Seth H > Seth's Quotes

“Strange how, when you are young, you owe no duty to the future; but when you are old, you owe a duty to the past. To the one thing you can’t change.”
― Julian Barnes, The Only Story

“Graffiti on Philosophy Hall: The examined life ain’t worth it either.”
― Sigrid Nunez, The Friend

“Wouldn’t it be easier if we just named all the cats Password?”
― Sigrid Nunez, The Friend

“You don’t believe the sky is falling until a chunk of it falls on you.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Testaments

“As they say, history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Testaments

“Nobody is any authority on the fucks other people give,”
― Margaret Atwood, The Testaments

“Once a story you’ve regarded as true has turned false, you begin suspecting all stories.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Testaments

“The truth can cause a lot of trouble for those who are not supposed to know it.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Testaments

“You’d be surprised how quickly the mind goes soggy in the absence of other people. One person alone is not a full person: we exist in relation to others. I was one person: I risked becoming no person.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Testaments

“We’re stretched thin, all of us; we vibrate; we quiver, we’re always on the alert. Reign of terror, they used to say, but terror does not exactly reign. Instead it paralyzes. Hence the unnatural quiet.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Testaments

“Being able to read and write did not provide answers to all questions. It led to other questions, and then to others.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Testaments

“I was buying time. One is always buying something.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Testaments

“Still, I wanted to believe; indeed I longed to; and, in the end, how much of belief comes from longing?”
― Margaret Atwood, The Testaments

“It’s better that way, and I am a great proponent of better. In the absence of best.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Testaments

“Giving up was the new normal, and I have to say it was catching.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Testaments

“No one wants to die,” said Becka. “But some people don’t want to live in any of the ways that are allowed.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Testaments

“It was culture as class performance, literature fetishised for its ability to take educated people on false emotional journeys, so that they might afterwards feel superior to the uneducated people whose emotional journeys they liked to read about.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“She believes Marianne lacks ‘warmth’, by which she means the ability to beg for love from people who hate her.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“Generally I find men are a lot more concerned with limiting the freedoms of women than exercising personal freedom for themselves.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“Cats are not adoring like dogs. They don’t care. They can never be relied upon to shore up a human ego. They go their way, do their thing, are not subservient and will never apologise. No one has ever come across a cat apologising and if a cat did, it would patently be obvious it was not being sincere.”
― Anna Burns, Milkman

“According to the police, of course, our community was a rogue community. It was we who were the enemy, we who were the terrorists, the civilian terrorists, the associates of terrorists or simply individuals suspected of being but not yet discovered to be terrorists. That being the case, and understood by both parties to be the case, the only time you’d call the police in my area would be if you were going to shoot them, and naturally they would know this and so wouldn’t come.”
― Anna Burns, Milkman

“Still,' he said. 'Ach,' I said. 'Ach nothing,' he said. 'Ach sure,' I said. 'Ach sure what?' he said. 'Ach sure, if that's how you feel.' 'Ach sure, of course that's how I feel.' 'Ach all right then.' 'Ach,' he said. 'Ach,' I said. 'Ach,' he said. 'Ach,' I said. 'Ach.'

So that was settled.”
― Anna Burns, Milkman

“Of course there was the big one, the biggest reason for not marrying the right spouse. If you married that one, the one you loved and desired and who loved and desired you back, with the union providing true and good and replete with the most fulfilling happiness, well, what if this wonderful spouse didn't fall out of love with you, or you with them, and neither of you either, got killed in the political problems? All those joyful evers and infinites? Are you sure, really, really sure, you could cope with the prospect of that? The community decided that no, it couldn't.”
― Anna Burns, Milkman

“The day Somebody McSomebody put a gun to my breast and called me a cat and threatened to shoot me was the same day the milkman died.”
― Anna Burns, Milkman

“It’s not about being happy,’ he said, which was, and still is, the saddest remark I’ve ever heard.”
― Anna Burns, Milkman

“Being loved back by the person he loved to the point where he couldn't cope anymore with the vulnerable reciprocity of giving and receiving, he ended the relationship to get it over with before he lost it”
― Anna Burns, Milkman

“... I didn't officially live with him and wasn't officially committed to him. If we were in a proper relationship and I did live with him and was officially committed to him, the first thing I would have to do would be to leave.”
― Anna Burns, Milkman

“It's not about being happy,' he said, which was, and still is, the saddest remark I've ever heard.”
― Anna Burns, Milkman

“She admonished him, saying ‘I think I hate you,’ which meant she didn’t because ‘I think I hate you’ is the same as ‘probably I hate you’, which is the same as ‘I don’t know if I hate you’, which is the same as ‘I don’t hate you, oh my God, my love, I love you, still love you, always, always have I loved you and never have I stopped loving you’.”
― Anna Burns, Milkman

“It broke the bounds of credibility, said the news, but lots of things in life break bounds of credibility. Breaking credibility, I was coming to understand, seemed to be what life was about.”
― Anna Burns, Milkman