Amanda

Add friend
Sign in to Goodreads to learn more about Amanda.


The Social Animal...
Rate this book
Clear rating

 
Loading...
Pablo Neruda
“The days aren't discarded or collected, they are bees
that burned with sweetness or maddened
the sting: the struggle continues,
the journeys go and come between honey and pain.
No, the net of years doesn't unweave: there is no net.
They don't fall drop by drop from a river: there is no river.
Sleep doesn't divide life into halves,
or action, or silence, or honor:
life is like a stone, a single motion,
a lonesome bonfire reflected on the leaves,
an arrow, only one, slow or swift, a metal
that climbs or descends burning in your bones.”
Pablo Neruda, Still Another Day

Lao Tzu
“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.”
Lao Tzu

J.R.R. Tolkien
“It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again

Martin Luther King Jr.
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
Martin Luther King Jr., I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World

Neil Gaiman
“I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not.

I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women.

I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state.

I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste.

I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds.

I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman.

I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself.

I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck.

I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too.

I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system.

I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.”
Neil Gaiman, American Gods

year in books
Stephen
635 books | 109 friends

Tanya
67 books | 85 friends

KGreer
1,112 books | 53 friends

bradley...
895 books | 65 friends

Emily
1,322 books | 51 friends

David
770 books | 3 friends

Alex West
539 books | 36 friends

Meghan ...
202 books | 64 friends

More friends…
Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls WilderCharlotte’s Web by E.B. WhiteA Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'EngleThe Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson BurnettAnne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
What Book Got You Hooked?
3,848 books — 10,520 voters
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John IrvingThe Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson BurnettEast of Eden by John SteinbeckMatilda by Roald DahlPersuasion by Jane Austen
Books That Everyone Should Read At Least Once
31,578 books — 120,257 voters

More…


Polls voted on by Amanda

Lists liked by Amanda