Meredith > Meredith's Quotes

“I feel about marathons the way my parents taught me to feel about the ocean: it is a mighty thing and very beautiful, but don't underestimate its capacity to hurt you.”
― Joan Benoit Samuelson

“There is no such thing as overtraining, just under resting.”
― Deena Kastor, Let Your Mind Run: A Memoir of Thinking My Way to Victory

“You know, I'm really starting to think the whole world is just a patchwork quilt of crazy little cults, all with their own secret spaces, their own records, their own rules.”
― Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

“Hovering over me was the Chihuly chandelier. Chihulys are the pigeons of Seattle. They're everywhere and even if they don't get in your way, you can't help but build up a kind of antipathy toward them.”
― Maria Semple, Where'd You Go, Bernadette

“Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given you by good people, by people who love you.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

“I think I would rather be a man than a god. We don't need anyone to believe in us. We just keep going anyhow. It's what we do.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“Nothing special has happened today; no one can say she was more provoked than usual. It is only that every day one grows a little, every day something is different, so that in the heaping up of days suddenly a thing that was impossible has become possible. This is how a girl becomes a grown woman. Step by step until it is done.”
― Naomi Alderman, The Power

“The Thames that goes north, south, east, and west, to finally go east, that seeps to one side and the other as it moves forward, that goes slow as it goes fast, that evaporates into the sky whilst meandering to the sea, is more about motion than about beginnings. If it has a beginning, it is located in a dark inaccessible place. Better study where it goes than where it comes from.”
― Diane Setterfield, Once Upon a River

“In their late thirties they'd decided not to have children, which at the time seemed like a sensible way to avoid unnecessary complications and heartbreak, and this decision had lent their lives a certain ease that he'd always appreciated, a sense of blissful unencumberance. But an encumbrance might also be thought of as an anchor, and what he'd found himself thinking lately was that he wouldn't mind being more anchored to this earth.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, The Glass Hotel

“Painting was something that had grabbed hold o her for a while, decades, but now it had let go and she had no further interest in it, or it had no further interest in her. All things end, she'd told herself, there was always going to be a last painting, but if she wasn't a painter, what was she? It was a troubling question.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, The Glass Hotel

“We've got a job to do, sure, but what good's a librarian without a story of his own?”
― A.J. Hackwith, The Library of the Unwritten

“Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Arthur: If I asked you where the hell we were, would I regret it?
Ford: We're safe.
Arthur: Oh good.
Ford: We're in a small galley cabin in one of the spaceships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet.
Arthur: Ah, this is obviously some strange use of the word safe that I wasn't previously aware of.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Out there in the wild, on a long journey, you hike your own hike, blaze your own trail, and only you can find what you’re looking for.”
― Scott Jurek, North: Finding My Way While Running the Appalachian Trail

“All too often, women marry their glass ceilings.”
― Caitlin Moran, More Than a Woman: A Brutally Honest and Hilarious Feminist Memoir on Parenting, Marriage, and Middle-Age

“Some would say it was a pact with the devil, and therefore I am not bound by it. But after that day I was no longer certain that Tequamuck was Satan’s servant. To be sure, father and every other minister in my lifetime has warned that Satan is guileful and adept at concealing his true purpose. But since that day I have come to believe that it is not for us to know the subtle mind of God. It may be, as Caleb thought, that Satan is God’s angel still, and works in ways that are obscure to us, to do his will. Blasphemy? Heresy? Perhaps. And perhaps I am damned for it. I will know, soon enough.”
― Geraldine Brooks, Caleb's Crossing

“But don't get me wrong...driving a truck doesn't make me a redneck. I don't have a gun rack in it. I have a wine rack.”
― Alex Trebek, The Answer Is…: Reflections on My Life

“everything was easier when you were a woman over fifty.”
― Emma Straub, All Adults Here

“even though race is constructed, we can't at this point remove race because then we can't see racism”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“What’s the point of all of this?” is a question that separates humans from other animals. Our curiosity around this issue has sparked everything from science to literature to philosophy to religion. When the answer to this question is “Because God deemed it so,” we might feel comforted. But what if the answer to this question is “I don’t know,” or worse still, “Nothing”?”
― Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom

“Most of the time in my work, I begin with the answers, with an idea of the results. I suspect that something is true and then I work toward that suspicion, experimenting, tinkering, until I find what I am looking for. The ending, the answer, is never the hard part. The hard part is trying to figure out what the question is, trying to ask something interesting enough, different enough from what has already been asked, trying to make it all matter.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom

“In this room he had once said to his wife that he liked that Kierkegaard's name meant 'churchyard.' Lauren had rolled her large eyes and said, 'That's so like you, Tyler. The name means graveyard.' Remembering this, he frowned. They'd had a real squabble about it. What was a churchyard, after all, he had argued. A graveyard, yes, but what was wrong with preferring the sound of the word 'churchyard'? Why did she have to insist on 'graveyard'? And what had she meant?”
― Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me

“My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. 'Something cannot emerge from nothing,' he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable 'the truth' can be.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“I feel like I've been standing underneath an open window, just as a baby gets tossed out. I grab the baby, right, because who wouldn't? But then another baby gets tossed out, so I pass the baby to someone else, and I make the catch. This keeps happening. And before you know it there are a whole bunch of people who are getting really good at passing along babies, just like I'm good at catching them, but no one ever asks who the fuck is throwing the babies out the window in the first place.”
― Jodi Picoult, Small Great Things

“Being as kind to yourself as you are hard on yourself is a skill that I’ve had to actively nurture. I had a teammate at UO named Becca who, when she felt particularly overwhelmed or otherwise dissatisfied with her day, would put on PJs, get into bed, turn off the lights, lie down for one minute, and then spring out of bed and declare “NEW DAY!,” put on a new outfit, make coffee, and have breakfast again. It didn’t matter if it was ten in the morning or six at night—if she sensed her day going south, she allowed herself this routine. It is the ultimate self-kindness.”
― Alexi Pappas, Bravey: Chasing Dreams, Befriending Pain, and Other Big Ideas

“The feeling of being watched is the next best thing to being touched. It's like sunlight on your skin, as though the person watching you is giving you some part of themselves by way of their eyes.”
― Alexi Pappas, Bravey

“Asking for help is a superpower anyone can have but only some people use. It is brave to ask for help. Asking for help is the first step toward finding a mentor. Mentors can help us change our lives if we let them.”
― Alexi Pappas, Bravey

“Nerves are cousin to excitement and excitement is cousin to gratitude. Pay attention to your nerves: If you feel nervous, it's a sign that a Very Big Thing is unfolding. Be nervous for how good that thing can be.”
― Alexi Pappas, Bravey

“Racing is about understanding that pain is a sensation but no necessarily a threat, and if you continue to put one foot in front of the other you will break through your rough patch.”
― Alexi Pappas, Bravey

“I told my dad that I was sure I would feel depressed forever and that it would be embarrassing to continue living this way, so maybe it was better to just die. But then my dad said that being dead would be more embarrassing than being depressed.”
― Alexi Pappas, Bravey