Zabusander > Zabusander's Quotes

“I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“Growing up, I took so many cues from books. They taught me most of what I knew about what people did, about how to behave. They were my teachers and my advisers.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“To speak is to stumble, to hesitate, to detour and hit dead ends. To listen is straightforward. You can always just listen.”
― Miri Yū , Tokyo Ueno Station

“I started inventing things, and then I couldn’t stop, like beavers, which I know about. People think they cut down trees so they can build dams, but in reality it’s because their teeth never stop growing, and if they didn’t constantly file them down by cutting through all of those trees, their teeth would start to grow into their own faces, which would kill them. That’s how my brain was.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“You don't pass or fail at being a person, dear.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“There's nothing wrong with not understanding yourself.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I took joy in the things that made me happy.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“I wondered, for the first time in my life, if life was worth all the work it took to live. What exactly made it worth it?”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“I spent my life learning to feel less. Every day I felt less. Is that growing old? Or is it something worse?”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“I wasn’t having second thoughts, but I was having thoughts.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“Hilta laughed like someone who had thought hard about Life and had seen the joke.”
― Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

“I'm tired of the news. I'm tired of the way it makes things spectacular that aren't, and deals so simplistically with what's truly appalling. I'm tired of the vitriol. I'm tired of anger. I'm tired of the meanness. I'm tired of selfishness. I'm tired of how we're doing nothing to stop it. I'm tired of how we're encourageing it. I'm tired of the violence that's on it's way, that's coming, that hasn't happened yet. I'm tired of liars. I'm tired of sanctified liars. I'm tired of how those liars have let this happen. I'm tired of having to wonder whether they did it out of stupidity or did it on purpose. I'm tired of lying governments. I'm tired of people not caring whether they're being lied to anymore. I'm tired of being made to feel this fearful.”
― Ali Smith, Autumn

“Very often history is a means of denying the past. Denying the past is to refuse to recognise its integrity. To fit it, force it, function it, to suck out the spirit until it looks the way you think it should. We are all historians in our small way.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“Forgetting it is important. We do it on purpose. It means we get a bit of a rest. Are you listening? We have to forget. Or we’d never sleep ever again.”
― Ali Smith, Autumn

“...is ignorance bliss, I don't know, but it's so painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“Thinking would keep me alive. But now I am alive and thinking is killing me”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“It was one of the best days of my life, a day during which I lived my life and didn't think about my life at all.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“The end of suffering does not justify the suffering, and so there is no end to suffering.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“Different people remember things differently, and you'll not get any two people to remember anything the same, whether they were there or not.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“and here you are living
despite it all”
― Rupi Kaur, The Sun and Her Flowers

“It broke my heart into more pieces than my heart was made of, why can't people say what they mean at the time?”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“It was terrible. All of the things we couldn't share. The room was filled with conversations we weren't having.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“I know there isn't no beast—not with claws and all that, I mean—but I know there isn't no fear, either."
Piggy paused.
"Unless—"
Ralph moved restlessly.
"Unless what?"
"Unless we get frightened of people.”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“There are things so horrible that even the dark is afraid of them. Most people don't know this and this is just as well because the world could not really operate if everyone stayed in bed with the blankets over their head, which is what would happen if people knew what horrors lay a shadow's width away.”
― Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

“She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you.”
― Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

“I never confused what I had with what I was.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently. Some people say there are true things to be found, some people say all kinds of things can be proved. I don't believe them. The only thing for certain is how complicated it all is, like string full of knots. It's all there but hard to find the beginning and impossible to fathom the end. The best you can do is admire the cat's cradle, and maybe knot it up a bit more.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“I felt suddenly shy. I was not used to shy. I was used to shame. Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want. Shame is when you turn your head away from something you do not want.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“That's why I love spiders. 'If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, Howl’s Moving Castle