A. > A.'s Quotes

“Remember how unimportant you are because that knowledge will gain you more respect than someone who thinks the world revolves around them.”
― Jack Kirby

“I was wise enough never to grow up, while fooling people into believing I had.”
― Margaret Mead

“In his grave, we praise him for his decency - but when he walked amongst us, we responded with no decency of our own.
When he suggested that all men should have a place in the sun - we put a special sanctity on the right of ownership and the privilege of prejudice by maintaining that to deny homes to Negroes was a democratic right.
Now we acknowledge his compassion - but we exercised no compassion of our own. When he asked us to understand that men take to the streets out of anguish and hopelessness and a vision of that dream dying, we bought guns and speculated about roving agitators and subversive conspiracies and demanded law and order.
We felt anger at the effects, but did little to acknowledge the causes. We extol all the virtues of the man - but we chose not to call them virtues before his death.
And now, belatedly, we talk of this man's worth - but the judgement comes late in the day as part of a eulogy when it should have been made a matter of record while he existed as a living force. If we are to lend credence to our mourning, there are acknowledgements that must be made now, albeit belatedly. We must act on the altogether proper assumption that Martin Luther King asked for nothing but that which was his due... He asked only for equality, and it is that which we denied him.
[excerpt from a letter to The Los Angeles Times in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.; April 8, 1968”
― Rod Serling

“I was unhappy for a long time, and very lonesome, living with my grandmother. Then it was that books began to happen to me, and I began to believe in nothing but books and the wonderful world in books — where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas.”
― Langston Hughes

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
― Gospel of Thomas

“This must be Thursday,' said Arthur to himself, sinking low over his beer. 'I never could get the hang of Thursdays.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“When you are crazy you learn to keep quiet.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“There exists, for everyone, a sentence - a series of words - that has the power to destroy you. Another sentence exists, another series of words, that could heal you. If you're lucky you will get the second, but you can be certain of getting the first.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“God damn it, you've got to be kind.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

“You know, I think the main purpose of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps is to get poor Americans into clean, pressed, unpatched clothes, so rich Americans can stand to look at them.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

“Grenouille no longer wanted to go somewhere, but only to go away, away from human beings.”
― Patrick Suskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

“He succeeded in being considered totally uninteresting. People left him alone. And that was all he wanted.”
― Patrick Suskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

“People left him alone. And that was all he wanted.”
― Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

“Man’s misfortune stems from the fact that he does not want to stay in the room where he belongs.”
― Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

“Until now he had thought that it was the world in general he had wanted to squirm away from. But it was not the world, it was the people in it.”
― Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

“...ever farther from human beings, driving him on ever more insistently toward the magnetic pole of the greatest possible solitude.”
― Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

“Soft and persistent rain penetrates the earth better than the storm.”
― Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, The Mountains Sing

“Only through love can we drive away the darkness of evil from this earth.”
― Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, The Mountains Sing

“I hate Peter Pan.”
― Christina Henry, Lost Boy: The True Story of Captain Hook

“After a while it wasn't fun to always feel like you had to have fun.”
― Christina Henry, Lost Boy: The True Story of Captain Hook

“I wasn’t destined to be an astronaut. I had to turn myself into one.”
― Chris Hadfield, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth

“Didn't you go back?"
"I wouldn't give them the satisfaction.”
― James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice

“Leave me out of it" I said, "I came here to drink”
― Hunter S. Thompson

“. . . but the Universe is an awfully big place. There is room enough for an awful lot of people to be right about things and still not agree.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

“Take care of the people, and god almighty will take care of himself.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“And so it goes...”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“He'd mentally prepared for it every day since they'd fallen in love. That something would surely take her away. Cancer, heart disease, a car hitting her bike on a country roạd, a stroke, burglars. Something would steal his immense good luck at loving her, and being loved by her.”
― Richard Osman, We Solve Murders