Kristine > Kristine's Quotes

“Only great challenges make it worthwhile to pack up and move all one's books.”
― Roberto Bolaño, Between Parentheses: Essays, Articles, and Speeches, 1998-2003

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.”
― James Baldwin

“It's not that there is no small talk...It's that it comes not at the beginning of conversations but at the end...Sensitive people...'enjoy small talk only after they've gone deep' says Strickland. 'When sensitive people are in environments that nurture their authenticity, they laugh and chitchat just as much as anyone else.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“The cruellest thing you can do to Kerouac is reread him at thirty-eight.”
― Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia

“That is the gift of taking the long road: you know you're not missing anything.”
― Melissa Febos, Whip Smart: A Memoir

“She didn't want me; she wanted all of me. I didn't mind saying it. My girlfriend scared the crap out of me.”
― T.J. Forrester, Miracles, Inc.: A Novel

“A stranger can see in an instant something in you that you might spend years learning about yourself. How awful we all are when we look at ourselves under a light, finally seeing our reflections. How little we know about ourselves. How much forgiveness it must take to love a person, to choose not to see their flaws, or to see those flaws and love the person anyway. If you never forgive you’ll always be alone.”
― Stephen Elliott, The Adderall Diaries

“Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.”
― Josephine Hart, Damage

“I used to think--and given the way we ended up, maybe I still do--that all relationships need the kind of violent shove that a crush brings, just to get you started and to push you over the humps. And then, when the energy from that shove has gone and you come to something approaching a halt, you have to look around and see what you've got. It could be something completely different, it could be something roughly the same, but gentler and calmer, or it could be nothing at all.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding. I am constantly filled with wonder at the number of things that other people do without any evident difficulty that are pretty much beyond me.”
― Bill Bryson, I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away

“Ever consider what pets must think of us? I mean, here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul - chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we're the greatest hunters on earth!”
― Anne Tyler, The Accidental Tourist

“I'm beginning to think that maybe it's not just how much you love someone. Maybe what matters is who you are when you're with them.”
― Anne Tyler, The Accidental Tourist

“Begin this moment, wherever you find yourself, and take no thought of the morrow. Look not to Russia, China, India, not to Washington, not to the adjoining county, city or state, but to your immediate surroundings. Forget Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed and all the others. Do your part to the best of your ability, regardless of the consequences. Above all, do not wait for the next man to follow suit.”
― Henry Miller, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare

“Isn't it amazing in life how one minute you are devastated by some news, but then, a few seconds later, your desperate need to survive at any price kicks in and you can find some way to turn it around in your head?”
― Michael Gates Gill, How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else

“Most murders are committed by someone who is known to the victim. In fact, you are most likely to be murdered by a member of your own family on Christmas day.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time

“Today is the sort of day where the sun only comes up to humiliate you.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“You are not special. You're not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We're all part of the same compost heap. We're all singing, all dancing crap of the world.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“Only after disaster can we be resurrected. It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything. Nothing is static, everything is evolving, everything is falling apart.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you're satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you've got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“As long as a population can be induced to believe in a supernatural hereafter, it can be oppressed and controlled. People will put up with all sorts of tyranny, poverty, and painful treatment if they're convinced that they'll eventually escape to some resort in the sky where lifeguards are superfluous and the pool never closes. Moreover, the faithful are usually willing to risk their skins in whatever military adventure their government may currently be promoting.”
― Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All

“In New York, people are unhappy on purpose, because unhappiness makes them seem more complex; in Washington DC it just sort of works out that way.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

“I'm going to paraphrase Thoreau here... rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness... give me truth. ”
― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

“Mr. Franz, I think careers are a 20th century invention and I don't want one.”
― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

“We like companionship, see, but we can't stand to be around people for very long. So we go get ourselves lost, come back for a while, then get the hell out again.”
― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

“It is true that I miss intelligent companionship, but there are so few with whom I can share the things that mean so much to me that I have learned to contain myself. It is enough that I am surrounded with beauty...”
― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

“I understood what he was doing, that he had spent four years fulfilling the absurd and tedious duty of graduating from college and now he was emancipated from that world of abstraction, false security, parents, and material excess.”
― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
― Leo Tolstoy , Anna Karenina

“Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina