Alex Bogan > Alex's Quotes

“The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn't be any of this.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist,'" says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“It's hard to not like a man who not only notices the colors, but speaks them.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“The song was born on her breathe and died at her lips.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“We all arrive by different streets, by unequal languages, at Silence.”
― Pablo Neruda

“In art as in lovemaking, heartfelt ineptitude has its appeal and so does heartless skill, but what you want is passionate virtuosity.”
― John Barth

“Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.”
― John Barth

“Somewhere in the world there was a young woman with such splendid understanding that she'd see him entire, like a poem or story, and find his words so valuable after all that when he confessed his apprehensions she would explain why they were in fact the very things that made him precious to her...and to Western Civilization! There was no such girl, the simple truth being.”
― John Barth, Lost in the Funhouse

“Every artist joins a conversation that's been going on for generations, even millennia, before he or she joins the scene.”
― John Barth

“He wishes he had never entered the funhouse. But he has. Then he wishes he were dead. But he's not. Therefore he will construct funhouses for others and be their secret operator -- though he would rather be among the lovers for whom funhouses are designed.”
― John Barth, Lost in the Funhouse

“not every boy thrown to the wolves becomes a hero.”
― John Barth

“Self knowledge is always bad news.”
― John Barth, Giles Goat-Boy

“All men are loyal, but their objects of allegiance are at best approximate.”
― John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor

“Nobody knew how to be what they were right. ”
― John Barth, Lost in the Funhouse

“I admire writers who can make complicated things simple, but my own talent has been to make simple things complicated.”
― John Barth

“I particularly scorn my fondness for paradox. I despise pessimism, narcissism, solipsism, truculence, word-play, and pusillanimity, my chiefer inclinations; loathe self-loathers ergo me; have no pity for self-pity and so am free of that sweet baseness. I doubt I am. Being me’s no joke.”
― John Barth, Lost in the Funhouse

“Those rituals of getting ready to write produce a kind of trance state.”
― John Barth

“path's should be laid where people walk, instead of walking where paths are laid-”
― John Barth, The End of the Road

“Indeed, if I have yet to join the hosts of the suicides, it is because (fatigue apart) I find it no meaningfuller to drown myself than to go on swimming.”
― John Barth, Lost in the Funhouse

“Nothing is loathsomer than the self-loathing of a self one loathes.”
― John Barth, Giles Goat-Boy

“There's a great difficulty in making
choices if you have any imagination at all. Faced with such a multitude of desireable choices, no one choice
seems satisfactory for very long by comparison with the aggregate desirability of all the rest, though compared to any *one* of the others it would not be found inferior. All equally attractive but none finally inviting.”
― John Barth, The End of the Road

“Some people wanted to get rich or famous, but my friends and I wanted to get real. We wanted to get deep. (Also, I suppose, we wanted to get laid.)”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“One writer I know tells me that he sits down every morning and says to himself nicely, "It's not like you don't have a choice, because you do-- you can either type or kill yourself.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“So why does our writing matter, again?" they ask.
Because of the spirit, I say. Because of the heart. Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“If you always dreamed of writing a novel or a memoir, and you used to love to write, and were pretty good at it, will it break your heart if it turns out you never got around to it? If you wake up one day at eighty, will you feel nonchalant that something always took precedence over a daily commitment to discovering your creative spirit?

If not--if this very thought fills you with regret--then what are you waiting for?”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.”
― Jorge Luis Borges