Greg > Greg's Quotes

“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.”
― Dr. Seuss

“We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
― Anaïs Nin

“In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Wintergirls

“I think literature is best when it's voicing what we would prefer not to talk about.”
― Rick Moody

“What's terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.”
― Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

“What I've come to learn is that the world is never saved in grand messianic gestures, but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion.”
― Chris Abani

“The heart is the toughest part of the body.
Tenderness is in the hands.”
― Carolyn Forché, The Country Between Us: The Achingly Sensual Political Poetry from a Journalist in El Salvador

“Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”
― Mary Oliver

“Finding yourself" is not really how it works. You aren't a ten-dollar bill in last winter's coat pocket. You are also not lost. Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other people's opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you drew as a kid that became your beliefs about who you are. "Finding yourself" is actually returning to yourself. An unlearning, an excavation, a remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you.”
― Emily McDowell

“Beautiful things don't ask for attention.”
― James Thurber, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”
― E.L. Doctorow, Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews, 2nd Series

“Just look at us, all of us, quietly doing our thing and trying to matter. The earnestness is inspiring and heartbreaking at the same time.”
― Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal: Not Exactly a Memoir

“The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Watch out for intellect,
because it knows so much it knows nothing
and leaves you hanging upside down,
mouthing knowledge as your heart
falls out of your mouth.”
― Anne Sexton, The Complete Poems