John Higgins > John's Quotes

“She's a woman, you're a dude. You're not supposed to understand her. That's not what she's after.... She doesn't want you to understand her. She knows that's impossible. She just wants you to understand yourself. Everything else is negotiable.”
― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

“Do you think I'm wonderful? she asked him one day as they leaned against the trunk of a petrified maple. No, he said. Why? Because so many girls are wonderful. I imagine hundreds of men have called their loves wonderful today, and it's only noon. You couldn't be something that hundreds of others are.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated

“I don't think that there are any limits to how excellent we could make life seem.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated

“The more you love someone, he came to think, the harder it is to tell them. It surprised him that strangers didn't stop each other on the street to say I love you.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others--the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by the midafternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“The only thing more painful than being an active forgetter is to be an inert rememberer.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated

“It was not the feeling of completeness I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“You are the only one who has understood even a whisper of me, and I will tell you that I am the only person who has understood even a whisper of you.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“With writing, we have second chances.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“I imagine a line, a white line, painted on the sand and on the ocean, from me to you.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“The only way to overcome sadness is to consume it. ”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“She has become an expert at confusing what is with what was with what should be with what could be.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“It's so hard to express yourself.'
I understand this.'
I want to express myself.'
The same is true for me.'
I'm looking for my voice.'
It's in your mouth.'
I want to do something I'm not ashamed of.'
Something you are proud of, yes?'
Not even. I just don't want to be ashamed.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated

“Everything is the way it is because everything was the way it was. Sometimes I feel ensnared in this, as if no matter what I do, what will come has already been fixed.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated

“(What are your ghosts like?)
(They are on the insides of the lids of my eyes.)
(This is also where my ghosts reside.)
(You have ghosts?)
(Of course I have ghosts.)
(But you are a child.)
(I am not a child.)
(But you have not known love.)
(These are my ghosts, the spaces amid love.)”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated

“She is deranged, but so so playful.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“He knew that I love you also means I love you in a way that no one loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that I love no one else, and never have loved anyone else, and never will love anyone else.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated

“I will describe my eyes and then begin the story. My eyes are blue and resplendent. Now I will begin the story.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated

“The images of his infinite pasts and infinite futures washed over him as he waited, paralyzed, in the present.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“But I do not do these things because we are family. I do them because they are common decencies. That is an idiom that the hero taught me. I do them because I am not a big fucking asshole. That is another idiom that the hero taught me.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“For the first time in longer than I can remember, I feel peaceful. Not happy. Not sad. Not anxious. Not horny. Just all the higher parts of my brain closing up shop. The cerebral cortex. The cerebellum. That's where my problem is. I'm now simplifying myself. Somewhere balanced in the perfect middle between happiness and sadness. Because sponges never have a bad day.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
― Robert Frost

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

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

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”
― Dr. Seuss

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching,
Love like you'll never be hurt,
Sing like there's nobody listening,
And live like it's heaven on earth.”
― William W. Purkey

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.”
― Bernard M. Baruch