Els > Els's Quotes

“Ultimately, your theme will find you. You don't have to go looking for it.”
― Richard Russo

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“I don’t regret anything I’ve ever done in life, any choice that I’ve made. But I’m consumed with regret for the things I didn’t do, the choices I didn’t make, the things I didn’t say. We spend so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to. “What if…” “If only…” “I wonder what would have…” You will never, never know, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“If you're Native American and you pray to the wolves, you're a savage. If you're African and you pray to your ancestors, you're a primitive. But when white people pray to a guy who turns water into wine, well, that's just common sense.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“There can be neither beauty, nor trust, nor security between a man and a woman if there is not truth.”
― Grace Metalious, Peyton Place

“Welcome to adulthood." Cob said. "Every child finds a day when they realize that adults can be weak and wrong just like everyone else. After that day, you are an adult. Like it or not.”
― Peter V. Brett, The Warded Man

“Wanting to reform the world without discovering one's true self is like trying to cover the world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes.”
― Ramana Maharshi

“Love is wise; hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don't like. We can only live together in that way. But if we are to live together, and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.”
― Bertrand Russell

“Whatever you give a woman, she will make greater. If you give her sperm, she'll give you a baby.. If you give her a house, she'll give you a home. If you give her groceries, she'll give you a meal. If you give her a smile, she'll give you her heart. She multiplies and enlarges what is given to her. So, if you give her any crap, be ready to receive a ton of shit!”
― Erick S. Gray

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)... There are just some kind of men who - who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Atticus said to Jem one day, "I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the backyard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird." That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. "Your father’s right," she said. "Mockingbirds don’t do one thing except make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corn cribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it—whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“It’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“It's not necessary to tell all you know. It's not ladylike -- in the second place, folks don't like to have someone around knowin' more than they do. It aggravates them. Your not gonna change any of them by talkin' right, they've got to want to learn themselves, and when they don't want to learn there's nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut or talk their language.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“I knew i would step back into having a faith at the centre of my life. I couldn't be bothered to question any more. I would rather have a Peggy-like faith than not. Simple. Forget theological debate, I'll just believe, because it makes me fell safer, connected, in purpose, loved and approved.
Life and loved can be pretty blooming messy sometimes. Humiliating even. And maybe that's the point. Relationships are meant to disrupt you, shake you up, cause upheaval. We're meant to love people, to be chaotically interconnected. It's what makes life worth living.”
― Miranda Hart, Peggy and Me

“Then I caught Peggy out of the corner of my eye. I saw how she was behaving; completely absorbed in her surroundings, responding sharply to everything around her, every smell, every sight, every new and wonderful sound. She was so committed to the landscape that she almost became a part of it, and I knew that the only way I could be happy was if I did the same; forced myself to be where I was, relax into the now. I realized I had been shuffling along emailing and missed the best bluebell wood. What an idiot. It dawned on me then how much I have missed in life. Truly. I have missed so many moments and memories by being stuck in my head worrying, 'what if this?', 'what if that?' What a BIG FAT WASTE OF TIME.”
― Miranda Hart, Peggy and Me

“His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools -- the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans -- and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, 'You can't trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“What have I always believed?
That on the whole, and by and large, if a man lived properly, not according to what any priests said, but according to what seemed decent and honest inside, then it would, at the end, more or less, turn out all right.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“What's a philosopher?' said Brutha.
Someone who's bright enough to find a job with no heavy lifting,' said a voice in his head.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“Fear is a strange soil. It grows obedience like corn, which grow in straight lines to make weeding easier. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“Gods don't like people not doing much work. People who aren't busy all the time might start to think.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“Just because you can explain it doesn't mean it's not still a miracle.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“The Ephebians believed that every man should have the vote (provided that he wasn't poor, foreign, nor disqualified by reason of being mad, frivolous, or a woman). Every five years someone was elected to be Tyrant, provided he could prove that he was honest, intelligent, sensible, and trustworthy. Immediately after he was elected, of course, it was obvious to everyone that he was a criminal madman and totally out of touch with the view of the ordinary philosopher in the street looking for a towel. And then five years later they elected another one just like him, and really it was amazing how intelligent people kept on making the same mistakes.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“Humans! They lived in a world where the grass continued to be green and the sun rose every day and flowers regularly turned into fruit, and what impressed them? Weeping statues. And wine made out of water! A mere quantum-mechanistic tunnel effect, that'd happen anyway if you were prepared to wait zillions of years. As if the turning of sunlight into wine, by means of vines and grapes and time and enzymes, wasn't a thousand times more impressive and happened all the time...”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“He had noticed that events were cowards: they didn't occur singly, but instead they would run in packs and leap out at him all at once.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“Lang geleden had Paul pasta en rijst aan het menu toegevoegd, zijn opstand tegen het regime van aardappelen. Al hield hij zelf ook het meeste van aardappelen, je moest je ertegen verzetten. Je werd er simpel van.”
― Tommy Wieringa, De heilige Rita

“Het hout, had Paul berekend, was zo'n beetje begonnen te groeien toen Columbus naar het westen voer en werd gerooid toen Abel Tasman zijn ankers liet zakken voor de kust van het eiland dat zijn naam zou dragen. Sindsdien droegen de balken het huis en de boeren die zich er in de loop der tijd aan verhangen hadden.”
― Tommy Wieringa, De heilige Rita

“Ruud is in 2003 overleden. Veertien jaar geleden alweer.'
'O,' zei Paul, 'Dat spijt me.'
'Zelfdoding. Ja, ik zeg het maar even meteen, anders blijft het zo hangen.'
Paul keek rond, zijn ziel vloog als een musje tegen het raam.”
― Tommy Wieringa, De heilige Rita

“Par une belle matinée de mai, une svelte amazone, montée sur une somptueuse jument alezane, parcourait, au milieu des fleurs, les allées du boi.”
― Albert Camus, The Plague