Jim > Jim's Quotes

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#1

“Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.”
― Virginia Woolf

tags: books, library

1432 likes

#2

“Democracy is a poor system of government at best; the only thing that can honestly be said in its favor is that it is eight times as good as any other method the human race has ever tried.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

120 likes

#3

“People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands - literally thousands - of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

tags: music, sad

3479 likes

#4

“As a general rule of biology, migratory species are less 'aggressive' than sedentary ones.

There is one obvious reason why this should be so. The migration itself, like the pilgrimage, is the hard journey: a 'leveller' on which the 'fit' survive and stragglers fall by the wayside.

The journey thus pre-empts the need for hierarchies and shows of dominance. The 'dictators' of the animal kingdom are those who live in an ambience of plenty. The anarchists, as always, are the 'gentlemen of the road'.”
― Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines

49 likes

#5

“Alice: How long is forever?
White Rabbit: Sometimes, just one second.”
― Lewis Carroll

tags: alice-in-wonderland

1841 likes

#6

“all my books are about a lonely person looking for some way to connect with other people.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Stranger Than Fiction

10 likes

#7

“I like men to behave like men. I like them strong and childish.”
― Francois Sagan

tags: men

126 likes

#8

“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it.”
― Mark Twain

tags: patriotism

389 likes

#9

“Man steps on an ant when he can't catch the fly.”
― Bill Gaede

tags: climate-change, economic-collapse, environmentalism, extinction, gaede, globalization, last-generation, last-humans, mass-extinction

12 likes

#10

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
― H. Jackson Brown Jr., P.S. I Love You

tags: actions, disappointed, disappointment, dream, dreams, explore, misattributed-mark-twain, sail

60257 likes

#11

“Democracy or reading, democracy of space: our public library tradition, wherever we live in the wide world, was incredibly hard-won for us by the generations before us and ought to be protected, not just for ourselves but in the name of every generation after us.”
― Ali Smith, Public Library and Other Stories

tags: library, public-libraries, public-library

9 likes

#12

“Harvey wasn't interested in the clothes, it was the masks that mesmerized him. They were like snowflakes: no two alike. Some were made of wood and of plastic; some of straw and cloth and papier-mâché. Some were as bright as parrots, others as pale as parchment. Some were so grotesque he was certain they'd been carved by crazy people; others so perfect they looked like the death masks of angels. There were masks of clowns and foxes, masks like skulls decorated with real teeth, and one with carved flames instead of hair.”
― Clive Barker, The Thief of Always

tags: always, barker, clive, halloween, harvey, hood, masks, thief

25 likes

#13

“Don’t you, when strangers and friends come to call, straighten the cushions, kick the books under the bed and put away the letter you were writing? How many of us want any of us to see us as we really are? Isn’t the mirror hostile enough?”
― Jeanette Winterson

tags: masks, mirror

76 likes

#14

“Perfume was first created to mask the stench of foul and offensive odors...
Spices and bold flavorings were created to mask the taste of putrid and rotting meat...
What then was music created for?
Was it to drown out the voices of others, or the voices within ourselves?
I think I know.”
― Emilie Autumn, The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

tags: depression, disguise, masks, music, perfume, spices, voices

778 likes

#15

“I'm not dumb. I just have a command of thoroughly useless information.”
― Bill Watterson

tags: calvin-and-hobbes, dumb, humor, information, school

529 likes

#16

“it was so quiet. Reckon I’d have heard an ant shit.”
― S.W. Kane, The Bone Jar

tags: ant-shit, bone-jar, quiet

2 likes

#17

“on the phone
Bookseller: Hello Ripping Yarns.
Customer: Do you have any mohair wool?
Bookseller: Sorry, we're not a yarns shop, we're a bookshop.
Customer: You're called Ripping Yarns.
Bookseller: Yes, that's 'yarns' as in stories.
Customer: Well it's a stupid name.
Bookseller: It's a Monty Python reference.
Customer: So you don't sell wool?
Bookseller: No.
Customer: Hmf. Ridiculous.
Bookseller: ...but we do sell dead parrots.
Customer: What?
Bookseller: Parrots. Dead. Extinct. Expired. Would you like one?
Customer: Erm, no.
Bookseller: Ok, well if you change your mind, do call back.”
― Jen Campbell, Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops

65 likes

#18

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

tags: read, readers, reading, reading-books

35634 likes

#19

“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

tags: books, reading

27745 likes

#20

“Let's be reasonable and add an eighth day to the week that is devoted exclusively to reading.”
― Lena Dunham

tags: humor, reading

466 likes

#21

“One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.”
― George W. Bush

476 likes

#22

“The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

tags: books, literature, living, reading, words

489 likes

#23

“Reader's Bill of Rights

1. The right to not read

2. The right to skip pages

3. The right to not finish

4. The right to reread

5. The right to read anything

6. The right to escapism

7. The right to read anywhere

8. The right to browse

9. The right to read out loud

10. The right to not defend your tastes”
― Daniel Pennac

tags: books, reading, rights

6987 likes

#24

“The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!”
― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

8841 likes

#25

“The best teacher is experience. Find the educational in every situation.”
― Bryan Cranston, A Life in Parts

29 likes

#26

“To write is, moreover, to withdraw language from the world, to detach it from what makes it a power according to which, when I speak, it is the world that declares itself, the clear light of day that develops through tasks undertaken, through action and time.”
― Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature: A Translation of "L'Espace littéraire"

2 likes

#27

“... history is a fog, a fog of uncertainty. The deeper one peers into it, the murkier and more uncertain the fog becomes. The instant an event has transpired and begins receding into the past it becomes vulnerable to memory and interpretation..”
― Don Hollway, The Last Viking: The True Story of King Harald Hardrada and the End of the Norsemen

2 likes

#28

“What is family? Most would say family means a group of people closely related by blood or marriage as parents, children, uncles, aunts, and cousins. This is family of the biological kind. By the same token I’ve learned in my life experience that family can also be of the chosen kind. As queer people we very often find that our chosen families are the ones who love us unconditionally and pick up the slack in support of our personal truths and humanity when our biological family members don’t have the tools.”
― Billy Porter, Unprotected: A Memoir

tags: chosen-family, family, found-family

1 likes

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