Aaron Eske > Aaron's Quotes

“There is a kind of gaping admiration that would fain roll Shakespeare and Bacon into one, to have a bigger thing to gape at; and a class of men who cannot edit one author without disparaging all others.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes

“You've seen the sun flatten and take strange shapes just before it sinks in the ocean. Do you have to tell yourself every time that it's an illusion caused by atmospheric dust and light distorted by the sea, or do you simply enjoy the beauty of it?”
― John Steinbeck, Sweet Thursday

“No one who is young is ever going to be old.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“So many old and lovely things are stored in the world's attic because we don't want them around us and we don't dare throw them out.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“A large drop of sun lingered on the horizon and then dripped over and was gone, and the sky was brilliant over the spot where it had gone, and a torn cloud, like a bloody rag, hung over the spot of its going. And dusk crept over the sky from the eastern horizon, and darkness crept over the land from the east.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“We could live offa the fatta the lan'.”
― John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

“Hard-covered books break up friendships. You loan a hard covered book to a friend and when he doesn’t return it you get mad at him. It makes you mean and petty. But twenty-five cent books are different.”
― John Steinbeck

“It is good to be a cynic — it is better to be a contented cat — and it is best not to exist at all.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, Collected Essays 5: Philosophy, Autobiography and Miscellany

“He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars.”
― Jack London, The Call of the Wild

“But especially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs and sounds as a man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious something that called -- called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come.”
― Jack London, The Call of the Wild

“Think of two people, living together day after day, year after year, in this small space, standing elbow to elbow cooking at the same small stove, squeezing past each other on the narrow stairs, shaving in front of the same small bathroom mirror, constantly jogging, jostling, bumping against each other’s bodies by mistake or on purpose, sensually, aggressively, awkwardly, impatiently, in rage or in love – think what deep though invisible tracks they must leave, everywhere, behind them!”
― Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man

“In the short term, it would make me happy to go play outside. In the long term, it would make me happier to do well at school and become successful. But in the VERY long term, I know which will make better memories.”
― Bill Watterson, It's a Magical World

“I like my smock. You can tell the quality of the artist by the quality of his smock. Actually, I just like to say smock. Smock smock smock smock smock smock.”
― Bill Watterson, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

“Calvin: Why are you crying mom?
Mom: I'm cutting up an onion.
Calvin: It must be hard to cook if you anthrpomorphisize your vegetables.”
― Bill Watterson, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

“I'm a 21st-century kid trapped in a 19th-century family.”
― Bill Watterson, There's Treasure Everywhere

“I liked things better when I didn't understand them.”
― Bill Watterson

“People who get nostalgic about childhood were obviously never children.”
― Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes

“What's the point of wearing your favorite rocket ship underpants if nobody ever asks to see 'em?”
― Bill Watterson

“Know what's weird? Day by day, nothing seems to change. But pretty soon, everything's different.”
― Bill Watterson

“Calvin: Somewhere in Communist Russia I'll bet there's a little boy who has never known anything but censorship and oppression. But maybe he's heard of America, and he dreams of living in this land of freedom and opportunity! Someday, I'd like to meet that little boy...and tell him the awful TRUTH ABOUT THIS PLACE!!
Calvin's Dad: Calvin, be quiet and eat the stupid lima beans.”
― Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes

“Some days in late August at home are like this, the air thin and eager like this, with something in it sad and nostalgic and familiar...”
― William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury

“These times are too progressive. Everything has changed too fast. Railroads and telegraphs and kerosene and coal stoves -- they're good to have but the trouble is, folks get to depend on 'em.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter

“Our inability to see things that are right before our eyes, until they are pointed out to us, would be amusing if it were not at times so serious. We are coming, I think, to depend too much on being told and shown and taught, instead of using our own eyes and brains and inventive faculties, which are likely to be just as good as any other person's.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, Before the Prairie: The Small Farm

“Spira, spera.

(breathe, hope)”
― Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

“He therefore turned to mankind only with regret. His cathedral was enough for him. It was peopled with marble figures of kings, saints and bishops who at least did not laugh in his face and looked at him with only tranquillity and benevolence. The other statues, those of monsters and demons, had no hatred for him – he resembled them too closely for that. It was rather the rest of mankind that they jeered at. The saints were his friends and blessed him; the monsters were his friends and kept watch over him. He would sometimes spend whole hours crouched before one of the statues in solitary conversation with it. If anyone came upon him then he would run away like a lover surprised during a serenade.”
― Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

“A doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.”
― Frank Lloyd Wright

“When I buy a new book, I always read the last page first, that way in case I die before I finish, I know how it ends. That, my friend, is a dark side.”
― Nora Ephron, When Harry Met Sally

“There isn't any particular relationship between all the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at once.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“The direction of a big act will warp history, but probably all acts will do the same thing in their degree, down to a stone stepped over in a path or a breath caught at the sight of a pretty girl or a finger nail nicked in the garden soil.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson