Darwin Godines > Darwin's Quotes

“There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto, and you may, O my brothers, have forgotten what these mestos were like, things changing so skorry these days, and everybody very quick to forget, newspapers not being read much neither.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“For if the modern mind is whimsical and discursive, the classical mind is narrow, unhesitating, relentless.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“What? Did we end up hating each other? Did we end up the way we thought we always knew would? Did I end up wearing khakis because of that fucking ad?”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Glamorama

“I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living (what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying). I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

“Strange how things turn out. Two birds, one stone and all that.' McBlane chuckled at his own impromptu joke. 'But things have worked out for the best and now we all get to work together,' he said, and a smile spread across his face as easy as a politician's lie.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Elephant Tree

“I assumed everything bad in the world could happen, because everything bad in the world already did happen.”
― Gillian Flynn, Dark Places

“People empty me. I have to get away to refill.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Are these things really better than the things I already have? Or am I just trained to be dissatisfied with what I have now?”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby

“As if the physical proximity can make up for the emotional distance.”
― Irvine Welsh, Ecstasy

“Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box

“If you find yourself imitating another writer, that doesn't have to be a bad thing, especially if you are a young or a new writer. However, you should be conscious of exactly how you are imitating him - word choice, sentence structure, motifs? - and think about why you're doing it.”
― Poppy Z. Brite

“Mother, monogamy, romance. High spurts the fountain; fierce and foamy the wild jet. The urge has but a single outlet. My love, my baby. No wonder those poor pre-moderns were mad and wicked and miserable. Their world didn’t allow them to take things easily, didn’t allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy. What with mothers and lovers, what with the prohibitions they were not conditioned to obey, what with the temptations and the lonely remorses, what with all the diseases and the endless isolating pain, what with the uncertainties and the poverty—they were forced to feel strongly. And feeling strongly (and strongly, what was more, in solitude, in hopelessly individual isolation), how could they be stable?”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“It occurred to me then, as it has before, that that is what men are really for. Both sexes can do one thing specially well; women can give birth and men can kill.”
― Iain Banks, The Wasp Factory

“Dad," said Will, his voice very faint. "Are you a good person?"

"To you and your mother, yes, I try. But no man's a hero to himself. I've lived with me a lifetime, Will. I know everything worth knowing about myself-"

"And, adding it all up...?"

"The sum? As they come and go, and I mostly sit very still and tight, yes, I'm all right.”
― Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

“Finally, you had to measure yourself by other people - there really was nothing else. every now and then, quite unintentionally, someone taught you something about yourself.”
― Ian McEwan

“كأن صميم ذاتها قد انصدع فاغراً”
― بول أوستر, Man in the Dark

“Can barely look in the mirror. I've been way too uncomfortable to try and shave and I've grown a thin, scraggy ginger beard which looks redder and thicker than it is, cause of the spots on my face. The yellowheads are repulsive enough, but it's two big boil-like fuckers on my cheek and forehead that cause the distress. They throb under the surface of my skin like a Peter Hook bassline, hurting my face every time I try to move it.”
― Irvine Welsh, Skagboys

“there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock”
― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell

“By definition, a human being is endowed with free will. He can use this to choose between good and evil. If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange - meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil or (since this is increasingly replacing both) the Almighty State. It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil. The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities. This is what the television news is all about. Unfortunately there is so much original sin in us all that we find evil rather attractive. To devastate is easier and more spectacular than to create.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“Ting-a-ling mother fucker.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake

“A few years ago it dawned on me that everybody past a certain age - regardless of how they look on the outside - pretty much constantly dreams of being able to escape from their lives.”
― Douglas Coupland, The Gum Thief

“It seemed my whole
life was composed of these disjointed
fractions of time, hanging around in one
public place and then another, as if I were
waiting for trains that never came. And, like
one of those ghosts who are said to linger
around depots late at night, asking
passersby for the timetable of the Midnight
Express that derailed twenty years before, I
wandered from light to light until that
dreaded hour when all the doors closed and,
stepping from the world of warmth and
people and conversation overheard, I felt
the old familiar cold twist through my bones
again and then it was all forgotten, the
warmth, the lights; I had never been warm
in my life, ever.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Aber die alten Zeiten haben mich zum alten Mann gemacht, mein Freund, und wenn ein alter Mann Angst hat, dann geht er nicht einfach so auf eine Sache los, wie er’s getan hat, als er gerade dabei war, zu lernen, wie man sich rasiert.”
― Richard Bachmann

“Going to trial with a lawyer who considers your whole life-style a Crime in Progress is not a happy prospect.”
― Hunter S. Thompson

“Vous ne le voyez pas, lorsqu'il baisse lentement les paupières, comme pour éteindre ses yeux.”
― Émile Zola, La Faute de l'abbé Mouret

“The bodies went back in the doors and bars and the heads in the windows. The cops drove away and Freddy and the guys went back into the Greeks and the street was quiet, just the sound of a tug and an occasional car; and even the blood couldn't be seen from a few feet away.”
― Hubert Selby Jr., Last Exit to Brooklyn

“Il m'arrive de penser que ce serait sympa de trouver des mecs intelligents qui veuillent bien travailler seize heures par jour pour des clopinettes –mais bon, s'ils le voulaient bien, ils ne seraient pas si intelligents.”
― Luke Rhinehart

“Do I dare?”
― Marisha Pessl, Night Film

“There is no intensity of love or feeling that does not involve the risk of crippling hurt. It is a duty to take this risk, to love and feel without defense or reserve.”
― William S. Burroughs

“Or perhaps he was skilled at foreshadowing. I’d imagine a pious avoidance of sin requires that.”
― Alissa Nutting, Tampa