Sid Decesare > Sid's Quotes

“A person who becomes defensive or angry when asked to strengthen their beliefs by
questioning them is someone with an underlying fear that if they questioned their
beliefs, they may abandon them. Such people have only superficial faith.”
― Simone Collins, The Pragmatist’s Guide to Life: A Guide to Creating Your Own Answers to Life’s Biggest Questions

“Eleanor stayed with Franklin after his repeated infidelities, and yet toward the end of her life, she regretted it, and advised her children to choose differently. ‘Never for a minute would I advocate that people who no longer love each other should live together because it does not bring the right atmosphere into a home,’ she wrote. She added that it was sad when a couple was unable to make a success of marriage, ‘but I feel it is equally unwise for people to bring up children in homes where love no longer exists.”
― Anne Michaud, Why They Stay: Sex Scandals, Deals, and Hidden Agendas of Eight Political Wives

“People hate thinking systematically about how to optimize their relationships. It is normal to hear someone say: “I will just wait for something to happen naturally” when talking about one of the most important aspects of their life while genuinely believing that this approach has reasonable odds of success. Imagine if people said the same thing about their careers. It would sound truly bizarre for someone to expect a successful career to “just happen naturally” and yet it is entirely normalized to expect that good relationships will.

People pay tens of thousands of dollars to receive degrees in computer science, marketing, and neuroscience. They make tough sacrifices with the understanding that the skills and knowledge they build in these domains will dramatically affect their quality of life. Ironically, people spend very little time systematically examining mating strategies—despite the fact that a robust understanding of the subject can dramatically affect quality of life.

We will happily argue that your sexual and relationship skills matter more than your career skills. If you want to be wealthy, the fastest way to become so is to marry rich. Nothing makes happiness easier than a loving, supportive relationship, while one of the best ways to ensure you are never happy is to enter or fail to recognize and escape toxic relationships. If you want to change the world, a great partner can serve as a force multiplier. A draft horse can pull 8000 pounds, while two working together can pull 24,000 pounds. When you have a partner with whom you can synergize, you gain reach and speed that neither you nor your partner could muster individually.

Heck, even if you are the type of person to judge your self-worth by the number of people with whom you have slept, a solid grasp of mating strategies will help you more than a lifetime of hitting the gym (and we say this with full acknowledgment that hitting the gym absolutely helps). A great romantic relationship will even positively impact your health (a 2018 paper in Psychophysiology found that the presence of a partner in a room lowered participants’ blood pressure) and increase your lifespan (a 2019 paper in the journal Health Psychology showed individuals in happy marriages died young at a 20% lower rate). ”
― Malcolm Collins

“Was Ali a poor, illiterate, village boy when he met Wallace, as has generally been believed? Or, did he have an important and interesting backstory?”
― Paul Spencer Sochaczewski, "Look Here, Sir, What a Curious Bird": Searching for Ali, Alfred Russel Wallace's Faithful Companion

“Intellectual honesty means pursuing the truth regardless of whether or not it serves your interests or goals.”
― Milan Kordestani, I'm Just Saying: A Guide to Maintaining Civil Discourse in an Increasingly Divided World

“God had been orchestrating the events of my life behind the scenes for years, and I had no clue.”
― Gregory S. Works, Triumph: Life on the Other Side of Trials, Transplants, Transition and Transformation

“When a woman loves you she's not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she's weak, she has a rage for domination, and nothing less will satisfy her.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence

“But the thing that . . . that I touched . . . " I cried. "It was furry! It-" I stopped short, taken with a shudder. "I know," said Herrick.”
― Margery Williams

“Plastic is still plastic. The material still remains a polymer. Polyethylene is not biodegraded in any”
― Alan Weisman, The World Without Us

“All in all, it’s only the initial shock that counts. People get used to everything, everything that happens in the occupied zone:”
― Irène Némirovsky, Suite Française

“I desire to press in my arms the loveliness which has not yet come into the world.”
― James Joyce

