Daniel Jun Kim > Daniel Jun's Quotes

“Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Tis the gift to be simple... 'Tis the gift to be free...”
― Anne Rice, The Wolf Gift

“The highest truths a person could discover were rooted in the natural world.”
― Anne Rice, The Wolf Gift

“Sometimes you need to be forced to study what's right in front of you.”
― Anne Rice, The Wolf Gift

“A flame burned in him, a faith that a comprehending Power existed, animating all this that it had created, and sustaining it with a love beyond anything that he, Reuben, could imagine.”
― Anne Rice, The Wolf Gift

“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“That's the thing about pain. It demands to be felt”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“The only solution was to try to unmake the world, to make it black and silent and uninhabited again, to return to the moment before the Big Bang, in the beginning when there was the Word, and to live in that vacuous uncreated space alone with the Word.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“The pain was always there, pulling me inside of myself, demanding to be felt. It always felt like I was waking up from the pain when something in the world outside of me suddenly required my comment or attention.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Some tourists think Amsterdam is a city of sin, but in truth it is a city of freedom. And in freedom, most people find sin.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“You say you're not special because the world doesn't know about you, but that's an insult to me. I know about you.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“You could hear the wind in the leaves, and on that wind traveled the screams of the kids on the playground in the distance, little kids figuring out how to be alive, how to navigate a world that wasn't made for them by navigating a playground that was.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can't stop pissing on fire hydrants...I am an animal like any other. Hazel is different. she walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. She knows the truth: We're as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we're not likely to do either.

People will say it's sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it's not sad. It's triumphant. It's heroic. Isn't that the real heroism?

The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Here's the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That's what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease.

I want to leave a mark.

But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, "They'll remember me now," but (a) they don't remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion.
...
We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can't stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it's silly and useless--epically useless in my current state--but I am an animal like any other.

Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We're as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we're not likely to do either.

People will say it's sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it's not sad, Van Houten. It's triumphant. It's heroic. Isn't that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm.

The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn't actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn't get smallpox.
...
But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar.
...
What else? She is so beautiful. You don't get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Our fearlessness shall be our secret weapon.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Love is keeping the promise anyway.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Jean M. Twenge, a professor of psychology and the author of 'Generation Me' has persuasively argued that the youngest generations today—particularly anyone born after 1980—are, in her words, "more miserable than ever before." Why? Because of our increased cultural emphasis on "self-esteem" and "self-fulfillment." But real fulfillment, as countless psychologists, philosophers, and spiritual leaders have shown, comes from fulfilling commitments to others.”
― Jane McGonigal, Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World

“When he opened the door, the light from within threw his shadow clear across the yard, and for just a moment Tyrion Lannister stood tall as a king.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“Why is it always the innocents who suffer most, when you high lords play your game of thrones?”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“Did you teach him wisdom as well as valor, Ned! She wondered. Did you teach him how to
Kneel! The grave yards of the Seven Kinfdoms are full of brave men who had never learned that lesson.

Cat.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“Thus Arthur achieved the adventure of the sword that day and entered into his birthright of royalty. Wherefore, may God grant His Grace unto you all that ye too may likewise succeed in your undertakings. For any man may be a king in that life in which he is placed if so he may draw forth the sword of success from out of the iron of circumstance. Wherefore when your time of assay cometh, I do hope it may be with you as it was with Arthur that day, and that ye too may achieve success with entire satisfaction unto yourself and to your great glory and perfect happiness.”
― Howard Pyle

“Say what you will to the force that governs the universe. Perhaps we'll call it into being, and it will yet love us as we love it.”
― Anne Rice, The Wolf Gift

“Living in Hell kept him aware of the possibility of Heaven, and he’d never felt more alive.”
― Anonymous

“Living in Hell kept him aware of the possibility of Heaven, and he’d never felt more alive.”
― Clive Barker, The Scarlet Gospels

“Death lurked everywhere. Death was alive and well.”
― Eric Rickstad, The Silent Girls

“Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging.”
― Joseph Campbell

“This, to me, is the ultimately heroic trait of ordinary people; they say no to the tyrant and they calmly take the consequences of this resistance.”
― Philip K. Dick

“Nothing. Heart pounding. Respiration and all somatic processes including all manner of diencephalic-controlled autonomic responses to crises: adrenalin greater heartbeat pulse rate glands pouring throat paralysed eyes staring bowels loose et al. Stomach queasy and sex instinct suppressed.

And yet nothing to see nothing for body to do. Run All in preparation for panic flight. But where to and why Mr Tagomi asked himself. No clue. Therefore impossible. Dilemma of civilized man body mobilized but danger obscure.”
― Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle

“Protect your spirit, because you are in the place where spirits get eaten.”
― John Trudell