Allen Applefield > Allen's Quotes

“It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle

“All serious daring starts from within.”
― Eudora Welty, On Writing

“Wherever one encounters members of the human race, they always show the traits of a being that is condemned to surrealistic effort. Whoever goes in search of humans will find acrobats.”
― Peter Sloterdijk, Du mußt dein Leben ändern

“Consequently, immune systems at this level can be defined a priori as embodied expectations of injury and the corresponding programmes of protection and repair.”
― Peter Sloterdijk, Du mußt dein Leben ändern

“As long as no more than a small minority are capable of reading and writing, universal alphabetization seems like a messianic project. Only once everyone has this ability does one notice the catastrophe that almost no one can do it properly.”
― Peter Sloterdijk, Du mußt dein Leben ändern

“It is not sufficient, he emphasized, to colour (colorare) the mind with wisdom; it must be pickled (macerare) in it, as it were, soaked in it (inficere), and entirely transformed by it.”
― Peter Sloterdijk, You Must Change Your Life

“The aesthetic construct, and nothing else, has taught us to expose ourselves to a non-enslaving experience of rank differences. The work of art is even allowed to 'tell' us, those who have run away from form, something, because it quite obviously does not embody the intention to confine us. 'La poesie ne s'impose plus, elle s'expose' Something that exposes itself and proves itself in this test gains unpresumed authority. In the space of aesthetic simulation, which is at once the emergency space for the success and failure of the artistic construct, the powerless superiority of the works can affect observers who otherwise take pains to ensure that they have no lord, old or new, above them.”
― Peter Sloterdijk, Du mußt dein Leben ändern

“How much truth is contained in something can be best determined by making it thoroughly laughable and then watching to see how much joking around it can take. For truth is a matter that can withstand mockery, that is freshened by any ironic gesture directed at it. Whatever cannot withstand satire is false.”
― Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason

“Ventilation is the profound secret of existence.”
― Peter Sloterdijk

“In the wall-less house of sounds, humans became the animals that come together by listening. Whatever else they might be, they are sonospheric communards.”
― Peter Sloterdijk

“As in the days of the first Merovingian, who pledged allegiance to the cross because of a victorious battle, today's children of the banalized Enlightenment are likewise meant to burn what they worshipped and worship what they burned.”
― Peter Sloterdijk, Du mußt dein Leben ändern

“You get lazy, you get sad. Start givin' up. Plain and simple.”
― James Dashner, The Maze Runner

“Holy crap, I’m scared.”

“Holy crap, you’re human. You should be scared.”
― James Dashner, The Maze Runner

“Shouldn't someone give a pep talk or something?' Minho asked...
"Go ahead," Newt replied.
Minho nodded and faced the crowd. 'Be careful,' he said dryly. 'Don't die.'
Thomas would have laughed if he could, but he was too scared for it to come out.
'Great. We're all bloody inspired,' Newt answered.”
― James Dashner, The Maze Runner

“Quit voting me down before you even think about what I'm saying.”
― James Dashner, The Maze Runner

“why is it
that when the story ends
we begin to feel all of it”
― Rupi Kaur, The Sun and Her Flowers

“a lot of times
we are angry at other people
for not doing what
we should have done for ourselves

- responsibility”
― Rupi Kaur, The Sun and Her Flowers

“You do not just wake up and become the butterfly"
-Growth is a process.”
― Rupi Kaur, The Sun and Her Flowers

“it isn't what we left behind
that breaks me
it's whatever we could've built
had we stayed”
― Rupi Kaur, The Sun and Her Flowers

“Graceful has never been a word you immediately pinned to my physical prowess; a flailing, tumbling human version of Jenga was a tad closer to accuracy.”
― Jeffery Self, Drag Teen

“I am what I am, and there's much about me that won't be changed with any amount of wishing or wanting. I'm sorry for that. I'd trade a great deal to share an afternoon in the hay with you, dust in the air and sweat on our skins and neither of us caring. But I'm afraid the experience would drive me mad. I am a creature of sterile environments. It's too late for me to change.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“Friends are great, except, I never know what to do with them. I see other people and it all seems so natural. They laugh and talk and make plans to talk and laugh some more at a later date. I would probably throw a fry at them and hope they were distracted enough not to notice me running away.”
― Airicka Phoenix, The Voyeur Next Door

“Isolated people, those who live alone, are always conscious of their condition in the homes of families.”
― Patrick McGrath, Trauma

“The girl whose table I occupied was reading a book but I couldn’t help but notice that all this time, she was secretly watching me.
“You are beautiful.”
I took my eyes off my phone and I saw the girl talking to me. I was embarrassed and didn’t know what to say or how to react.”
― Nico J. Genes, Magnetic Reverie

“When all by myself, I can think of all kinds of clever remarks, quick comebacks to what no one said, and flashes of witty sociability with nobody. But all of this vanishes when I face someone in the flesh: I lose my intelligence, I can no longer speak, and after half an hour I just feel tired. Talking to people makes me feel like sleeping. Only my ghostly and imaginary friends, only the conversations I have in my dreams, are genuinely real and substantial.”
― Fernando Pessoa

“I've spent most of my life and most of my friendships holding my breath and hoping that when people get close enough they won't leave, and fearing that it's a matter of time before they figure me out and go.”
― Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way

“I have packed myself into silence so deeply and for so long that I can never unpack myself using words. When I speak, I only pack myself a little differently.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel

“For someone like myself in whom the ability to trust others is so cracked and broken that I am wretchedly timid and am forever trying to read the expression on people's faces.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“Life is made of fear. Some people eat fear soup three times a day. Some people eat fear soup all the meals there are. I eat it sometimes. When they bring me fear soup to eat, I try not to eat it, I try to send it back. But sometimes I'm too afraid to and have to eat it anyway.”
― Martin Amis, Other People

“I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird through the close set bars of a cage: a vivid, restless, resolute captive is there; were it but free, it would soar cloud-high.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre