’re all linked inescapably by their acts of commission and omission, and no one stands alone.”
― Abraham Verghese, The Covenant of Water

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to."
"I don't much care where –"
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“I don't think..." then you shouldn't talk, said the Hatter.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“Mad Hatter: “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?”
“Have you guessed the riddle yet?” the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.
“No, I give it up,” Alice replied: “What’s the answer?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said the Hatter”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“My ability to turn good news into anxiety is rivaled only by my ability to turn anxiety into chin acne.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“Politics and prostitution have to be the only jobs where inexperience is considered a virtue. In what other profession would you brag about not knowing stuff? “I’m not one of those fancy Harvard heart surgeons. I’m just an unlicensed plumber with a dream and I’d like to cut your chest open.” The crowd cheers.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“Some people say, “Never let them see you cry.” I say, if you’re so mad you could just cry, then cry. It terrifies everyone.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants