Niki > Niki's Quotes

“It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

“I think our generation has been called to apathy just as our grandparents were called to defeat fascism and the baby boomers were called to get divorced and fuck around for most of their adult lives before bankrupting the entire goddamn country when they retire. But we have the chance to do something really special here. Imagine a world where people didn’t care enough to go to war over anything. Where some guy gets up in the morning and says, “I know God wants me to kill the infidels and keep gay people from marrying each other, but I just don’t give a shit. I’m going back to bed.” It would be paradise on earth. This is our mission. I think we can make it happen, but I really don’t care either way. And that’s called hope.”
― Paul Neilan

“Nobody knows how to just shut the fuck up and look out the window anymore.”
― Paul Neilan

“If I’m at a party where I’m not enjoying myself, I will put some cookies in my jacket pocket and leave without saying good-bye.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“Producing works of art doesn't often count as appropriate intellectual work in an arts department: yet the equivalent in a science department, doing physics or chemistry, does. So why is it that in universities writing about novels is thought to be a higher intellectual calling than writing novels; or rather, if writing novels is not thought to be intellectually valid, why is writing about them?”
― Ken Robinson, Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative

“Right before you head out running, it can be hard to remember exactly why you're doing it. You often have to override a nagging sense of futility, lacing up your shoes, telling yourslef that no matter how unlikely it seems right now, after you finish you will be glad you went. It's only afterward that it makes sense, although even then it's hard to rationalize why. You just feel right. After a run, you feel at one with the world, as though some unspecified, innate need has been fulfilled.”
― Adharanand Finn, Running with the Kenyans: Passion, Adventure, and the Secrets of the Fastest People on Earth

“Life is a stew, and pot is poop.If someone stirred even a teeny-bit of poop in the stew, would you really want to eat it?”
― Maria Semple, Where'd You Go, Bernadette

“What are you doing?"
"Ya!" said Jane, whirling around, her hands held up menacingly.
It was Mr. Nobley with coat, hat, and cane, watching her with wide eyes. Jane took several quick (but oh so casual) steps away from Martin's window.
"Um, did I just say, 'Ya'?"
"You just said 'Ya,'" he confirmed. "If I am not mistaken, it was a battle cry, warning that you were about to attack me.
I, uh..." She stopped to laugh. "I wasn't aware until this precise and awkward moment that when startled in a startled in a strange place, my instincts would have me pretend to be a ninja.”
― Shannon Hale, Austenland

“And meanwhile the sad truth was that not everyone could be extraordinary, not everyone could be extremely cool; because whom would this leave to be ordinary?”
― Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections

“Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes it'll on'y be one.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“We were restless for ages...After a while I heard an owl hooting and calmed myself by thinking of it flying over the dark fields – and then I remembered it would be pouncing on mice. I love owls, but I wish God had made them vegetarian.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“After that, the book will fade, the way all books fade in your mind. But I hope you will remember this:
A man walking fast down a dark lonely street. Quick steps and hard breathing, all wonder and need. A bell above a door and the tinkle it makes. A clerk and a ladder and warm golden light, and then: the right book exactly, at exactly the right time.”
― Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

“Neel takes a sharp breath and I know exactly what it means. It means: I have waited my whole life to walk through a secret passage built into a bookshelf.”
― Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

“There’s a short circuit between my brain and my tongue, thus “Leave me the fuck alone” comes out as “Well, maybe. Sure. I guess I can see your point.”
― David Sedaris, Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls: Essays, Etc.

“Don't tell me I don't know how to hate,' I wanted to say. Then I stopped and asked myself, 'Do you really want that to be your message? Think you can out-hate me, asshole? I was fucking hating people before you were even born!”
― David Sedaris, Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls: Essays, Etc.

“I was not a lovable child, and I'd grown into a deeply unlovable adult. Draw a picture of my soul, and it'd be a scribble with fangs.”
― Gillian Flynn, Dark Places

“Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”
― André Gide

“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Underneath this veneer of slightly crazy and mildly socially retarded, I'm a complete disaster.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl

“Maybe Park had paralyzed her with his ninja magic, his Vulcan handhold, and now he was going to eat her.
That would be awesome.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“I really wondered why people were always doing what they didn't like doing. It seemed like life was a sort of narrowing tunnel. Right when you were born, the tunnel was huge. You could be anything. Then, like, the absolute second after you were born, the tunnel narrowed down to about half that size. You were a boy, and already it was certain you wouldn't be a mother and it was likely you wouldn't become a manicurist or a kindergarten teacher. Then you started to grow up and everything you did closed the tunnel in some more. You broke your arm climbing a tree and you ruled out being a baseball pitcher. You failed every math test you ever took and you canceled any hope of being a scientist. Like that. On and on through the years until you were stuck. You'd become a baker or a librarian or a bartender. Or an accountant. And there you were. I figured that on the day you died, the tunnel would be so narrow, you'd have squeezed yourself in with so many choices, that you just got squashed.”
― Carol Rifka Brunt, Tell the Wolves I'm Home

“I felt like I had proof that not all days are the same length, not all time has the same weight. Proof that there are worlds and worlds and worlds on top of worlds, if you want them to be there.”
― Carol Rifka Brunt, Tell the Wolves I'm Home

“Yeah, okay. I'll drop it," I said, and although I held it back with every muscle in my body, what I really wanted to do was cry. Not only because Finn had never told me about this guy, but because there was no way to ask him about it. And until then I don't think I really understood the meaning of gone.”
― Carol Rifka Brunt, Tell the Wolves I'm Home

“When all the goodbyes are said, I want to be the one who is leaving.”
― Lee Maynard

“What we can't speak, we say in silence.”
― Hillary Jordan, Mudbound

“However, if you do start crying in an argument and someone asks why, you can always say, "I'm just crying because of how wrong you are.”
― amy poehler, Yes Please

“The world was made up of people putting one foot in front of the other; and a life might appear ordinary simply because the person living it had been doing so for a long time.”
― Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

“My fatal flaw is hubris.
The brown stuff they spread on veggie sandwiches?
No, seaweed brain. That's hummus. Hubris is worse.
What could be worse than hummus?”
― Rick Riordan, The Sea of Monsters

“But, she knew, you didn’t have to marry your soulmate, and you didn’t even have to marry an Interesting. You didn’t always need to be the dazzler, the firecracker, the one who cracked everyone up, or made everyone want to sleep with you, or be the one who wrote and starred in the play that got the standing ovation. You could cease to be obsessed with the idea of being interesting.”
― Meg Wolitzer, The Interestings