E > E's Quotes

“Anyway.
I’m not allowed to watch TV, although I am allowed to rent documentaries that are approved for me, and I can read anything I want. My favorite book is A Brief History of Time, even though I haven’t actually finished it, because the math is incredibly hard and Mom isn’t good at helping me. One of my favorite parts is the beginning of the first chapter, where Stephen Hawking tells about a famous scientist who was giving a lecture about how the earth orbits the sun, and the sun orbits the solar system, and whatever. Then a woman in the back of the room raised her hand and said, “What you
have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back
of a giant tortoise.” So the scientist asked her what the tortoise was standing
on. And she said, “But it’s turtles all the way down!”
I love that story, because it shows how ignorant people can be. And also because I love tortoises.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
― Ray Bradbury

“But the problem with readers, the idea we're given of reading is that the model of a reader is the person watching a film, or watching television. So the greatest principle is, "I should sit here and I should be entertained." And the more classical model, which has been completely taken away, is the idea of a reader as an amateur musician. An amateur musician who sits at the piano, has a piece of music, which is the work, made by somebody they don't know, who they probably couldn't comprehend entirely, and they have to use their skills to play this piece of music. The greater the skill, the greater the gift that you give the artist and that the artist gives you. That's the incredibly unfashionable idea of reading. And yet when you practice reading, and you work at a text, it can only give you what you put into it. It's an old moral, but it's completely true.”
― Zadie Smith

“There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.”
― Ambrose Bierce

“Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.”
― Zadie Smith, White Teeth

“Nothing got inside the head without becoming pictures.”
― Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections

“Just kidding' was exactly what people wrote when they meant every word.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“A family is a mystery.”
― Sharon Olds

“In a whisper he began begging for—and, as the sun set, received—the concession people always beg for: a little more time.”
― Zadie Smith, On Beauty

“And presently I was driving through the drizzle of the dying day, with the windshield wipers in full action but unable to cope with my tears.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“I say, Billy, what’s the use in playing croquet when you’re doomed?
He says, Frankie, what’s the use of not playing croquet when you’re doomed?”
― Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes

“There are so many things we've been brought up to believe that it takes you an awfully long time to realize that they aren't you.”
― Edward Gorey

“If you don't stick to your values when they're being tested, they're not values: they're hobbies.”
― Jon Stewart

“We've begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.”
― Gloria Steinem

“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“It's well we cannot hear the screams we make in other people's dreams.”
― Edward Gorey

“Selfish, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.”
― Ambrose Bierce, The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Activism is my rent for living on the planet.”
― Alice Walker

“What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them.”
― Toni Morrison

“All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. And then there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don't matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.”
― Jean Rhys

“I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with 'you' in mind or, even worse, that there is a divine plan into which one fits whether one knows it or not. This kind of modesty is too arrogant for me.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“Humans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with lips. So in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are. And the more you wage war.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“Religion is far more of a choice than homosexuality.”
― Jon Stewart

“Every day we're told that we live in the greatest country on earth. And it's always stated as an undeniable fact: Leos are born between July 23 and August 22, fitted queen-size sheets measure sixty by eighty inches, and America is the greatest country on earth. Having grown up with this in our ears, it's startling to realize that other countries have nationalistic slogans of their own, none of which are 'We're number two!”
― David Sedaris , Me Talk Pretty One Day

“I regret to say I'm
unable to reply to your unexpressed desires.”
― Harryette Mullen

“He broke my heart. You merely broke my life.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Isn't hate merely the result of wounded love?”
― Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

“Everything want to be loved. Us sing and dance and holler, just trying to be loved.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple