Stoner Quotes

“A broom that was almost never used was leaned up against the wall. He took it and started to sweep. Dust flew up his nose. When he had been sweeping for a while he realised he had no dustpan. He swept the pile of dust under the couch. Better to have a little shit in the corners than a clean hell. He flipped through the pages of a porno, put it back. Wound his scarf around his neck until his head felt like it was about to explode, released it. Got up and took a few steps on the rug. Sank to his knees, prayed to god.”
― John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let the Right One In

“At last he went back to his old habit of spending most of his time at his office in Jesse Hall. He told himself that he should be grateful for the chance of reading on his own, free from the pressures of preparing for particular classes, free from the predetermined directions of his learning. He tried to read at random, for his own pleasure and indulgence, many of the things that he had been waiting for years to read. But his mind would not be led where he wished it to go; his attention wandered from the pages he held before him, and more and more often he found himself staring dully in front of him, at nothing; it was as if from moment to moment his mind were emptied of all it knew and as if his will were drained of its strength. He felt at times that he was a kind of vegetable, and he longed for something—even pain—to pierce him, to bring him alive. He had come to that moment in his age when there occurred to him, with increasing intensity, a question of such overwhelming simplicity that he had no means to face it. He found himself wondering if his life were worth the living; if it had ever been. It was a question, he suspected, that came to all men at one time or another; he wondered if it came to them with such impersonal force as it came to him. The question brought with it a sadness, but it was a general sadness which (he thought) had little to do with himself or with his particular fate; he was not even sure that the question sprang from the most immediate and obvious causes, from what his own life had become. It came, he believed, from the accretion of his years, from the density of accident and circumstance, and from what he had come to understand of them. He took a grim and ironic pleasure from the possibility that what little learning he had managed to acquire had led him to this knowledge: that in the long run all things, even the learning that let him know this, were futile and empty, and at last diminished into a nothingness they did not alter. Once, late, after his evening class, he returned to his office and sat at his desk, trying to read. It was winter, and a snow had fallen during the day, so that the out-of-doors was covered with a white softness.”
― John Williams

“But William Stoner knew of the world in a way that few of his younger colleagues could understand. Deep in him, beneath his memory, was the
knowledge of hardship and hunger and endurance and pain. Though he seldom thought of his early years on the Booneville farm, there was always
near his consciousness the blood knowledge of his inheritance, given him by forefathers whose lives were obscure and hard and stoical and whose common ethic was to present to an oppressive world faces that were expressionless and hard and bleak.”
― John Williams, Stoner

“Es para gente como nosotros por lo que existe la universidad, para los desposeídos del mundo; no para los estudiantes, ni para la altruista búsqueda de conocimiento, ni por ninguno de los motivos que se aducen por ahí. Nosotros distribuimos el raciocinio y permitimos el acceso a él de algunas personas comunes, a aquéllos que encajarán mejor en el mundo. Pero se trata sólo de un barniz protector. Al igual que la Iglesia en la Edad Media, a la que le importaban un bledo los seglares e incluso Dios, también nosotros sobrevivimos gracias a nuestros engaños».”
― John Williams, Stoner

“There's nothing worse than being alone when you aren't strong enough to face your own thoughts. You can stand it just so long, and then––Well, then you just can't be alone any longer. You've got to do something, no matter how silly it is. You've got to make yourself believe you aren't alone, even if you are.”
― John Williams

“Lust and learning,' Katherine once said. 'That's really all there is, isn't it?' And it seemed to Stoner that that was exactly true, that that was one of the things he had learned.”
― John Williams, Stoner

“U četrdeset trećoj godini života William Stoner naučio je ono što su drugi, mnogo mlađi, naučili prije njega: da osoba koju zavoliš u prvom trenutku nije osoba koju voliš na kraju i da ljubav nije svršetak puta, nego proces u kojem jedna osoba nastoji upoznati drugu.”
― John Williams, Stoner

“Liefde is geen eindpunt, maar een proces, waarin de een probeert de ander te leren kennen.”
― John Williams

“I sit treogfyrretyvende år lærte Stoner, hvad andre havde lært før ham, da de var meget yngre; at den, man elsker til at begynde med, ikke er den samme som den, man elsker til sidst, og at kærligheden ikke er et mål, men en proces, hvori et menneske forsøger at lære en anden at kende.”
― John Edward Williams, Stoner

“Vio hombres buenos caer en una lenta decadencia de desesperanza, destruidos al ver destruido su concepto de una vida decente, les veía caminar desanimados por las calles, con la mirada vacía como añicos de cristal roto; les veía encaminarse hacia las puertas de atrás, con el amargo orgullo de los hombres que avanzan hacia su propia ejecución, a mendigar el pan que les permitiera volver a mendigar, y vio hombres que una vez caminaron erguidos por efecto de su propia identidad mirarle con envidia y odio por la débil seguridad que él disfrutaba como empleado de una institución que, no se sabe por qué, no podía caer.”
― John Williams, Stoner

“A full life can include things you ingest, but it is a barren mind who considers that the totality of one's persona.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“William sokáig állt, és nézte. Kimért szánalmat, kellemetlen barátságot, hétköznapi tiszteletet érzett; és fáradt szomorúságot is, mert tudta, hogy az asszony látványa soha többé nem kelt benne olyan kínzó vágyat, amilyet régebben ismert, és tudta azt is, hogy soha többé nem indítja meg úgy a jelenléte, mint egykor.”
― John Williams, Stoner

“Stoner rájött, hogy a lány előre megtervezte a távozását; és hálás volt, amiért ő nem tudott róla, hogy Katherine nem hagyott neki búcsúlevelet, nem mondta el, amit nem lehet elmondani.”
― John Williams, Stoner

“I’m so used to getting high that not being high feels foreign.”
― Randall Scott, White Collar Stoner

“عاد إلى حياة الوحدة التي لم يخب أمله فيها قط”
― جون ويليامز

“A war doesn't merely kill off a few thousand or a few hundred young men.
It kills off something in people that can never be brought back. And if people go through enough wars, all that's left is the brute,
the creature that we --- you and I and others
like us -- have brought up from the slime",
he paused for a long moment; then he smiled slightly: "The scholar should not be asked to destroy what he has aimed his life to build.”
― John Willams

“You must remember what you are and what you have chosen to become, and the significance of what you are doing. There are wars and defeats and victories of the human race that are not military and that are not recorded in the annals of history. Remember that while you're trying to decide what to do.”
― John Willams

“He had a glimpse at the figure that flitted through the smoking rooms and pages of cheap fiction -a pitiable fellow in his middle age, seeking to renew his youth by taking up with a girl who was much younger ... a fatuous, garishly got up clown at whom the world laughed out of discomfort, pity, and contempt. He looked at this figure as closely as he could; but the longer he looked the less familiar it became. It was not himself that he saw, and he knew suddenly that it was no-one.”
― John Williams

“Vagava per i corridoi della biblioteca dell’università, in mezzo a migliaia di libri, inalando l’odore stantio del cuoio e della tela delle vecchie pagine, come se fosse un incenso esotico.
Certe volte si fermava, prendeva un volume da uno scaffale e lo teneva per un istante tra le sue manone, che vibravano al contatto ancora insolito con il dorso e il bordo e le pagine docili. Poi cominciava a sfogliarlo, leggendo qualche paragrafo qua e là, e le sue dita rigide giravano le pagine con infinita attenzione, quasi timorose di distruggere, con la loro rozzezza, ciò che avevano scoperto con tanta fatica.”
― John Williams, Stoner: A special edition of the literary classic

“You, too, are cut out for failure; not that you'd fight the world. You'd let it chew you up and spit you out, and you'd lie there wondering what was wrong. Because you'd always expect the world to be something it wasn't, something it had no wish to be.”
― John Williams, Stoner: A special edition of the literary classic

“Sometimes, immersed in his books, there would come to him the awareness of all that he did not know, of all that he had not read; and the serenity for which he labored was shattered as he realized the little time he had in life to read so much, to learn what he had to know.”
― John Williams, Stoner: A Novel

“And he had wanted to be a teacher, and he had become one; yet he knew, he had always known, that for most of his life he had been an indifferent one.”
― John Williams, Stoner: A Novel

“L'amore per la letteratura, per il linguaggio, per il mistero della mente e del cuore che si rivelano in quella minuta, strana e imprevedibile combinazione di lettere e parole, di neri e gelidi caratteri stampati sulla carta, l'amore che aveva sempre nascosto come se fosse illecito e pericoloso, cominciò a esprimersi dapprima in modo incerto, poi con coraggio sempre maggiore. Infine con orgoglio.”
― John Williams, Stoner: A Novel

“At one point, I noticed I had drifted off too far from the shore. It felt as if the current had grown arms and grabbed me by the balls. I gazed back at Sally. She looked like a cardboard cutout, her eyes wide as if she’d seen a ghost. Where the hell did Pete go?! I couldn’t tell. The neon lights of the mountain blinded me. They seemed to dance around me like little glowing seahorses. I panicked and started swimming back to shore like a madman, fighting against the tide. Then Sally’s voice—or was it Pete’s?—cut through my panic: “Put down your feet!” I followed the orders. It turned out the water was shallow, like a parking lot puddle. I stood up, the water barely reaching my knees, and walked back to shore triumphantly.”
― A.C. van Wonderen, Mad Monkeys: The darkly funny road trip novel for anyone who’s ever felt lost