jess > jess's Quotes

“I was so depressed I stopped using hair spray for three weeks.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Pigs in Heaven

“Since we're neither at the bottom nor at the top, we must be in the middle.”
― Trina Paulus, Hope for the Flowers

“You're asking yourself, Can I give this child the best possible upbringing and keep her out of harm's way her whole life long? The answer is no, you can't. But nobody else can either. Not a state home, that's for sure. For heaven's sake, the best they can do is turn their heads while the kids learn to pick locks and snort hootch, and then try to keep them out of jail. Nobody can protect a child from the world. That's why it's the wrong thing to ask, if you're really trying to make a decision."
So what's the right thing to ask?"
Do I want to try? Do I think it would be interesting, maybe even enjoyable in the long run, to share my life with this kid and give her my best effort and maybe, when all's said and done, end up with a good friend.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Bean Trees

“But nothing on this earth is guaranteed, when you get right down to it, you know? I've been thinking about that. About how your kids aren't really YOURS, they're just these people that you try to keep an eye on, and hope you'll all grow up someday to like each other and still be in one piece. What I mean is, everything you get is really just on loan. Does that make sense?"

"Sure," I said. "Like library books. Sooner or later they've all got to go back into the nightdrop.”
― Barbara Kingsolver

“A human being can be good or bad or right or wrong, maybe. But how can you say a person is illegal? You just can't. That's all there is to it.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Bean Trees

“Some things are forgotten, some things disappear, some things die.”
― Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase

“True success is figuring out your life and career so you never have to be around jerks.”
― John Waters, Role Models

“Being rich is not about how much money you have or how many homes you own; it's the freedom to buy any book you want without looking at the price and wondering if you can afford it.”
― John Waters, Role Models

“You should never read just for "enjoyment." Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgmental. More apt to understand your friends' insane behavior, or better yet, your own. Pick "hard books." Ones you have to concentrate on while reading. And for god's sake, don't let me ever hear you say, "I can't read fiction. I only have time for the truth." Fiction is the truth, fool! Ever hear of "literature"? That means fiction, too, stupid.”
― John Waters, Role Models

“I am not pretty. I am not beautiful. I am as radiant as the sun.”
― Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

“What's the purpose of being with someone if they don't change your life? She said that, and Julio was present when she said it: that life only had purpose if you found someone who changed it, who destroyed your life.”
― Alejandro Zambra, Bonsaï

“Paper Matches

My aunts washed dishes while the uncles
squirted each other on the lawn with
garden hoses. Why are we in here,
I said, and they are out there?
That’s the way it is,
said Aunt Hetty, the shriveled-up one.
I have the rages that small animals have,
being small, being animal.
Written on me was a message,
“At Your Service,”
like a book of paper matches.
One by one we were taken out
and struck.
We come bearing supper,
our heads on fire.”
― Paulette Jiles

“What young people didn't know, she thought, lying down beside this man, his hand on her shoulder, her arm; oh, what young people did not know. They did not know that lumpy, aged, and wrinkled bodies were as needy as their own young, firm ones, that love was not to be tossed away carelessly . . . No, if love was available, one chose it, or didn't chose it. And if her platter had been full with the goodness of Henry and she had found it burdensome, had flicked it off crumbs at a time, it was because she had not know what one should know: that day after day was unconsciously squandered. . . . But here they were, and Olive pictured two slices of Swiss cheese pressed together, such holes they brought to this union--what pieces life took out of you.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge

“Sure, everything is ending," Jules said, "but not yet.”
― Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

“I’m like America ” he said.

Stephanie swung around to look at him unnerved. “What are you talking about ” she said. “Are you off your meds ”

“Our hands are dirty ” Jules said.”
― Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

“I like pulling on a baggy bee suit, forgetting myself and getting as close to the bees' lives as they will let me, remembering in the process that there is more to life than the merely human.”
― Sue Hubbell, A Book Of Bees: And How to Keep Them – A Melodious Beekeeping Memoir and Nature Journal from the Missouri Ozarks

“Not real can tell us about real.”
― Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

“Happiness, when it comes, is stronger than all the jerk girls in Santo Domingo combined.”
― Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

“What we call the present is given shape by an accumulation of the past.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“I spent so much of my younger life drinking, and being drunk makes learning to be a grown-up kind of hard.”
― Jane Lynch, Happy Accidents: A Memoir

“Take pride in your pain; you are stronger than those who have none”
― Lois Lowry, Gathering Blue

“Two hallmarks of Homo Sapiens are decoration and self-identification.”
― Carl Zimmer, Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed

“The equation Bubble Tea = Something to Look Forward To depressurizes the misery of capitalism and is a Hello Kitty band-aid on the festering wound of Neo-Liberalism.”
― Vanessa Veselka, Zazen

“Mace, you never read Smoky the Cowhorse,did you?
No.
Well,ol' Smoky, he had somebad things happen to him,had the heart knocked clean out of him.But he hung on and came out of it okay.I've been bashed up pretty good,Mason, but I'm going to make it.”
― S.E. Hinton, Tex

“...farming takes root in you and crowds out other endeavors, makes them seem paltry. Your acres become a world. And maybe you realize that it is beyond those acres or in your distant past, back in the realm of TiVo and cubicles, of take-out food and central heat and air, in that country where discomfort has nearly disappeared, that you were deprived. Deprived of the pleasure of desire, of effort and difficulty and meaningful accomplishment.”
― Kristin Kimball, The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love

“Sitting at the table, watching the cards being dealt, I heard a man say that the difference between an amateur and a pro is that the pro doesn't have an emotional reaction to losing anymore. It's just the other side of winning. I guess I'm a farmer now, because I'm used to loss like this, to death of all kinds, and to rot. It's just the other side of life. It is your first big horse and all he meant to you, and it is also his bones and skin breaking down in the compost pile, almost ready to be spread on the fields.”
― Kristin Kimball, The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love

“Cook things, eat them with other people. If you can tire your own bones while growing the beans, so much the better for you.”
― Kristin Kimball, The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love

“We can all of us be hurt, and no one is exclusively safe from worry and sadness.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“This perhaps was what lay at the root of the hysteria surrounding what came to be known as the Gold Rush: Men desiring a feeling of fortune; the unlucky masses hoping to skin or borrow the luck of others, or the luck of a destination. A seductive notion, and one I thought to be wary of. To me, luck was something you either earned or invented through strength of character. You had to come by it honestly; you could not trick or bluff your way into it.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“Come with me into the world and reclaim your independence. You stand to gain so much, and riches are the least of it.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers