Ankush Agarwal > Ankush's Quotes

“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
― William Gibson, Neuromancer

“Phones ringing in the middle
of the night always sound harsh and grating, like some savage metal tool out to
destroy the world. I felt it was my duty, as a member of the human race, to put a
stop to it”
― Haruki Murakami, Hombres sin mujeres

“my own voice was now tinged with the
dead too. The kind of unsettled feeling the newly deceased bring on is highly
contagious. It moves through the phone line as a faint trembling, transforming
the sound of words, bringing the world in sync with its vibration.”
― Haruki Murakami, Hombres sin mujeres

“No one can keep their eyes on someone every second. You have to
sleep, have to use the bathroom. Need to scrub the bathtub sometime. Have to
slice onions, have to snap off the ends of string beans. Check the air in the tires
of your car. That’s how we left each other. Or, rather, how she left me. There was
always, in the background, the unambiguous shadow of a sailor. A single dark,
autonomous shadow gliding up the wall of a building. Bathtubs, onions, and air
were simply shards of metaphor scattered like thumbtacks by that shadow.”
― Haruki Murakami, Hombres sin mujeres

“My dear young fellow,' the Old-Green-Grasshopper said gently, 'there are a whole lot of things in this world of ours you haven't started wondering about yet.”
― Roald Dahl, James and the Giant Peach

“Poor Earthworm,' the Ladybird said, whispering in James's ear. 'He loves to make everything into a disaster. He hates to be happy. He is only happy when he is gloomy.”
― Roald Dahl, James and the Giant Peach

“Yes. It’s very difficult to be calm and centred if your entire focus is on that. For karma is action in the hope of something in return. Like, if you give charity to someone, you expect at least respect in return. It’s a transaction. And if the result of your actions is not what you expected, you feel let down and become unhappy. Even worse, if the karma you get in return for your actions is, in fact, what you expected, you discover that the happiness you derive from it is fleeting. If dissatisfaction is guaranteed, how can you find peace of mind?’ ‘How?’ ‘Simply by Being what you are meant to Be.”
― Amish Tripathi, Raavan: Enemy of Aryavarta

“Nobility without capability is limiting, it only results in good theory.”
― Amish Tripathi, Raavan: Enemy of Aryavarta

“The diameter of the sun was a hundred and eight times the diameter of the earth. The average distance from the sun to the earth was a hundred and eight times the diameter of the sun. The average distance of the moon from the earth was a hundred and eight times the diameter of the moon. There were several other examples of this number appearing almost magically in the universe. Over time, it had been incorporated into many rituals. For instance, it was recommended that a mantra be chanted a hundred and eight times.”
― Amish Tripathi, Raavan: Enemy of Aryavarta

“If you spend enough time with anything, you start liking it, even sadness.”
― Amish Tripathi, Raavan: Enemy of Aryavarta

“Only an artist can understand the despair of being abandoned by his muse, his lifelong inspiration. Only someone who had loved can know the immeasurable agony of losing the object of one's passion. Only a devout believer who has touched the Divine can know the soul-emptying misery of his Goddess being taken from him.”
― Amish Tripathi, Raavan: Enemy of Aryavarta

“The past is just a story we tell ourselves.”
― Spike Jonze, her

“Falling in love is kind of like a form of socially acceptable insanity.”
― Spike Jonze, her

“Sometimes I think I've felt everything I'm ever gonna feel and from here on out I'm not going to feel anything new - just lesser versions of what I've already felt.”
― Spike Jonze, her

“It was exciting to see her grow -
both of us grow and change together. But then, that's the hard part - growing without growing apart, or changing without it scaring the other person.”
― Spike Jonze, her

“When a lake's doubt is shown as ripples, sunshine rays are flown to the hills.

झील के माथे की चंद सिलवटों में
घुल जाता है सुर्ख सवेरा करवटों में”
― Ankush Agarwal

“When the night is dark enough,
Remember - "The dawn is near”
― Ankush Agarwal

“kings and queens once depended on the mystique of inaccessibility as an expression of power.”
― Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads

“any and all information that one consumes - pays attention to - will have some influence, even if just forcing a reaction. That idea, in turn, has a very radical implication, for it suggests that sometimes we overestimate our own capacity for truly independent thought.”
― Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads

“That which is good or great makes itself known, no matter how loud the clamor of denial. That which deserves to live - lives.”
― Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads

“We have already remarked how who we are can be defined, at least in part, by what we attend to - how much more so this is when what we attend to is determined less by our volition and more by ambience.”
― Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads

“choices may be the cornerstone of individual freedom but, as the history of humanity shows, the urge to surrender to something larger and to transcend the self can be just as urgent, if not more so. The greatest propagandists and advertisers have always understood this.”
― Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads

“programs are scheduled interruptions of marketing bulletins.”
― Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads

“the lasting power of attentional habits is never to be underestimated”
― Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads

“When the love walks with an innocent morning,
the empathy of an unheard song will mean the world to me”
― Ankush Agarwal

“(talking about the habit of constantly checking for updates on email/FB/Twitter, etc.)

The check-in would eventually become a widespread attentional habit;
.....
No other has compelled so many minds with such regularity - regularity that has the feel of a compulsion, of a mental itch constantly in need of being scratched.”
― Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“You are all the colors in one, at full brightness.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“The thing I realize is, that it's not what you take, it's what you leave.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places