Alesia > Alesia's Quotes

“I, to this day, hold to only one truth: if a man chooses to carry a gun he will get shot. My father agreed to carry twelve.”
― Robert Lautner, Road to Reckoning

“If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.”
― Dorothy Parker

“People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying school masters; the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years.

Above all -- we were wet.”
― Frank McCourt

“When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.
. . . nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious alcoholic father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying schoolmasters; the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years.”
― Frank McCourt

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Writing is easy. You only need to stare at a blank piece of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”
― Gene Fowler

“If watching television doesn't hasten death, it surely manages to make death very inviting; for television so shamelessly sentimentalizes and romanticizes death that it makes the living feel they have missed something - just by staying alive.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“Memory plays tricks. Memory is another word for story, and nothing is more unreliable.”
― Ann-Marie MacDonald, Fall On Your Knees

“those who escape hell
however
never talk about
it
and nothing much
bothers them
after
that.”
― Charles Bukowski

“What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.”
― Salman Rushdie

“Tortured writing is easy. Writing that seems effortless takes real skill.”
― Jason Brennan, Good Work If You Can Get It: How to Succeed in Academia

“Most academics don’t learn how to sell what they do. If you haven’t, I’m not blaming you. You may simply be copying how others in the field write. Most academics are boring, flat writers. To be clear: They succeeded despite their bad writing, not because of it.”
― Jason Brennan, Good Work If You Can Get It: How to Succeed in Academia

“your teachers and professors were paid to read your work. They generally read all of it. In the real world, though, including academia, people aren’t getting paid to read your work, even when they’re getting paid to read some work. Your research is competing with Game of Thrones, drinking craft beer, playing tennis, taking a nap, prepping classes, chatting with co-workers, revising the reader’s own research, and reading all the other research out there.”
― Jason Brennan, Good Work If You Can Get It: How to Succeed in Academia

“The fastest way to lose your peace of mind is to give someone a piece of yours.”
― Jefferson Fisher, The Next Conversation: Argue Less, Talk More

“Stop carrying the weight of other people’s words. Stop attending every argument you’re invited to. If sports are your jam, just because they throw a pitch doesn’t mean you have to swing. Let it go by. Just because they hit it to your side of the court doesn’t mean you have to send it back over the net. Let it fall to the ground. There is no requirement, no compulsion, that just because they said something, you are obligated to say anything at all. “I just have to say…” No, you don’t. There’s nothing you have to say. There are only things you want to say. But who are you”
― Jefferson Fisher, The Next Conversation: Argue Less, Talk More

“Stop seeing arguments as something to win but as an opportunity to understand the person behind the words. Stop hearing only what’s said and start hearing what’s felt. Build the discipline to connect to the person in front of you.”
― Jefferson Fisher, The Next Conversation: Argue Less, Talk More

“Winning an argument is a losing game. Winning means that you’ve likely lost something far more valuable—their trust, their respect, or worse, the connection. The only reward you’ve won is their contempt.”
― Jefferson Fisher, The Next Conversation: Argue Less, Talk More

“I hate when people ask what a book is about. People who read for plot, people who suck out the story like the cream filling in an Oreo, should stick to comic strips and soap operas. . . . Every book worth a damn is about emotions and love and death and pain. It's about words. It's about a man dealing with life. Okay?”
― J.R. Moehringer