Infinite Jen > Infinite Jen's Quotes

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.”
― Bernard M. Baruch

“We can't stop here, this is bat country!”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

“It never got weird enough for me.”
― Hunter S. Thompson

“The Edge... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Hell's Angels

“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Do you hate people?”

“I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around.”
― Charles Bukowski, Barfly

“I used to read three newspapers every morning. Three.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“...disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business....”
― Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“Landlords are enemies of the workers,” Hansu said.”
― Lee Min-jin, Pachinko

“homesound”
― Leila Mottley, Nightcrawling

“Mama used to tell me that blood is everything, but I think we’re all out here unlearning that sentiment, scraping our knees and asking strangers to patch us back up. I don’t say goodbye to Shauna and she doesn’t even turn around to watch me leave, to head back out to a sky that sunk into deep blue while my brother asked me to do the one thing I know I shouldn’t, the one thing Shauna cared enough to warn me about: hollow myself out for another person who ain’t gonna give a shit when I’m empty. The café lady sticks the pen behind her ear where her undercut fades from blue to hot pink and then blond, and she smiles the same way that the mean girls used to smile before they said I couldn’t sit at their table in elementary school, like she’s waiting for a punch or some kind of prize.”
― Leila Mottley, Nightcrawling

“Walking in downtown Oakland is like trying to find your footing on an ocean floor. Everything is big here, not like back home in East, where we keep our buildings low to the ground and our feet to the sidewalk. In downtown, it feels like everything is airborne or underground”
― Leila Mottley, Nightcrawling

“Daddy always said fuck the cops, but don’t fuck with them, unless you got a reason.”
― Leila Mottley, Nightcrawling

“Once you’re a made man, you don’t need the constant living influence of sources outside yourself.”
― Don DeLillo, Underworld

“Whiz Co was a firm with an inside track to the future. The Future of Waste.”
― Don DeLillo, Underworld

“Not just pleasure, not really, more like the stanching of a wound, more like the holding of a tide, a sacrifice, negating the trauma of his birth.”
― Deepti Kapoor, Age of Vice

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“Words”
― Ling Ma, Severance

“The worm is very greedy, Balthasar said darkly.”
― Ling Ma, Severance

“The past is a black hole, cut into the present day like a wound, and if you come too close, you can get sucked in. You have to keep moving.”
― Ling Ma, Severance

“akpeteshie”
― Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

“While Abeeku Badu was the figurehead, the Omanhin who received gifts from the political leaders of London and Holland alike for his role in their trade, Fiifi was the authority. When he shook his head, the whole village stopped.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

“His mother had spit on the ground at his feet, and shook her head so quickly he thought it might spin off. “You think you know, but you don’t know,” she said. “Evil is like a shadow. It follows you.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

“This was how they lived there, in the bush: Eat or be eaten. Capture or be captured. Marry for protection. Quey would never go to Cudjo’s village. He would not be weak. He was in the business of slavery, and sacrifices had to be made.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

“I know the way back out,” Aku said. The sermon was about to begin and Ness knew she wouldn’t have much time. Easter Sunday would not come again for another year, and by that time she or Aku or both could be sold; dead, even.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

“We believe the one who has the power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study history, you must always ask yourself, Whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth? Once you have figured that out, you must find that story too. From there, you begin to get a clearer, yet still imperfect, picture.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

“What I know now, my son: Evil begets evil. It grows. It transmutes, so that sometimes you cannot see that the evil in the world began as the evil in your own home.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

“the organized and heavily financed modern expedition had not arrived. With him, it was the heroic story of a man against the forest.”
― David Grann, The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon

“topside,”
― David Grann, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

“A man-of-war may justly be styled an epitome of the world, in which there is a sample of every character, some good men as well as bad.” Among the latter, he noted, were “highwaymen, burglars, pickpockets, debauchees, adulterers, gamesters, lampooners, bastard-getters, imposters, panders, parasites, ruffians, hypocrites, threadworn beaux jack-a-dandies.”
― David Grann, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder