Marianne Orr > Marianne's Quotes

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”
― Franz Kafka

“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

“The TV's the altar. I'm what people are sacrificing to.'
'What do they sacrifice?' asked Shadow.
'Their time, mostly,' said Lucy. 'Sometimes each other.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“Don't start anything you're not prepared to finish.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“Call no man happy, said Shadow, until he is dead”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.”
― Iris Murdoch

“One of the secrets of a happy life is continous small treats.”
― Iris Murdoch

“We can only learn to love by loving.”
― Iris Murdock

“One should go easy on smashing other people's lies. Better to concentrate on one's own.”
― Iris Murdoch, Henry and Cato

“Those who hope, by retiring from the world, to earn a holiday from human frailty, in themselves and others, are usually disappointed.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

“Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wavelength of ours all they hear is a continuous scream.”
― Iris Murdoch

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car.”
― Garrison Keillor

“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
― Albert Einstein

“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.”
― Oscar Wilde

“A good friend will always stab you in the front.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Never memorize something that you can look up.”
― Albert Einstein

“In my next life I want to live my life backwards. You start out dead and get that out of the way. Then you wake up in an old people's home feeling better every day. You get kicked out for being too healthy, go collect your pension, and then when you start work, you get a gold watch and a party on your first day. You work for 40 years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You party, drink alcohol, and are generally promiscuous, then you are ready for high school. You then go to primary school, you become a kid, you play. You have no responsibilities, you become a baby until you are born. And then you spend your last 9 months floating in luxurious spa-like conditions with central heating and room service on tap, larger quarters every day and then Voila! You finish off as an orgasm!”
― Woody Allen

“It's a match made in heaven...by a retarded angel.”
― Woody Allen

“You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.”
― Woody Allen

“I can levitate birds. No one cares.”
― Woody Allen

“I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.”
― Woody Allen, The Illustrated Woody Allen Reader

“Calm Down
what happens
happens mostly
without you.”
― Josef Albers, Poems and Drawings