“Truthfully, Professor Hawking? Why would we allow tourists from the future muck up the past when your contemporaries had the task well in Hand?"
Brigadier General Patrick E Buckwalder 2241C.E.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Paradox Effect: Time Travel and Purified DNA Merge to Halt the Collapse of Human Existence

“Are you a student of Shakespeare?"
"He's been dead a long time, so not precisely, but who isn't?" she said.”
― Lisa Kaniut Cobb, Down in the Valley

“The need for intimacy with the Creator never left us; it was embedded in our very nature.”
― Ami Loper, Constant Companion: Your Practical Path to Real Interaction with God

“The guard looked down at the scarlet bloodstains blooming on his chest. He appeared to think of something that he needed to say, but as his lips began to form the words, his knees gave up the strain of supporting his ruined bulk. He collapsed to the floor, his throat issuing a final sound like a bubbling casserole.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Zombie Room

“This is your last chance, and I mean it. Now get me to my ship,’ he told the device. A moment later he vanished from the Grand Plaza, and the mayhem that still continued unabated.”
― A.R. Merrydew, Inara

“They can make all the plans they want but it doesn't mean I have to cooperate with them”
― Edward Williams, Framed & Hunted: A True Story of Occult Persecution

“The old man smiled. “If they could talk, these walls would tell you of battles lost and won, of fear and terror, of red fire and white light, of peace and prosperity. Aldene has a history going back centuries.”
― Robert Reid, The Emperor

“Pilots used to fly planes manually, but now they operate a dashboard with the help of computers. This has made flying safer and improved the industry.
Healthcare can benefit from the same type of approach, with physicians practicing medicine with the help of data, dashboards, and AI. This will improve
the quality of care they provide and make their jobs easier and more efficient”
― Ronald M. Razmi, AI Doctor: The Rise of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare - A Guide for Users, Buyers, Builders, and Investors

“It is weird that the same two parents can come together and make two such different people.”
― Sara Pascoe, Faber Faber Weirdo Intense, also BRILLIANT, funny and forensically astute. Marian Keyes.

“You have a peace about you. You have a wisdom. You have a way of living life that kicks my butt and pushes me around, and it beats me out of my idiocy and narrow-mindness. You, Addy, you, have shown me what life is all about”
― Heath Sommer

“When Peeta holds out his arms, I walk straight into them. It's the first time since they announced the Quarter Quell that he's offered me any sort of affection. He's been more like a very demanding trainer, always pushing, always insisting Haymitch and I run faster, eat more, know our enemy better. Lovers? Forget about that. He abandoned any pretense of even being my friend. I wrap my arms tightly around his neck before he can order me to do push-ups or something. Instead he pulls me in close and buries his face in my hair. Warmth radiates from the spot where his lips just touch my neck, slowly spreading through the rest of me. It feels so good, so impossibly good, that I know I will not be the first to let go.
And why should I?”
― Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire

“Al Dictador le gustan las mujeres de uniforme”
― Koushun Takami, Battle Royale

“She thought of Aziza's stutter, and of what Aziza had said earlier about fractures and powerful collisions deep down and how sometimes all we see on the surface is a slight tremor.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“I lay so still in the gloom I could hear the house breathe, and the boards of the floors whispered, conniving a way to keep me here forever.”
― V.C. Andrews, My Sweet Audrina

“It still remains unrecognised, that to bring a child into existence without a fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for its body, but instruction and training for its mind, is a moral crime, both against the unfortunate offspring and against society; and that if the parent does not fulfil this obligation, the State ought to see it fulfilled, at the charge, as far as possible, of the parent.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“Although enemy forces had overrun the mortar and some gun positions, they did not have everything their own way.”
― Michael G. Kramer, A Gracious Enemy

“If one does not react to gossip, the informer hushes more quickly.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“The sky is full of messages of love sent to Her, feelings that transform into clouds of devotion over Seoul.”
― Raz Mihal, Just Love Her

“Look around! Look what we’ve done to the world. We fucked everything up. In a few years it’s going to be unlivable. We don’t deserve to be stewards of this planet. And that pales to the things we do to each other. We’re monsters, Sander, and someone needs to end it.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sixth Borough