Jason Blanco > Jason's Quotes

“I'm not afraid to compete. It's just the opposite. Don't you see that? I'm afraid I will compete — that's what scares me. That's why I quit the Theatre Department. Just because I'm so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else's values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn't make it right. I'm ashamed of it. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I'm sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of a splash.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go around looking for it, and I think it can be poisonous. I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, 'Please — a little less love, and a little more common decency'.”
― Kurt Vonnegut , Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!

“This is a very bad book you’re writing,” I said to myself behind my leaks.

“I know,” I said.

“You’re afraid you’ll kill yourself the way your mother did,” I said.

“I know,” I said.

There in the cocktail lounge, peering out through my leaks at a world of my own invention, I mouthed this word: schizophrenia. The sound and appearance of the word had fascinated me for many years. It sounded and looked to me like a human being sneezing in a blizzard of soapflakes.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

“They're in love. Fuck the war.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

“The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.”
― Ernest Hemingway, Men Without Women

“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Never to go on trips with anyone you do not love.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

“I didn't want to kiss you goodbye — that was the trouble — I wanted to kiss you good night — and there's a lot of difference.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Why did you do all this for me?' he asked. 'I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you.' 'You have been my friend,' replied Charlotte. 'That in itself is a tremendous thing.”
― E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web

“What do you mean less than nothing? I don't think there is any such thing as less than nothing. Nothing is absolutely the limit of nothingness. It's the lowest you can go. It's the end of the line. How can something be less than nothing? If there were something that was less than nothing, then nothing would not be nothing, it would be something - even though it's just a very little bit of something. But if nothing is nothing, then nothing has nothing that is less than it is.”
― E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web

“That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“This is time for us. Memory. A nostalgia. The pain of absence. But it isn't absence that causes sorrow. It is affection and love. Without affection, without love, such absences would cause us no pain.
For this reason, even the pain caused by absence is in the end something good and even beautiful. Because it feeds on that which gives meaning to life.”
― Carlo Rovelli, L'ordine del tempo

“Without creative, independently thinking and judging personalities the upward development of society is as unthinkable as the development of the individual personality without the nourishing soil of the community.”
― Albert Einstein, The World as I See It

“I am not one of these pessimists; I believe that better times are coming.”
― Albert Einstein, The World as I See It

“we will hope that future historians will explain the morbid symptoms of present-day society as the childhood ailments of an aspiring humanity,”
― Albert Einstein, The World as I See It

“Question: What is a scientific author? Answer: A cross between a mimosa and a porcupine.”
― Albert Einstein, The World as I See It

“The example of great and pure characters is the only thing that can produce fine ideas and noble deeds. Money only appeals to selfishness and always tempts its owners irresistibly to abuse it. Can anyone imagine Moses, Jesus, or Gandhi armed with the money-bags of Carnegie?”
― Albert Einstein, The World as I See It

“The only rational way of educating is to be an example of what to avoid, if one can’t be the other sort.”
― Albert Einstein, The World as I See It

“The principal art of the teacher is to awaken the joy in creation and knowledge. Z”
― Albert Einstein, The World as I See It

“He probably, if it’s possible, would have cried even more if he had known she was sleeping alone. That would have made him feel even sadder.”
― Richard Brautigan, Sombrero Fallout: A Japanese Novel

“She was never going to go out with another writer: no matter how charming, sensitive, inventive or fun they could be. They weren’t worth it in the long run. They were emotionally too expensive and the upkeep was too complicated. They were like having a vacuum cleaner around that broke all the time and only Einstein could fix it.”
― Richard Brautigan, Sombrero Fallout: A Japanese Novel

“When other people were talking, she stared directly at them with very narrow understanding eyes that listened to them as if they were the only sound left in the world, as if everything else that made sound had disappeared entirely from the human ear and their voice was all there was left.”
― Richard Brautigan, Sombrero Fallout: A Japanese Novel

“He looked very carefully at her fingers as if he had never seen fingers before. He was enchanted by them and thought that they were beautiful. He never wanted to let go. He wanted to hold her hand forever.”
― Richard Brautigan, Sombrero Fallout: A Japanese Novel

“This man was so complicated that he could make a labyrinth seem like a straight line.”
― Richard Brautigan, Sombrero Fallout: A Japanese Novel

“It would have compromised his basic approach to life which was to have it as confusing, labyrinth-laden and fucked up as possible.”
― Richard Brautigan, Sombrero Fallout: A Japanese Novel

“I wonder what in the hell I was thinking about?’ he said aloud to himself. ‘I wonder if I’m losing my mind?’ That was like a duck wondering why it flies south in the autumn or an old camel noticing one day that he has a hump on his back.”
― Richard Brautigan, Sombrero Fallout: A Japanese Novel

“He sometimes wondered why people talked at all. If people didn’t talk then he wouldn’t be nervous trying to figure out things to answer them with.”
― Richard Brautigan, Sombrero Fallout: A Japanese Novel

“Though the library is “closed” I don’t have to go home because this is my home and has been for years, and besides, I have to be here all the time.”
― Richard Brautigan, Revenge of the Lawn / The Abortion / So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away

“I have an understanding of people and I love what I am doing.”
― Richard Brautigan, Revenge of the Lawn / The Abortion / So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away

“WHEN I first met Vida she had been born inside the wrong body and was barely able to look at people, wanting to crawl off and hide from the thing that she was contained within.”
― Richard Brautigan, Revenge of the Lawn / The Abortion / So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away