Foad > Foad's Quotes

“Books turn muggles into wizards.”
― -Unknown

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

“Out of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most.”
― Mark Twain

“I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally. ”
― W.C. Fields

“Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources”
― C.E.M. Joad

“I don't know the question, but sex is definitely the answer.”
― Woody Allen

“If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.”
― W.C. Fields

“Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?”
― Henry Ward Beecherr

“When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'.”
― Groucho Marx

“There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.”
― Bertrand Russell

“Never memorize something that you can look up.”
― Albert Einstein

“There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.”
― Oscar Levant

“My tastes are simple: I am easily satisfied with the best.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain

“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.”
― Frank Zappa

“Music is ... A higher revelation than all Wisdom & Philosophy”
― Ludwig van Beethoven

“I would believe only in a God that knows how to dance.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.”
― Franz Kafka

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.”
― Ernest Benn

“Loneliness was an unsatisfied thirst for illusion.”
― Kobo Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

“If she was going to die, Marla didn't want to know about it.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“You get a little moody sometimes but I think that's because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“He had been bored, that's all, bored like most people. Hence he had made himself out of whole cloth a life full of complications and drama. Something must happen - and that explains most human commitments. Something must happen, even loveless slavery, even war or death. Hurray then for funerals!”
― Albert Camus, The Fall

“We'll never be as young as we are tonight.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“The future you have, tomorrow, won't be the same future you had, yesterday.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“Music is crucial. Beyond no way can I overstress this fact. Let's say you're southbound on the interstate, cruising alone in the middle lane, listening to AM radio. Up alongside comes a tractor trailer of logs or concrete pipe, a tie-down strap breaks, and the load dumps on top of your little sheetmetal ride. Crushed under a world of concrete, you're sandwiched like so much meat salad between layers of steel and glass. In that last, fast flutter of your eyelids, you looking down that long tunnel toward the bright God Light and your dead grandma walking up to hug you--do you want to be hearing another radio commercial for a mega, clearance, closeout, blow-out liquidation car-stereo sale?”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“After a good-looking boy gives you rabies two, three times, you'll settle down and marry somebody less exciting for the rest of your life”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“By first believing in Santa Claus, then the Easter Bunny, then the Tooth Fairy, Rant Casey was recognizing that those myths are more than pretty stories and traditions to delight children. Or to modify behavior. Each of those three traditions asks a child to believe in the impossible in exchange for a reward. These are stepped-up tests to build a child's faith and imagination. The first test is to believe in a magical person, with toys as the reward. The second test is to trust in a magical animal, with candy as the reward. The last test is the most difficult, with the most abstract reward: To believe, trust in a flying fairy that will leave money.

From a man to an animal to a fairy.

From toys to candy to money. Thus, interestingly enough, transferring the magic of faith and trust from sparkling fairy-dom to clumsy, tarnished coins. From gossamer wings to nickels... dimes... and quarters.

In this way, a child is stepped up to greater feats of imagination and faith as he or she matures. Beginning with Santa in infancy, and ending with the Tooth Fairy as the child acquires adult teeth. Or, plainly put, beginning with all the possibility of childhood, and ending with an absolute trust in the national currency. ”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

“It’s a fun playtime. Please, don’t kill it with big words.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey