Mindy Jones > Mindy's Quotes

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“When in doubt, look intelligent.”
― Garrison Keillor

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“I'd rather have a book, but in a pinch I'll settle for a set of Water Pik instructions.”
― Anne Fadiman, Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

“Dear old world', she murmured, 'you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“A pretty sight, a lady with a book.”
― Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

“Unexplained noises are best left unexplained.”
― John Bellairs, The Face In The Frost

“There was one big rule in life - the things you worried about never happened, and the things that happened were never the ones you expected. Not that this bit of advice helped Johnny much. It simply meant that he spent more time guessing at what the unexpected disasters in his life would be.”
― John Bellairs, The Mummy, the Will, and the Crypt

“I am always concerned when people, finding out that I am a writer, apologise and say, “I’m not much of a reader actually. I know I ought to, but I just don’t seem able to find the time,” and then go on to tell me how they feel obliged to finish any book they begin. Well, of course, I say, you will be reluctant to open one in the first place, knowing what it might entail. It isn’t meant to be like that, I assure them. If you begin a book and you don’t like it, just throw it away. Or take it round to a charity shop. It’s like going to a party: some people you linger with, knowing you get on. Some people you exchange greeting with and move on fast. It’s nothing against them. They’re just not your kind of person. It’s the same with books. You must be prepared to discard. And though you may feel it’s a waste of money not reading a book you don’t get on with, that’s like not opening the windows when the weather turns warm for fear of wasting the central heating. So, as I say, now is a good point to abandon the book. You have my permission - even my encouragement.”
― Fay Weldon, Chalcot Crescent

“Some of us are made fat and some of us are made thin, and that's all there is to it.”
― Fay Weldon, The Fat Woman's Joke

“I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls. They always say because it's such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother is attractive, but I have photographs of her.”
― Ellen DeGeneres

“Why did Iwanski risk so much to save Jews? He told the author, "When a Jew cries, I cry. When a Jew suffers, I am a Jew. All are of my nation, for I am a man.”
― Dan Kurzman, The Bravest Battle: The Twenty-eight Days of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

“They drove together under the stars to the lake, where they sat with fishing poles in a metal rowboat and waited for something to bite. Zack ate the toast, Uncle Orson gave some pointers, and then they cast their lines, again and again, into the pale fog. Dawn broke. The sunrise cracked. Clouds settled across the sky. The fog scattered as the air heated. And they still weren’t catching anything. And that whole time, the exact same gull was circling overhead. “Nothing’s happening,” Zack complained. But Uncle Orson smiled at the clouds and smiled at the rowboat and smiled at the gull and smiled at the poles. “Nothing has to happen,” Uncle Orson had said.”
― Matthew Baker

“It remains an astonishing, disturbing fact that in America—a nation where nearly every new drug is subjected to rigorous scrutiny as a potential carcinogen, and even the bare hint of a substance’s link to cancer ignites a firestorm of public hysteria and media anxiety—one of the most potent and common carcinogens known to humans can be freely bought and sold at every corner store for a few dollars.”
― Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

“The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.”
― Samuel Butler

“There's an old Southern saying that if you're worried about your weight, clothes, or getting old, then you don't have any real problems.”
― Amy Hill Hearth

“Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“The garden is one of the two great metaphors for humanity.
The garden is about life and beauty and the impermanence of all living things.
The garden is about feeding your children, providing food for the tribe.
It’s part of an urgent territorial drive that we can probably trace back to animals storing food.
It’s a competitive display mechanism, like having a prize bull, this greed for the best tomatoes and English tea roses.
It’s about winning; about providing society with superior things; and about proving that you have taste, and good values, and you work hard.
And what a wonderful relief, every so often, to know who the enemy is.
Because in the garden, the enemy is everything: the aphids, the weather, time.
And so you pour yourself into it, care so much, and see up close so much birth, and growth, and beauty, and danger, and triumph.
And then everything dies anyway, right?
But you just keep doing it.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“We were together. I forget the rest.”
― Walt Whitman

“Lorie darlin', life in San Francisco, you see, is still just life. If you want any one thing too badly, it's likely to turn out to be a disappointment. The only healthy way to live life is to learn to like all the little everyday things, like a sip of good whiskey in the evening, a soft bed, a glass of buttermilk, or a feisty gentleman like myself.”
― Gus McCrae in Lonesome Dove...

“Looking at her, though, was like looking at the hills. The hills stayed as they were. You could go them, if you had the means, but they extended no greeting.”
― Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove

“Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same?”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“When I lost my sight, Werner, people said I was brave. When my father left, people said I was brave. But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same?”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“Some people are weak in some ways, sir. Others in other ways.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“Stones are just stones and rain is just rain and misfortune is just bad luck.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“We rise again in the grass. In the flowers. In songs.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“Is she happy? For portions of every day, she is happy.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“All that is very well," answered Candide, "but let us cultivate our garden.”
― Voltaire, Candide