Olivia Chan > Olivia's Quotes

“But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“All great and precious things are lonely.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Words are good for saying what things are, but sometimes they don't function for what things aren't.”
― Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

“He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat.”
― John Steinbeck , East of Eden

“I wonder how many people I have looked at all my life and never really seen.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“There's more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“I like being myself. Myself and nasty.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“...most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“...reality, however utopian, is something from which people feel the need of taking pretty frequent holidays....”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Did you eat something that didn't agree with you?" asked Bernard. The Savage nodded. "I ate civilization.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Never put off till tomorrow the fun you can have today.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Some people think love is the end of the road, and if you're lucky enough to find it, you stay there. Other people say it just becomes a cliff you drive off, but most people who've been around awhile know it's just a thing that changes day by day, and depending on how much you fight for it, you get it, or you hold on to it, or you lose it, but sometimes it's never even there in the first place.”
― Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

“People are good or half good or a quarter good, and it changes all the time- but even on the best day nobody's perfect.”
― Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

“I gave them all the truth and none of the honesty.”
― Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

“...it was necessary to love silence, but before you could love silence you had to have noise.”
― Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

“The person we know at first, she thinks, is not the one we know at last.”
― Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

“I sit there thinking about how much courage it takes to live an ordinary life.”
― Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

“Goodness was more difficult than evil. Evil men knew that more than good men. That's why they became evil. That's why it stuck with them. Evil was for those who could never reach the truth. It was a mask for stupidity and lack of love. Even if people laughed at the notion of goodness, if they found it sentimental, or nostalgic, it didn't matter -- it was none of those things, he said, and it had to be fought for.”
― Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

“If they ask you to stand still, you should dance.”
― Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

“The stars looked like nail heads in the sky--pull a few of them out and the darkness would fall.”
― Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

“You can count the dead, but you can't count the cost. We've got no math for Heaven...”
― Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

“I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“Who says life is fair, where is that written?”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“Inconceivable!"
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“Have fun storming the castle!”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“You mock my pain! Life is pain, anyone who says otherwise is obviously selling something!”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride