Benedict > Benedict's Quotes

“Deep rivers run quiet.”
― Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

“They get up early, because they have so much to do, and go to bed early, because they have so little to think about. ”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Everything, everything seemed once-upon-a-time.”
― Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

“Life's no piece of cake, mind you, but the recipe's my own to fool with.”
― Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

“I wasn't particularly afraid of death itself. As Shakespeare said, die this year and you don't have to die the next.”
― Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

“If you are the type of person who thinks too much about stuff then there is nothing lonelier in the world than being surrounded by a load of people on a different wavelength.”
― Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

“You can be a depressive and be happy, just as you can be a sober alcoholic.”
― Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

“Everyone may be ordinary, but they're not normal.”
― Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

“How to stop time: kiss.
How to travel in time: read.
How to escape time: music.
How to feel time: write.
How to release time: breathe.”
― Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

“THE WORLD IS increasingly designed to depress us. Happiness isn’t very good for the economy. If we were happy with what we had, why would we need more? How do you sell an anti-ageing moisturiser? You make someone worry about ageing. How do you get people to vote for a political party? You make them worry about immigration. How do you get them to buy insurance? By making them worry about everything. How do you get them to have plastic surgery? By highlighting their physical flaws. How do you get them to watch a TV show? By making them worry about missing out. How do you get them to buy a new smartphone? By making them feel like they are being left behind. To be calm becomes a kind of revolutionary act. To be happy with your own non-upgraded existence. To be comfortable with our messy, human selves, would not be good for business.”
― Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

“There is no standard normal. Normal is subjective. There are seven billion versions of normal on this planet.”
― Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

“There is this idea that you either read to escape or you read to find yourself.”
― Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

“Three in the morning is never the time to try and sort out your life.”
― Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

“One cliché attached to bookish people is that they are lonely, but for me books were my way out of being lonely. If you are the type of person who thinks too much about stuff then there is nothing lonelier in the world than being surrounded by a load of people on a different wavelength.”
― Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

“I wanted to be dead. No. That's not quite right. I didn't want to be dead, I just didn't want to be alive.”
― Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

“Things people say to depressives that they don’t say in other life-threatening situations:

‘Come on, I know you’ve got tuberculosis, but it could be worse. At least no one’s died.’
'Why do you think you got cancer of the stomach?’
‘Yes, I know, colon cancer is hard, but you want to try living with someone who has got it. Sheesh. Nightmare.’
‘Oh, Alzheimer’s you say? Oh, tell me about it, I get that all the time.’
‘Ah, meningitis. Come on, mind over matter.’
‘Yes, yes, your leg is on fire, but talking about it all the time isn’t going to help things, is it?’
‘Okay. Yes. Yes. Maybe your parachute has failed. But chin up.”
― Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

“A society which demands we be normal even as it drives us insane.”
― Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

“There is this idea that you either read to escape or you read to find yourself. I don't really see the difference. We find ourselves through the process of escaping.”
― Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

“Wherever you are, at any moment, try and find something beautiful. A face, a line out of a poem, the clouds out of a window, some graffiti, a wind farm. Beauty cleans the mind.”
― Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

“But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I drink, the very air I breathe, would feel like long, sharp needles. The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. I could hear the roots of loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed at four o'clock in the morning.”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“Here's what I think, Mr. Wind-Up Bird," said May Kasahara. "Everybody's born with some different thing at the core of their existence. And that thing, whatever it is, becomes like a heat source that runs each person from the inside. I have one too, of course. Like everybody else. But sometimes it gets out of hand. It swells or shrinks inside me, and it shakes me up. What I'd really like to do is find a way to communicate that feeling to another person. But I can't seem to do it. They just don't get it. Of course, the problem could be that I'm not explaining it very well, but I think it's because they're not listening very well. They pretend to be listening, but they're not, really. So I get worked up sometimes, and I do some crazy things.”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“I'm not so weird to me.”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“In a place far away from anyone or anywhere, I drifted off for a moment.”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“For both of us, it had simply been too enormous an experience. We shared it by not talking about it. Does this make any sense?”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“Reason is the first victim of strong emotion," Scytale murmured.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“Truth suffers from too much analysis.

-Ancient Fremen Saying”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“If you need something to worship, then worship life - all life, every last crawling bit of it! We're all in this beauty together!”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual.

-Words of Muad'dib by Princess Irulan.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“The flesh surrenders itself. Eternity takes back its own. Our bodies stirred these waters briefly, danced with a certain intoxication before the love of life and self, dealt with a few strange ideas, then submitted to the instruments of Time. What can we say of this? I occurred. I am not...yet, I occurred.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“How easy it was to mistake clear reasoning for correct reasoning!”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah