Devin > Devin's Quotes

“Wisdom is oft-times nearer when we stoop
Than when we soar.”
― William Wordsworth, The Excursion 1814

“...there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

“I am not shy about admitting my modest talents. For example, I am happy to admit that I am better than average at clever remarks, and I also have a flair for getting people to like me. But to be perfectly fair to myself, I am ever-ready to confess my shortcomings, too, and a quick round of soul-searching forced me to admit that I had never been any good at all at breathing water. As I hung there from the seat belt, dazed and watching the water pour in and swirl around my head, this began to seem like a very large character flaw.”
― Jeff Lindsay, Dearly Devoted Dexter

“If you are allergic to a thing, it is best not to put that thing in your mouth, particularly if the thing is cats.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Wide Window

“It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

“A man of my acquaintance once wrote a poem called "The Road Less Traveled", describing a journey he took through the woods along a path most travelers never used. The poet found that the road less traveled was peaceful but quite lonely, and he was probably a bit nervous as he went along, because if anything happened on the road less traveled, the other travelers would be on the road more frequently traveled and so couldn't hear him as he cried for help. Sure enough, that poet is dead.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Slippery Slope

“I'm not young enough to know everything.”
― J.M. Barrie, The Admirable Crichton

“Poirot," I said. "I have been thinking."
"An admirable exercise my friend. Continue it.”
― Agatha Christie, Peril at End House

“Your father, Jo. He never loses patience, never doubts or complains, but always hopes, and works and waits so cheerfully that one is ashamed to do otherwise before him.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly – they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“I'm sure you have heard it said that appearance does not matter so much, and that it is what's on the inside that counts. This is, of course, utter nonsense, because if it were true then people who were good on this inside would would never have to comb their hair or take a bath, and the whole world would smell even worse than it already does.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Miserable Mill

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.”
― Lewis Carroll , Alice in Wonderland

“Alice! A childish story take,
And with a gentile hand
Lay it where Childhood dreams are twined
In memory's mystic band,
Like pilgrim's withered wreath of flowers
Pluck'd in a far off land.”
― Lewis Carroll, The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition

“the table of elements does not contain one of the most powerful elements that make up our world, and that is the element of surprise.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Ersatz Elevator

“There are some things we might not know, but that doesn't mean we should give up. We can find out what we need to know. We can find out everything”
― Lemony Snicket, The Carnivorous Carnival

“Besides getting several paper cuts in the same day or receiving the news that someone in your family has betrayed you to your enemies, one of the most unpleasant experiences in life is a job interview.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Carnivorous Carnival

“Grief is an element. It has its own cycle like the carbon cycle, the nitrogen. It never diminishes not ever. It passes in and out of everything.”
― Peter Heller, The Dog Stars

“Is it possible to love so desperately that life is unbearable? I don't mean unrequited, I mean being in the love. In the midst of it and desperate. Because knowing it will end, because everything does. End.”
― Peter Heller, The Dog Stars

“He's getting old. I don't count the years. I don't multiply by seven. They bred dogs for everything else, even diving for fish, why didn't they breed them to live longer, to live as long as a man?”
― Peter Heller, The Dog Stars

“Life and death lived inside each other. That's what occured to me. Death was inside all of us, waiting for warmer nights, a compromised system, a beetle, as in the now dying black timber on the mountains.”
― Peter Heller, The Dog Stars

“There is a pain you can’t think your way out of. You can’t talk it away. If there was someone to talk to. You can walk. One foot the other foot. Breathe in breathe out. Drink from the stream. Piss. Eat the venison strips. And. You can’t metabolize the loss. It is in the cells of your face, your chest, behind the eyes, in the twists of the gut. Muscles, sinew, bone. It is all of you.

When you walk you propel it forward. When you let the sled and sit on a fallen log and. You imagine him curling in the one patch of sun maybe lying over your feet. Then it sits with you, the Pain puts its arm over your shoulders. It is your closest friend. Steadfast. And at night you can’t bear to hear your own breath unaccompanied by another and underneath the big stillness like a score is the roaring of the cataract of everything being and being torn away. Then. The Pain is lying beside your side, close. Does not bother you with sound even of breathing.”
― Peter Heller, The Dog Stars

“Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

“Reality itself is too twisted.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone: The Essential Hunter S. Thompson

“I can't stand it to think my life is going so fast and I'm not really living it.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“Every time you enter a library you might say to yourself, "The world is quiet here," as a sort of pledge proclaiming reading to be the greater good.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Slippery Slope

“Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean that it's nonsense.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Slippery Slope

“I know that having a good vocabulary doesn't guarantee that I'm a good person, but it does mean I've read a great deal. And in my experience, well-read people are less likely to be evil.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Slippery Slope

“She says nothing at all, but simply stares upward into the dark sky and watches, with sad eyes, the slow dance of the infinite stars.”
― Neil Gaiman, Stardust

“Every lover is, in his heart, a madman, and, in his head, a minstrel.”
― Neil Gaiman, Stardust