Chass Coon > Chass's Quotes

“Our children live or die with or without us. No matter what we do, no matter how we agonize or obsess, we cannot choose for our children whether they live or die. It is a devastating realization, but also liberating. I finally chose life for myself.”
― David Sheff, Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

“How strange a world, how strange an existence, that one’s equal must argue for one’s equality, that one’s equal must hold a station that allows airing of that argument, that one cannot make that argument for oneself, that premises of said argument must be vetted by those equals who do not agree.”
― Percival Everett, James

“I ain't never seen two fellas talk so much and say so little," Huck said.
"You be almos' thinkin' dey be preachers," I said.
"You know what I could go fer, Bilgewater?"
"What's that, Dolphin?”
― Percival Everett, James

“If you're not making mistakes, you're not learning.”
― Percival Everett, James

“The hardest choices in life aren't between what's right and what's wrong but between what's right and what's best.”
― Jamie Ford, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

“He'd do what he always did, find the sweet among the bitter.”
― Jamie Ford, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

“Henry, this isn't about us. I mean it is, but they don't define you by the button you wear. They define you by what you do, by what your actions say about you. And coming here, despite your parents, says a lot to them- and me. And they're Americans first. They don't see you as the enemy. They see you as a person.”
― Jamie Ford, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

“You just gave me hope, Henry." Mr. Okabe shook Henry's small hand and looked him in the eye. "And sometimes hope is enough to get you through anything.”
― Jamie Ford, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

“For you, a thousand times over”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“She said, 'I'm so afraid.' And I said, 'why?,' and she said, 'Because I'm so profoundly happy, Dr. Rasul. Happiness like this is frightening.' I asked her why and she said, 'They only let you be this happy if they're preparing to take something from you.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“People say that eyes are windows to the soul.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“I brought Hassan’s son from Afghanistan to America, lifting him from the certainty of turmoil and dropping him in a turmoil of uncertainty”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“Perspective [is] a luxury when your head [is] constantly buzzing with a swarm of demons.”
― Khaled Hosseini

“lifting him from the certainty of turmoil and dropping him in a turmoil of uncertainty.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“This is a common theme in human progress. We make things beyond what we understand, and we always have done. Steam engines worked before we had a theory of thermodynamics; vaccines were developed before we knew how the immune system works; aircraft continue to fly to this day, despite the many gaps in our understanding of aerodynamics. When theory lags behind application, there will always be mathematical surprises lying in wait. The important thing is that we learn from these inevitable mistakes and don’t repeat them.”
― Matt Parker, Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors

“A million seconds from now is just shy of eleven days and fourteen hours. Not so bad. I could wait that long. It’s within two weeks. A billion seconds is over thirty-one years. A trillion seconds from now is after the year 33,700 CE.”
― Matt Parker, Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors

“Humans instinctively perceive numbers logarithmically, not linearly. A young child or someone who has not been indoctrinated by education will place three halfway between one and nine.”
― Matt Parker, Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors

“Even after a lifetime of education dealing with small numbers, there is a vestigial instinct that larger numbers are logarithmic; that the gap between a trillion and a billion feels about the same as the jump between a million and a billion—because both are a thousand times bigger. In reality, the jump to a trillion is much bigger: the difference between living to your early thirties and a time when humankind may no longer exist.”
― Matt Parker, Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World

“Even when we cannot see parts of the moon, they are still physically there. During a new moon, when it is completely lit from behind, it appears only as a black, starless circle in the sky. For while we sometimes cannot see the moon, it is still there as a silhouette. Which is why I get upset when a crescent moon is shown with stars visible through the middle of it!”
― Matt Parker, Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors

“The happiest people are the ones who want what they already have.”
― Emma Pattee, Tilt

“We fall back into silence. Something like adrenaline starts beating its slow drum inside me. Maybe you’ll know this feeling one day—there’s nothing a woman hates more than walking by herself, and hearing a strange noise, or feeling the presence of an “other,” that horrible sickness all over my body, ground shifting, women are so unsafe, all of us always pretending to be safe, always avoiding any reminder that our safety is upheld only as long as the person closest to us keeps deciding not to kill us.”
― Emma Pattee, Tilt: A Novel

“I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late, that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering, and that I was human after all.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“Survival is never more than putting off the moment of death.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“Inevitably, with memory comes pain.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“I cannot mourn for what I have not known.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“Talking is existing.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“even a person raised in captivity learns to want, yearns to see beyond their cage. How much of our humanity is intrinsic? How much remains, when all else is stripped away?”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“Death is sometimes so discreet that it steals in noiselessly, stays for only a moment and carries off its prey...”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men