Alistair > Alistair's Quotes

“To know what a person has done, and to know who a person is, are very different things.”
― Hannah Kent, Burial Rites

“Accept who you are. Unless you're a serial killer.”
― Ellen DeGeneres, Seriously... I'm Kidding

“A trip to a Central American jungle to watch how Indians behave near a bridge won't make you see either the jungle or the bridge or the Indians if you believe that the civilization you were born into is the only one that counts. Go and look around with the idea that everything you learned in school and college is wrong.”
― B. Traven, The Bridge in the Jungle

“Anyone who is willing to work and is serious about it will certainly find a job. Only you must not go to the man who tells you this, for he has no job to offer and doesn't know anyone who knows of a vacancy. This is exactly the reason why he gives you such generous advice, out of brotherly love, and to demonstrate how little he knows the world.”
― B. Traven, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

“Just when you think you've hit rock bottom, you realize you're standing on another trapdoor.”
― Marisha Pessl, Night Film

“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Sin ought to be something exquisite, my dear boy.”
― Emile Zola

“Any God I ever found in church, I brought in myself.”
― Alice Walker

“Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Despite my ghoulish reputation, I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk.”
― Robert Bloch

“My experience of life is that it is not divided up into genres; it’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky.”
― Alan Moore

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

“My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.”
― Orson Welles

“Bullying builds character like nuclear waste creates superheroes. It's a rare occurrence and often does much more damage than endowment.”
― Zack W. Van

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

“Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.”
― Terry Pratchett, Jingo

“While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination." (from "The Third and Final Continent")”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter Of Maladies

“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“Words and pictures are yin and yang. Married, they produce a progeny more interesting than either parent.”
― Dr. Seuss

“′Classic′ - a book which people praise and don't read.”
― Mark Twain

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

“The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Diggers

“A friend said to me, “Hey you need to grow a pair. Grow a pair, Bro.” It’s when someone calls you weak, but they associate it with a lack of testicles. Which is weird, because testicles are the most sensitive things in the world. If you suddenly just grew a pair, you’d be a lot more vulnerable. If you want to be tough, you should lose a pair. If you want to be real tough, you should grow a vagina. Those things can take a pounding.”
― Sheng Wang

“A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.”
― Steve Martin

“I don't have pet peeves - I have major psychotic fucking hatreds.”
― George Carlin

“If you're going to play it out of tune, then play it out of tune properly.”
― Mark E. Smith, Renegade: The Lives and Tales of Mark E. Smith

“Atmosphere" is a massive song. A lot of people say it's their favorite Joy Division song, but it's not mine; it reminds me too much of Ian, like it's his death march or something, and it figures that it's one of the most popular songs to play at funerals: Robbie Williams has got "Angels" for weddings and we've got "Atmosphere" for funerals.”
― Peter Hook, Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division

“One should always be drunk. That's all that matters...But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you chose. But get drunk.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen

“Death doesn't exist. It never did, it never will. But we've drawn so many pictures of it, so many years, trying to pin it down, comprehend it, we've got to thinking of it as an entity, strangely alive and greedy. All it is, however, is a stopped watch, a loss, an end, a darkness. Nothing.”
― Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes