Deirdre > Deirdre's Quotes

“We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It's easy. The first girl I ever loved was someone I knew in sixth grade. Her name was Missy; we talked about horses. The last girl I love will be someone I haven't even met yet, probably. They all count. But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like. These are the most important people in your life, and you’ll meet maybe four or five of these people over the span of 80 years. But there’s still one more tier to all this; there is always one person you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of these loveable qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable. The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different than anyone else, and they’re often just the person you happen to meet the first time you really, really, want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win, and you lose. Because for the rest of your life, they will control how you feel about everyone else.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

“It's far easier to write why something is terrible than why it's good. If you're reviewing a film and you decide "This is a movie I don't like," basically you can take every element of the film and find the obvious flaw, or argue that it seems ridiculous, or like a parody of itself, or that it's not as good as something similar that was done in a previous film. What's hard to do is describe why you like something. Because ultimately, the reason things move people is very amorphous. You can be cerebral about things you hate, but most of the things you like tend to be very emotive.”
― Chuck Klosterman

“We all believe that we are a certain kind of person, but we never know until we do something that proves otherwise, or until we die.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Downtown Owl

“It feels so exhausting to be so bad at something I loved so much.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

“It's possible this whole "Why do Latinos love Morrisey?" question will haunt us forever. Fortunately, Canadian academics are on the case.”
― Chuck Klosterman

“The strength of your memory dictates the size of your reality”
― Chuck Klosterman, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto

“…I have never understood the concept of infatuation. It has always been my understanding that being ‘infatuated’ with someone means you think you are in love, but you’re actually not; infatuation is (supposedly) just a foolish, fleeting feeling. But if being ‘in love’ is an abstract notion, and it’s not tangible, and there is no way to physically prove it to anyone else… well, how is being in love any different than having an infatuation? They’re both human constructions. If you think you’re in love with someone and you feel like you’re in love with someone, then you obviously are; thinking and feeling is the sum total of what love is. Why do we feel an obligation to certify emotions with some kind of retrospective, self-imposed authenticity?”
― Chuck Klosterman, Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

“Your memory is a monster; you forget—it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you—and summons them to your recall with will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“When all the details fit in perfectly, something is probably wrong with the story.”
― Charles Baxter, Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction

“What's agitating about solitude is the inner voice telling you that you should be mated to somebody, that solitude is a mistake. The inner voice doesn't care about who you find. It just keeps pestering you, tormenting you--if you happen to be me--with homecoming queens first, then girls next door, and finally anybody who might be pleased to see you now and then at the dinner table and in bed on occasion. You look up from reading the newspaper and realize that no one loves you, and no one burns for you.”
― Charles Baxter, El festín del amor

“Savor the imminent weirdness of the day.”
― Charles Baxter, Gryphon: New and Selected Stories

“You know, there's something heartsick about parties like this. Look at us. We're all pretending to be smart, as if intelligence were the cure for our anguish.”
― Charles Baxter, The Soul Thief

“A novel is not a summary of its plot but a collection of instances, of luminous specific details that take us in the direction of the unsaid and unseen.”
― Charles Baxter

“If you want to see the consequences of ideas, write a story. If you want to see the consequences of belief, write a story in which somebody is acting on the ideas or beliefs that she has. ”
― Charles Baxter

“Always try to keep a patch of sky above your life.”
― Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way

“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
― Marcel Proust

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
― Marcel Proust

“Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.”
― Marcel Proust

“Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book. The reader's recognition in himself of what the book says is the proof of the book's truth.”
― Marcel Proust, Time Regained

“We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.”
― Marcel Proust

“Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard.”
― Anne Sexton

“Saints have no moderation, nor do poets, just exuberance.”
― Anne Sexton

“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young

“Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., A Man Without a Country

“Many people need desperately to receive this message: 'I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake

“I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five

“The practice of art isn't to make a living. It's to make your soul grow.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it”
― Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow