PF > PF's Quotes

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“You don’t have a soul, Doctor. You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily.”
― Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

“We read to know we're not alone.”
― William Nicholson, Shadowlands: A Play

“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.”
― Niels Bohr

“I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

“You're probably thinking I owe you my life."[Chris]
"No." she [Becca] snapped.
"Just sixty bucks."
"You charge for the hero act?" [Chris]”
― Brigid Kemmerer, Storm

“Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart
until, in our own despair, against our will,
comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”
― Aeschylus

“Everything in moderation, including moderation.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night

“I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.”
― Toni Morrison

“Knowledge was more powerful than fear. Love was stronger than hate.”
― Lauren Myracle, Shine

“In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“Not all librarians are evil cultists. Some librarians are instead vengeful undead who want to suck your soul.”
― Brandon Sanderson (Alcatraz Smedry), Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.”
― Marilyn Monroe

“If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“Books fall open, you fall in.”
― David T.W. McCord

“I never tell anyone exactly how clever I am. They would be too scared.”
― Eoin Colfer, The Eternity Code

“I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.”
― Galileo Galilei

“And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon.”
― Edward Lear, The Owl and the Pussycat

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
― Ira Glass

“Books: a beautifully browsable invention that needs no electricity and exists in a readable form no matter what happens.”
― Nicholson Baker

“I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.”
― C. S. Lewis

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“Censorship of anything, at any time, in any place, on whatever pretense, has always been and always will be the last resort of the boob and the bigot.”
― Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

“Do not ignore dreams. They are a line from the past to the future. All nightmares are real.”
― Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise

“For half a century he had stood too close to darkness, and some it crept into his bones.”
― Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead