Katie > Katie's Quotes

“I do love secondhand books that open to the page some previous owner read oftenest. The day Hazlitt came he opened to "I hate to read new books," and I hollered "Comrade!" to whoever owned it before me.”
― Helene Hanff, 84, Charing Cross Road

“It is an undeniable, and may I say fundamental quality of man, that when faced with extinction, every alternative is preferable.”
― Dr. Leonard Church

“I must tell you I've just been reborn."
"Nicholas, you always think you can do things better than your mother. You can be sure you were born quite adequately on the first occasion.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“What after all, is a halo? It's only one more thing to keep clean.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“ALIZON They told me no one was here.
RICHARD It would be me they meant.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“Madam, if I were Herod in the middle Of the massacre of the innocents, I'd pause
Just to consider the confusion of your imagery.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“Thomas, only another Fifty years or so and then I promise to let you go.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“jennet. Are you doing this to save me?
thomas. You natter my powers,
My sweet; you're too much a woman. But if you wish You can go down to the dinner of damnation
On my arm.
jennet. I dine elsewhere.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“Am I supposed to be merely exercising my tongue Or am I being listened to?”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“JENNET What can you see Out there?
THOMAS Out here? Out here is a sky so gentle Five stars are ventured on it. I can see
The sky's pale belly glowing and growing big, Soon to deliver the moon. And I can see
A glittering smear, the snail-trail of the sun
Where it crawled with its golden shell into the hills. A darkening land sunken into prayer
Lucidly in dewdrops of one syllable,
Nunc dimittis. I see twilight, madam.
JENNET But what can you hear?
THOMAS The howl of human jackals-.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“I've only one small silver night to spend
So show me no luxuries. It will be enough
If you spare me a spider, and when it spins I'll see The six days of Creation in a web
And a fly caught on the seventh. And if the dew Should rise in the web, I may well die a Christian.”
― Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

“Hey," said Shadow. "Huginn or Muninn, or whoever you are."
The bird turned, head tipped, suspiciously, on one side, and it stared at him with bright eyes.
"Say 'Nevermore,'" said Shadow.
"Fuck you," said the raven.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof.”
― John Kenneth Galbraith

“One of my greatest pleasures in writing has come from the thought that perhaps my work might annoy someone of comfortably pretentious position. Then comes the saddening realization that such people rarely read.”
― John Kenneth Galbraith

“The family which takes its mauve an cerise, air-conditioned, power-steered and power-braked automobile out for a tour passes through cities that are badly paved, made hideous by litter, lighted buildings, billboards and posts for wires that should long since have been put underground. They pass on into countryside that has been rendered largely invisible by commercial art. (The goods which the latter advertise have an absolute priority in our value system. Such aesthetic considerations as a view of the countryside accordingly come second. On such matters we are consistent.) They picnic on exquisitely packaged food from a portable icebox by a polluted stream and go on to spend the night at a park which is a menace to public health and morals. Just before dozing off on an air mattress, beneath a nylon tent, amid the stench of decaying refuse, they may reflect vaguely on the curious unevenness of their blessings. Is this, indeed, the American genius?”
― John Kenneth Galbraith

“Men can labor to make sense out of single steps toward the goal without ever pausing to reflect that the goal itself is ludicrous.”
― John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society

“The worst continued to worsen. What looked one day like the end proved on the next day to have been only the beginning. Nothing could have been more ingeniously designed to maximize the suffering, and also to insure that as few people as possible escape the common misfortune. The fortunate speculator who had funds to answer the first margin call presently got another and equally urgent one, and if he met that there would still be another. In the end all the money he had was extracted from him and lost. The man with the smart money, who was safely out of the market when the first crash came, naturally went back in to pick up bargains. The bargains then suffered a ruinous fall. Even the man who waited for volume of trading to return to normal and saw Wall Street become as placid as a produce market, and who then bought common stocks would see their value drop to a third or a fourth of the purchase price in the next 24 months. The Coolidge bull market was a remarkable phenomenon. The ruthlessness of its liquidation was, in its own way, equally remarkable.”
― John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash 1929

“I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can't stop them. They leave me and I love them more.”
― Maurice Sendak

“Certainly we want to protect our children from new and painful experiences that are beyond their emotional comprehension and that intensify anxiety; and to a point we can prevent premature exposure to such experiences. That is obvious. But what is just as obvious — and what is too often overlooked — is the fact that from their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, they continually cope with frustrations as best they can. And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things.”
― Maurice Sendak

“To die will be an awfully big adventure.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“To live will be an awfully big adventure.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“Pears can just fuck off too. 'Cause they're gorgeous little beasts, but they're ripe for half an hour, and you're never there. They're like a rock or they're mush. In the supermarket, people banging in nails. "I'll just put these shelves up, mate, then you can have the pear." … So you think, "I'll take them home and they'll ripen up." But you put them in the bowl at home, and they sit there, going, "No! No! Don't ripen yet, don't ripen yet. Wait til he goes out the room! Ripen! Now now now!”
― Eddie Izzard, Definite Article

“A great nation is not saved by wars, it is saved by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans and empty quacks.”
― William James

“...do every day or two something for no other reason that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.”
― William James, Habit

“We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition”
― William James

“If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it.”
― Stephen Colbert

“May those who follow their fate be granted happiness; may those who defy it be granted glory”
― Mizuo Shinonome, Princess TuTu, Vol. 1

“The complaints of the privileged are too often confused with the voice of the masses.”
― John Kenneth Galbraith

“Milton Friedman’s misfortune is that his economic policies have been tried.”
― John Kenneth Galbraith

“In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong.”
― John Kenneth Galbraith