Jay > Jay's Quotes

“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young

“And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.”
― Mary Shelley

“How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“I am alone, I thought, and they are everybody.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead

“I used to imagine adventures for myself, I invented a life, so that I could at least exist somehow.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead

“We were like gods at the dawning of the world, & our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“There are no bargains between lion and men. I will kill you and eat you raw.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“Name one hero who was happy.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“People truly engaged in life have messy houses.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen

“Maybe they understood, in fact, that beauty and meaning had nothing to do with one another.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation

“Idealism without consequences is the pathetic dream of every spoiled brat, I suppose.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen

“He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Toughest Indian in the World

“When you resort to violence to prove a point, you’ve just experienced a profound failure of imagination.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Toughest Indian in the World

“Humor was an antiseptic that cleaned the deepest of personal wounds.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

“We only know how to lose and be lost.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“I feel like a carton of eggs holding up an elephant.”
― Sherman Alexie

“That's the whole point of life, you know? To meet new people.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian