Julian > Julian's Quotes

“The world is so unpredictable. Things happen suddenly, unexpectedly. We want to feel we are in control of our own existence. In some ways we are, in some ways we're not. We are ruled by the forces of chance and coincidence.”
― Paul Auster

“I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Es imposible no terminar siendo como los otros creen que uno es.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Memoria de mis putas tristes (Bestseller internacional)

“También la moral es un asunto de tiempo, decía, con una sonrisa maligna, ya verás.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“Once a man begins to recognize himself in another, he can no longer look on that person as a stranger.”
― Paul Auster, The Music of Chance

“Remember this. Hold on to this. This is the only perfection there is, the perfection of helping others. This is the only thing we can do that has any lasting meaning. This is why we're here. To make each other feel safe.”
― Andre Agassi, Open

“What you feel doesn’t matter in the end; it’s what you do that makes you brave.”
― Andre Agassi, Open

“Even if it’s not your ideal life, you can always choose it. No matter what your life is, choosing it changes everything.”
― Andre Agassi, Open

“This is why we’re here. To fight through the pain and, when possible, to relieve the pain of others. So simple. So hard to see.”
― Andre Agassi, Open

“It seems to me that I will always be happy in the place where I am not.”
― Paul Auster

“We all want to believe in impossible things, I suppose, to persuade ourselves that miracles can happen.”
― Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions

“It always stimulates me to discover new examples of my own prejudice and stupidity, to realize that I don't know half as much as I think I do.”
― Paul Auster, Oracle Night

“You think it will never happen to you, that it cannot happen to you, that you are the only person in the world to whom none of these things will ever happen, and then, one by one, they all begin to happen to you, in the same way they happen to everyone else.”
― Paul Auster, Winter Journal

“That's all I've ever dreamed of, Mr. Bones. To make the world a better place. To bring some beauty to the drab humdrum corners of the soul. You can do it with a toaster, you can do it with a poem, you can do it by reaching out your hand to a stranger. It doesn't matter what form it takes. To leave the world a little better than you found it. That's the best a man can ever do.”
― Paul Auster, Timbuktu

“In his suicide note, Kurt Cobain wrote, "It's better to burn out than to fade away." He was quoting a Neil Young song about Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols. When I was twenty-four, I interviewed John Lennon. I asked him about this sentiment, one that pervades rock and roll. He took strong, outraged exception to it. "It's better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out, " he said. "I worship people who survive. I'll take the living and the healthy.”
― David Sheff, Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

“It's always the mother's fault, ain't it?" she said softly, collecting her coat. "That boy turn out bad cause his mama a drunk, or she a junkie. She let him run wild, she don't teach him right from wrong. She never home when he back from school. Nobody ever say his daddy a drunk, or his daddy not home after school. And nobody ever say they some kids just damned mean. ...”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“You were always uncomfortable with the rhetoric of emotion, which is quite a different matter from discomfort with emotion itself.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.”
― Michel de Montaigne

“El verdadero dolor es indecible. Si puedes hablar de lo que te acongoja estás de suerte: eso significa que no es tan importante. Porque cuando el dolor cae sobre ti sin paliativos, lo primero que te arranca es la #Palabra.”
― Rosa Montero, La ridícula idea de no volver a verte

“Dicen que la Humanidad se puede dividir entre aquellos cuya infancia fue un infierno, en cuyo caso siempre vivirán perseguidos por ese fantasma, y aquellos que disfrutraron de una niñez maravillosa, que lo tienen aún mucho peor porque perdieron para siempre el paraíso”
― Rosa Montero, La ridícula idea de no volver a verte

“Hay que hacer algo con todo eso para que no nos destruya, con ese fragor de desesperación, con el inacabable desperdicio, con la furiosa pena de vivir cuando la vida es cruel. Los humanos nos defendemos del dolor sin sentido adornándolo con la sensatez de la belleza”
― Rosa Montero, La ridícula idea de no volver a verte

“When all else fails, philosophize.”
― J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace

“You are going to end up as one of those sad old men who poke around in rubbish bins.”

“I’m going to end up in a hole in the ground... And so are you. So are we all.”
― J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace

“Hatred . . . When it comes to men and sex, David, nothing surprises me any more. Maybe, for men, hating the woman makes sex more exciting. You are a man, you ought to know. When you have sex with someone strange - when you trap her, hold her down, get her under you, put all your weight on her - isn't it a killing? Pushing the knife in; exiting afterwards, leaving the body behind covered in blood - doesn't it feel like murder, like getting away with murder?”
― J.M.Coetzee, Disgrace

“Because there's a hundred ways sex can ruin you but there's no end to the ways love can.”
― Megan Abbott, You Will Know Me

“That’s what parenthood was about, wasn’t it? Slowly understanding your child less and less until she wasn’t yours anymore but herself.”
― Megan Abbott, You Will Know Me

“She hadn't learned, no one had taught her ... that the things you want, you never get them. And if you do, they're not what you thought they'd be. But you'd still do anything to keep them. Because you'd wanted them for so long.”
― Megan Abbott, You Will Know Me

“I have never understood how people can blithely disregard the damage they do by following their hearts. Who was it said that following your heart is a good thing? It is pure egotism, a selfishness to conquer all.”
― Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train

“Thoughts are real', he said. 'Words are real. Everything human is real, and sometimes we know things before they happen, even if we aren't aware of it. We live in the present, but the future is inside us at every moment. Maybe that's what writing is all about, Sid. Not recording events from the past, but making things happen in the future'.”
― Paul Auster, Oracle Night