Simone Leigh > Simone's Quotes

“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
― Steve Jobs

“. . . hope resides in the future, while perspective and wisdom are almost always found by looking to the past.”
― Greg Mortenson, Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace With Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“Eventually, I came to understand that a group of people who wield enormous power happen, oddly enough, to espouse some of the very same ideals imparted to me by people in Africa and central Asia who have no power at all. The reason for this, in my view, is that members of the armed forces have worked on the ground-in many cases, during three or four tours of duty-on a level that very few diplomats, academicians, journalists, or policy makers can match. And among other things, this experience has imbued soldiers with the gift of empathy.”
― Greg Mortenson, Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace With Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“When ordinary human beings perform extraordinary acts of generosity, endurance or compassion, we are all made richer by their example. Like the rivers that flow out of the Karakoram and the Hindu Kush, the inspiration they generate washes down to the rest of us. It waters everyone's fields.”
― Greg Mortenson, Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace With Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“And this is what I want you to understand, that good, real good, was born out of your father's remorse. Sometimes, I thing everything he did, feeding the poor on the streets, building the orphanage, giving money to friends in need, it was all his way of redeeming himself. And that, I believe, is what true redemption is, Amir jan, when guilt leads to good.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“There is only one sin. and that is theft... when you tell a lie, you steal someones right to the truth.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“In his rearview mirror, I saw something flash in his eyes. "You want to know?" he sneered. "Let me imagine, Agha sahib. You probably lived in a big two- or three-story house with a nice backyard that your gardener filled with flowers and fruit trees. All gated, of course. Your father drove an American car. You had servants, probably Hazaras. Your parents hired workers to decorate the house for the fancy mehmanis they threw, so their friends would come over to drink and boast about their travels to Europe or America. And I would bet my first son's eyes that this is the first time you've ever worn a pakol." He grinned at me, revealing a mouthful of prematurely rotting teeth. "Am I close?"
Why are you saying these things?" I said.
Because you wanted to know," he spat. He pointed to an old man dressed in ragged clothes trudging down a dirt path, a large burlap pack filled with scrub grass tied to his back. "That's the real Afghanistan, Agha sahib. That's the Afghanistan I know. You? You've always been a tourist here, you just didn't know it.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“It's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“It is now your duty to hone that talent, because a person who wastes his God-given talents is a donkey.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“Let us keep courage and try to be patient and gentle. And let us not mind being eccentric, and make distinction between good and evil.”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“Let’s not forget that the little emotions are the great captains of our lives and we obey them without realizing it.”
― Vincent van Gogh

“Like Leontius, the young Athenian in Plato, I presume that you are reading this because you desire a closer look, and that you, too, are properly disturbed by your curiosity. Perhaps, in examining this extremity with me, you hope for some understanding, some insight, some flicker of self-knowledge – a moral, or a lesson, or a clue about how to behave in this world: some such information. I don’t discount the possibility, but when it comes to genocide, you already know right from wrong. The best reason I have come up with for looking closely into Rwanda’s stories is that ignoring them makes me even more uncomfortable about existence and my place in it. The horror, the horror, interests me only insofar as a precise memory of the offense is necessary to understand its legacy.”
― Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda

“There is no doubt that the United States has much to atone for, both domestically and abroad...To produce this horrible confection at home, start with our genocidal treatment of the Native Americans, add a couple hundred years of slavery, along with our denial of entry to Jewish refugees fleeing the death camps of the Third Reich, stir in our collusion with a long list of modern despots and our subsequent disregard for their appalling human rights records, add our bombing of Cambodia and the Pentagon Papers to taste, and then top with our recent refusals to sign the Kyoto protocol for greenhouse emissions, to support any ban on land mines, and to submit ourselves to the rulings of the International Criminal Court. The result should smell of death, hypocrisy, and fresh brimstone.”
― Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

“You know someone's right for you when the things they don't have to say are even more important than the things they do.”
― Jodi Picoult, Sing You Home

“She should have done science, not spent all her time with her head in novels. Novels gave you a completely false idea about life, they told lies and they implied there were endings when in reality there were no endings, everything just went on and on and on.”
― Kate Atkinson, Case Histories

“They said love made you strong, but in Louise's opinion it made you weak. It corkscrewed into your heart and you couldn't get it out again, not without ripping your heart to pieces.”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“Love was the hardest thing. Don't let anyone ever tell you different.”
― Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

“The belief that unhappiness is selfless and happiness is selfish is misguided. It's more selfless to act happy. It takes energy, generosity, and discipline to be unfailingly lighthearted, yet everyone takes the happy person for granted. No one is careful of his feelings or tries to keep his spirits high. He seems self-sufficient; he becomes a cushion for others. And because happiness seems unforced, that person usually gets no credit.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
― J. Krishnamurti

“There is one thing that has disappeared, not just from the U.S. but from the entire world, is the idea of ever being embarrassed by anything.”
― Fran Lebowitz

“The half-life of love is forever.”
― Junot Díaz, This Is How You Lose Her

“When you think yours is the only true path you forever chain yourself to judging others and narrow the vision of God. The road to righteousness and arrogance is a parallel road that can intersect each other several times throughout a person's life. It’s often hard to recognize one road from another. What makes them different is the road to righteousness is paved with the love of humanity. The road to arrogance is paved with the love of self.”
― Shannon Alder

“A stranger is shot in the street, you hardly move to help. But if, half an hour before, you spent just ten minutes with the fellow and knew a little about him and his family, you might just jump in front of his killer and try to stop it. Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know is bad, or amoral, at least. You can’t act if you don’t know.”
― Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

“You're not like the others. I've seen a few; I know. When I talk, you look at me. When I said something about the moon, you looked at the moon, last night. The others would never do that. The others would walk off and leave me talking. Or threaten me. No one has time any more for anyone else. You're one of the few who put up with me. That's why I think it's so strange you're a fireman, it just doesn't seem right for you, somehow.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“You're afraid of making mistakes. Don't be. Mistakes can be profited by. Man, when I was young I shoved my ignorance in people's faces. They beat me with sticks. By the time I was forty my blunt instrument had been honed to a fine cutting point for me. If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Too late, I found you can't wait to become perfect, you got to go out and fall down and get up with everybody else.”
― Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

“The ability to "fantasize" is the ability to survive. It's wonderful to speak about this subject because there have been so many wrong-headed people dealing with it.... The so-called realists are trying to drive us insane, and I refuse to be driven insane.... We survive by fantasizing. Take that away from us and the whole damned human race goes down the drain.”
― Ray Bradbury

“I feel I'm doing what I should've done a lifetime ago.
For a little while I'm not afraid.
Maybe it's because I'm doing the right thing at last.
Maybe it's because I've done a rash thing and don't want to look the coward to you.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451