Ira > Ira's Quotes

“You're gorgeous, you old hag, and if I could give you just one gift ever for the rest of your life it would be this. Confidence. It would be the gift of confidence. Either that or a scented candle”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“Wasn't that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted”
― Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone

“Tell us please, what treatment in an emergency is administered by ear?"....I met his gaze and I did not blink. "Words of comfort," I said to my father.”
― Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone

“To be around someone whose self-confidence is more than what our first glance led us to expect is seductive.”
― Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone

“A rich man's faults are covered with money, but a surgeon's faults are covered with earth.”
― Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone

“How much do you value life?” “Sixty-four.”
― Richard P. Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character

“There were a lot of fools at that conference—pompous fools—and pompous fools drive me up the wall. Ordinary fools are all right; you can talk to them, and try to help them out.”
― Richard P. Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character

“Phillip is the Paul McCartney of our family: better-looking than the rest of us, always facing a different direction in pictures, and occasionally rumored to be dead.”
― Jonathan Tropper, This is Where I Leave You

“A good speech is like a woman's skirt: short enough to hold your attention, long enough to cover the subject”
― Jonathan Tropper, This is Where I Leave You

“THERE IS NOTHING more pathetically optimistic than the morning erection. I am depressed, unemployed, unloved, basement-dwelling, and bereaved, but there it is, every morning like clockwork, rising up to greet the day, poking out of my fly cocksure and conspicuously useless. And every morning, I face the same choice: masturbate or urinate. It’s the one time of the day where I feel like I have options.”
― Jonathan Tropper, This is Where I Leave You

“If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - What would you tell him?"

I…don't know. What…could he do? What would you tell him?"

To shrug.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“A man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions.... He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer--because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“Who is John Galt?”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“There are no evil thoughts except one; the refusal to think.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged: Wer ist John Galt?

“[Friendship] is a relationship that has no formal shape, there are no rules or obligations or bonds as in marriage or the family, it is held together by neither law nor property nor blood, there is no glue in it but mutual liking. It is therefore rare.”
― Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety

“Henry James says somewhere that if you have to make notes on how a thing has struck you, it probably hasn’t struck you.”
― Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety

“Alone. She realized how much she had missed the luxury of solitude, and knew that its occasional comfort would always be essential to her. The pleasure of being on one's own was not so much spiritual as sensuous, like wearing silk, or swimming without a bathing suit, or walking along a totally empty beach with the sun on your back. One was restored by solitude. Refreshed.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, Coming Home

“What happens when you get scared half to death twice?”
― Jessica Park, Flat-Out Love

“Regrets came up and asked me if I’d like to own them. Declined them for the most part but took a few just so I wouldn’t leave this relationship empty handed.”
― Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

“Sometimes I think the human animal doesn't really need food or water to survive, only gossip.”
― Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

“He pointed the gun at me. Then he looked up at my hand & tilted his head slightly.
- Journey, he said. I had forgotten I was still holding the book.
- Céline, I said back in a whisper.
- I love that book.
- I'm only halfway through.
- Have you got to the point where --
- Hey, kill me, but don't tell me the end!”
― Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

“Those books of mine really got under their skin. Ironically, they thought I was inhuman because of the way I churned through library books.
How do you know how to pick them? Who tells you?' Daved asked me once.
I explained that there was a line. 'If you read Dostoyevsky, he mentions Pushkin, and so you go and read Pushkin and he mentions Dante, and so you go and read Dante and--'
All right!'
All books are in some way about other books.'
I get it!”
― Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

“We were on our way to the twentieth floor, sharing the elevator with two suits that had men inside them.”
― Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

“...I wondered if it was blasphemous to tell God that rainbows are kitsch.”
― Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

“There's freedom in looking crazy.”
― Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

“Sex: the match that sets off human firework.”
― Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

“The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think, he [Einstein] said.”
― Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving. —ALBERT EINSTEIN, IN A LETTER TO HIS SON EDUARD, FEBRUARY 5, 1930”
― Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe

“A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.”
― Walter Isaacson

“I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays and have things arranged for them that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas.”
― Agatha Christie, Agatha Christie: An Autobiography