DAER > DAER's Quotes

“Barack intrigued me. He was not like anyone I’d dated before, mainly because he seemed so secure. He was openly affectionate. He told me I was beautiful. He made me feel good. To me, he was sort of like a unicorn—unusual to the point of seeming almost unreal. He never talked about material things, like buying a house or a car or even new shoes. His money went largely toward books, which to him were like sacred objects, providing ballast for his mind. He read late into the night, often long after I’d fallen asleep, plowing through history and biographies and Toni Morrison, too. He read several newspapers daily, cover to cover. He kept tabs on the latest book reviews, the American League standings, and what the South Side aldermen were up to. He could speak with equal passion about the Polish elections and which movies Roger Ebert had panned and why.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“Failure is a feeling long before it becomes an actual result”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“The country now has the second highest GDP per capita in the world after Luxembourg, and Luxembourg is hardly a proper country.”
― Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

“This ungodly act is simply something that Finns do, like the British and their DIY, or the French and their adultery.”
― michael booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

“They go out, they drink a lot of beer and they eat dead pigs, and then they go home and have sex with strangers afterwards.”
― Michael Booth, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

“After forty-odd years you stop asking," she says. "Want some free advice?"
I nod.
"Don't trip over yourselves trying to be a perfect couple, love. Get out of each other's way; don't be afraid of falling out, shutting up, or telling little porky pies; do your share of the cleaning; don't leave your dirty undies inside out on the carpet; leave the seat down; buy her flowers once a month; and pinch her bum once a week - the rest's up to you.”
― Andy Jones, The Two of Us

“Much of what was said did not matter, and that much of what mattered could not be said.”
― Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity

“Liberty and love
These two I must have.
For my love I’ll sacrifice
My life.
For liberty I’ll sacrifice
My love.”
1 January 1823, Petőfi Sándor was born in Kiskörös, Hungary.”
― Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

“Our Toast

Not to the Future, nor to the Past;
No drink of Joy or Sorrow;
We drink alone to what will last;
Memories on the Morrow.
Let us live as Old Time passes;
To the Present let Bohemia bow.
Let us raise on high our glasses
To Eternity--the ever-living Now.”
― Clarence E Edwords, Bohemian San Francisco, Its Restaurants and Their Most Famous Recipes: The Elegant Art of Dining

“Q: What is a Soviet trio?
A: A quartet returning from an overseas tour.
—1970s underground Soviet humor”
― Robert Wallace, Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs from Communism to Al-Qaeda

“Remember, 'Ask and ye shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Look it up. Matthew 7:7”
― Robert Wallace, Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs from Communism to Al-Qaeda

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

“I am quite gifted at waiting,” von Rumpel says in French. “It is my one great skill. I was never much good at athletics or mathematics, but even as a boy, I possessed unnatural patience. I would wait with my mother while she got her hair styled. I would sit in the chair and wait for hours, no magazine, no toys, not even swinging my legs back and forth. All the mothers were very impressed.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“Kelly wears her hair swept back in an odd 1940s pompadour that one writer assumed must be her “auxiliary brain.”
― Sarah Thornton, Seven Days in the Art World

“Buying is an extremely satisfying, macho act”
― Sarah Thornton, Seven Days in the Art World

“he gave me step-by-step instructions on the right way to do the wrong things”
― Josh Luchs

“When government works, it is usually because the chief understands the fabric of power, threading the needle where policy and politics converge.”
― Chris Whipple, The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency

“At a farewell party, his staff presented him with a gift: a beaten-up car seat—a nod to his Secret Service code name.”
― Chris Whipple, The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency

“People ask me if it's like that television show The West Wing," says Erskine Bowles, Bill Clinton's second chief. "But that doesn't begin to capture the velocity. In an average day you would deal with Bosnia, Northern Ireland, the budget, taxation, the environment-and then you'd have lunch! And then on Friday you would say, 'Thank God-only two more working days until Monday.”
― Chris Whipple, The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency

“In the winter of 1968, after one of the most bitterly contested election campaigns in American history, Richard Nixon hunkered down in a hotel suite in New York City. He had gone there to plan his presidency, and to get even with his enemies. With him was a man Nixon called his pluperfect son of a bitch, and Lord High Executioner: the man who would become the first truly modern White House chief of staff.”
― Chris Whipple, The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency

“Real love - for a president, for a person, for a country — is more textured than that. Real love is about fighting for something long after its flaws are laid bare. It’s about caring so deeply, you have no choice but to place another’s well-being above your own. Love is not a feeling. It transcends feelings. Love is what allows us to be disillusioned and to somehow still believe.”
― David Litt, Thanks, Obama: My Hopey, Changey White House Years

“I have more Dollars than sense”
― Jackie Chan, Never Grow Up

“How did you do all those dangerous stunts, jumping off rooftops and over cliffs?’

I said, ‘Oh, that’s even simpler. It’s just rolling, action, jump, cut, hospital!”
― Jackie Chan, Never Grow Up

“Friends were surprised that a sensuous and handsome man such as Einstein,
who could have almost any woman fall for him, would find himself with a short
and plain Serbian who had a limp and exuded an air of melancholy. “I would
never be brave enough to marry a woman unless she were absolutely healthy,” a
fellow student said to him. Einstein replied, “But she has such a lovely voice.”
― Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe

“Later that year, a similar note left for her added, “If you don’t mind, I’d like to come over this evening to read with you.”
― Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe

“My little Johnnie,

Because I like you so much, and because you’re so far away that I can’t
give you a little kiss, I’m writing this letter to ask if you like me as much as
I do you? Answer me immediately.


A thousand kisses from your Dollie—”
― Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe

“In the case of my parents, as with most people, the senses exercise a direct control over the emotions,” he wrote her amid the family wars
of August. “With us, thanks to the fortunate circumstances in which we live, the
enjoyment of life is vastly broadened.”

To his credit, Einstein reminded Marie (and himself) that “we mustn’t forget
that many existences like my parents’ make our existence possible.” The simple
and honest instincts of people like his parents had ensured the progress of
civilisation. “Thus I am trying to protect my parents without compromising anything that is important to me—and that means you, sweetheart!”
― Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe

“Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the making of action in spite of fear, the moving out against the resistance engendered by fear into the unknown and into the future.”
― M. Scott Peck

“The mind, which sometimes presumes to believe that there is no such thing as a miracle, is itself a miracle.”
― M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth

“Throughout the whole of life one must continue to learn to live,” said Seneca two millennia ago, “and what will amaze you even more, throughout life one must learn to die.”
― M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth