Nick Adams > Nick Adams's Quotes

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“You thought, as a boy, that a mage is one who can do anything. So I thought, once. So did we all. And the truth is that as a man's real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do. . . .”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

“For a word to be spoken, there must be silence. Before, and after.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”
― Albert Camus

“Get busy living or get busy dying.”
― Stephen King, Different Seasons

“Spend your money on the things money can buy. Spend your time on the things money can’t buy.”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.”
― Susan Sontag

“Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to was never there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place... Nothing outside you can give you any place... In yourself right now is all the place you've got.”
― Flannery O'Connor , Wise Blood

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
― Mae West

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend”
― Albert Camus

“Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”
― Stephen King

“The scariest moment is always just before you start.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.”
― Stephen King, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption

“That's what the world is , after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Memories and thoughts age, just as people do. But certain thoughts can never age, and certain memories can never fade.”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“It is our suffering that brings us together. It is not love. Love does not obey the mind, and turns to hate when forced. The bond that binds us is beyond choice. We are brothers. We are brothers in what we share. In pain, which each of us must suffer alone, in hunger, in poverty, in hope, we know our brotherhood. We know it, because we have had to learn it. We know that there is no help for us but from one another, that no hand will save us if we do not reach out our hand. And the hand that you reach out is empty, as mine is. You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

“Here's what I think, Mr. Wind-Up Bird," said May Kasahara. "Everybody's born with some different thing at the core of their existence. And that thing, whatever it is, becomes like a heat source that runs each person from the inside. I have one too, of course. Like everybody else. But sometimes it gets out of hand. It swells or shrinks inside me, and it shakes me up. What I'd really like to do is find a way to communicate that feeling to another person. But I can't seem to do it. They just don't get it. Of course, the problem could be that I'm not explaining it very well, but I think it's because they're not listening very well. They pretend to be listening, but they're not, really. So I get worked up sometimes, and I do some crazy things.”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“I'm tired of living unable to love anyone. I don't have a single friend - not one. And, worst of all, I can't even love myself. Why is that? Why can't I love myself? It's because I can't love anyone else. A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else. Do you understand what I am saying? A person who is incapable of loving another cannot properly love himself.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“It is not that the meaning cannot be explained. But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“In a place far away from anyone or anywhere, I drifted off for a moment.”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“Confidence is ignorance. If you're feeling cocky, it's because there's something you don't know.”
― Eoin Colfer, Artemis Fowl

“That wasn't any act of God. That was an act of pure human fuckery.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“I think that we're all mentally ill. Those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better - and maybe not all that much better after all.”
― Stephen King

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Go then, there are other worlds than these.”
― Stephen King, The Gunslinger

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“What is success?
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate the beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch Or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“We accept the love we think we deserve.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Do not love half lovers
Do not entertain half friends
Do not indulge in works of the half talented
Do not live half a life
and do not die a half death
If you choose silence, then be silent
When you speak, do so until you are finished
Do not silence yourself to say something
And do not speak to be silent
If you accept, then express it bluntly
Do not mask it
If you refuse then be clear about it
for an ambiguous refusal is but a weak acceptance
Do not accept half a solution
Do not believe half truths
Do not dream half a dream
Do not fantasize about half hopes
Half a drink will not quench your thirst
Half a meal will not satiate your hunger
Half the way will get you no where
Half an idea will bear you no results
Your other half is not the one you love
It is you in another time yet in the same space
It is you when you are not
Half a life is a life you didn't live,
A word you have not said
A smile you postponed
A love you have not had
A friendship you did not know
To reach and not arrive
Work and not work
Attend only to be absent
What makes you a stranger to them closest to you
and they strangers to you
The half is a mere moment of inability
but you are able for you are not half a being
You are a whole that exists to live a life
not half a life”
― Gibran Khalil Gibran