Bryson Graves > Bryson's Quotes

“In books and in life, you need to read several pages before someone's true character is revealed.”
― Gail Carson Levine

“Do you hate people?”

“I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around.”
― Charles Bukowski, Barfly

“You should date a girl who reads.
Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.”
― Rosemarie Urquico

“Your thorns are the best part of you.”
― Marianne Moore

“The reason I talk to myself is because I’m the only one whose answers I accept.”
― George Carlin

“The only thing worse than a boy who hates you: a boy that loves you.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Here's all you have to know about men and women: women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid.”
― George Carlin, When Will Jesus Bring The Pork Chops?

“A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?”
― Albert Einstein

“When you are crazy you learn to keep quiet.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“Crazy people are considered mad by the rest of the society only because their intelligence isn't understood.”
― Wei Hui

“Maybe he’s normal and we’re the crazy ones. Maybe everyone should talk to themselves. Maybe we’re all just afraid of what we’d say.”
― Katie Kacvinsky, Awaken

“Sometimes I wish I knew how to go crazy. I forget how.”
― Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly

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

“Women cannot complain about men anymore until they start getting better taste in them.”
― Bill Maher

“When you're the only sane person, you look like the only insane person.”
― Criss Jami, Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality

“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.”
― Charles Bukowski

“There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.”
― Oscar Levant

“I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer”
― Douglas Adams

“Reading is one form of escape. Running for your life is another.”
― Lemony Snicket

“Never memorize something that you can look up.”
― Albert Einstein

“It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Malachi scowled. "I don't remember the Clave inviting you into the Glass City, Magnus Bane."
"They didn't," Magnus said. "Your wards are down."
"Really?" the Consul's voice dripped sarcasm. "I hadn't noticed."
Magnus looked concerned. "That's terrible. Someone should have told you." He glanced at Luke. "Tell him the wards are down.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Glass

“Well, I’m not kissing the mundane," said Jace. "I’d rather stay down here and rot."
"Forever?" said Simon. "Forever’s an awfully long time."
Jace raised his eyebrows. "I knew it," he said. "You want to kiss me, don’t you?”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Ashes

“That does it," said Jace. "I'm going to get you a dictionary for Christmas this year."
"Why?" Isabelle said.
"So you can look up 'fun.' I'm not sure you know what it means.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Ashes

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“Basically, I have two speeds.... Hostile or smart-aleck. Your choice.”
― James Patterson, Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

“I'm not crazy about reality, but it's still the only place to get a decent meal.”
― Groucho Marx

“Whatever it is, I'm against it.”
― Groucho Marx

“I intend to live forever, or die trying.”
― Groucho Marx

“I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones