Antony Wong > Antony's Quotes

“That's the thing about pain. It demands to be felt”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world...but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“Oh, I wouldn't mind, Hazel Grace. It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free.”
― Stephen King, Different Seasons

“So avoid using the word ‘very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women - and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do. It also won’t do in your essays.”
― N.H. Kleinbaum, Dead Poets Society

“Carpe Diem,” Keating whispered loudly. “Seize the day. Make your lives extraordinary.”
― N.H. Kleinbaum, Dead Poets Society

“Human beings had two basic orientations: HAVING and BEING
HAVING: seeks to acquire, posses things even people
BEING: focuses on the experience; exchanging, engaging, sharing with other people”
― Erich Fromm

“We are a society of notoriously unhappy people: lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive, dependent — people who are glad when we have killed the time we are trying so hard to save.”
― Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be? The Nature of the Psyche

“Man’s happiness today consists in “having fun.” Having fun lies in the satisfaction of consuming and “taking in” commodities, sights, food, drinks, cigarettes, people, lectures, books, movies—all are consumed, swallowed. The world is one great object for our appetite, a big apple, a big bottle, a big breast; we are the sucklers, the eternally expectant ones, the hopeful ones—and the eternally disappointed ones.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

“Evil was defined as the use of power to destroy the spiritual growth of others for the purpose of defending and preserving the integrity of our own sick selves. In short, it is scapegoating. We scapegoat not the strong but the weak. For the evil to so misuse their power, they must have the power to use in the first place. They must have some kind of dominion over their victims. The most common relationship of dominion is that of parent over child. Children are weak, defenseless, and trapped in relation to their parents. They are born in thrall to their parents ... They are simply not free or powerful enough to escape.”
― M. Scott Peck

“Our gridlocked conflicts contain the potential for great intimacy between us. But we have to feel safe enough to pull our dreams out of the closet. When we wear them, our partner may glimpse how beautiful we are—fragile but shimmering. Then, with understanding, our partners may join us in being dream catchers, rather than dream shredders.”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Augustus Waters was a self-aggrandizing bastard. But we forgive him. We forgive him not because he had a heart as figuratively good as his literal one sucked, or because he knew more about how to hold a cigarette than any nonsmoker in history, or because he got eighteen years when he should've gotten more.'
'Seventeen,' Gus corrected.
'I'm assuming you've got some time, you interupting bastard.
'I'm telling you,' Isaac continued, 'Augustus Waters talked so much that he'd interupt you at his own funeral. And he was pretentious: Sweet Jesus Christ, that kid never took a piss without pondering the abundant metaphorical resonances of human waste production. And he was vain: I do not believe I have ever met a more physically attractive person who was more acutely aware of his own physical attractiveness.
'But I will say this: When the scientists of the future show up at my house with robot eyes and they tell me to try them on, I will tell the scientists to screw off, because I do not want to see a world without him.'
I was kind of crying by then.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Without pain, how could we know joy?' This is an old argument in the field of thinking about suffering and its stupidity and lack of sophistication could be plumbed for centuries but suffice it to say that the existence of broccoli does not, in any way, affect the taste of chocolate.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer. But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“When you go into the ER, one of the first things they ask you to do is rate your pain on a scale of one to ten, and from there they decide which drugs to use and how quickly to use them. I'd been asked this question hundreds of times over the years, and I remember once early on when I couldn't get my breath and it felt like my chest was on fire, flames licking the inside of my ribs fighting for a way to burn out of my body, my parents took me to the ER. nurse asked me about the pain, and I couldn't even speak, so I held up nine fingers.

Later, after they'd given me something, the nurse came in and she was kind of stroking my head while she took my blood pressure and said, "You know how I know you're a fighter? You called a ten a nine."

But that wasn't quite right. I called it a nine because I was saving my ten. And here it was, the great and terrible ten, slamming me again and again as I lay still and alone in my bed staring at the ceiling, the waves tossing me against the rocks then pulling me back out to sea so they could launch me again into the jagged face of the cliff, leaving me floating faceup on the water, undrowned.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Augustus," I said. "Really. You don't have to do this."
"Sure I do," he said. "I found my Wish."
"God, you're the best," I told him.
"I bet you say that to all the boys who finance your international travel," he answered.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Only now that I loved a grenade did I understand the foolishness of trying to save others from my own impending fragmentation: I couldn’t unlove Augustus Waters. And I didn’t want to.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“I'm on a roller coaster that only goes up," he said.

"And it is my privilege and my responsibility to ride all the way up with you," I said.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“You say you're not special because the world doesn't know about you, but that's an insult to me. I know about you.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“According to the conventions of the genre, Augustus Waters kept his sense of humor till the end, did not for a moment waiver in his courage, and his spirit soared like an indomitable eagle until the world itself could not contain his joyous soul.

But this is the truth, a pitiful boy who desperately wanted not to be pitiful, screaming and crying, poisoned by an infected G-tube that kept him alive, but not alive enough.

I wiped his chin and grabbed his face in my hands and knelt down close to him so that I could see his eyes, which still lived. 'I'm sorry. I wish it was like that movie, with the Persians and the Spartans.'

'Me too,' he said.

'But it isn't,' I said.

'I know,' he said.

'There are no bad guys.'

'Yeah.'

'Even cancer isn't a bad guy really: Cancer just wants to be alive.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“commitment to being curious rather than correct that allows us to turn toward instead of away from one another in the moments of disagreement.”
― John M. Gottman, Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love

“Successful long-term relationships are created through small words, small gestures, and small acts.”
― John M. Gottman, Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love

“You can spend a lifetime being curious about the inner world of your partner, and being brave enough to share your own inner world, and never be done discovering all there is to know about each other. It’s exciting.”
― John M. Gottman, Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love

“Perfection is not the price of love. Practice is. We practice how to express our love and how to receive our partner’s love. Love is an action even more than a feeling. It requires intention and attention, a practice we call attunement.”
― John M. Gottman, Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love

“Make dedicated, nonnegotiable time for each other a priority, and never stop being curious about your partner. Don’t assume you know who they are today, just because you went to bed with them the night before. In short, never stop asking questions. But ask the right kind of questions.”
― John M. Gottman, Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love

“have the conversations that lead to intimacy, to awareness, and to a deep and meaningful understanding of one another—the ways you’re the same and the ways you’re different.”
― John M. Gottman, Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love

“great relationships—the masters—are built on respect, empathy, and a profound understanding of each other. Relationships don’t last without talk, even for the strong and silent type.”
― John M. Gottman, Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love