Quotes from Evil and the Mask

“Don't you think people make their own choices in life?'

'They do, but in many cases their choices are limited--unless they break the rules.”
― Fuminori Nakamura, quote from Evil and the Mask

“I suppose you could present my life as a happy tale if you ended it in the right place.”
― Fuminori Nakamura, quote from Evil and the Mask

“You could say that everything had become weirdly distorted because I'd broken the rules so many times.”
― Fuminori Nakamura, quote from Evil and the Mask

“We're attacking all accepted values. Authority, class differences, shared perceptions. We don't care what happens to our social structure -- revolutions are for suckers. Our target is people's collective consciousness. It's like throwing a cream pie in their face.”
― Fuminori Nakamura, quote from Evil and the Mask

“THE FUZZY GREEN light gradually resolved itself into trees, and a narrow street of damp terra-cotta bricks stretched lazily into the distance.”
― Fuminori Nakamura, quote from Evil and the Mask

“When human consciousness stops fooling itself and looks at the situation straight on, it can't cope.”
― Fuminori Nakamura, quote from Evil and the Mask

“Number two becoming number one, that's how life goes. Always demanding the best, that's a strange way of living.”
― Fuminori Nakamura, quote from Evil and the Mask

“Our job involves looking at things that people usually can't see.”
― Fuminori Nakamura, quote from Evil and the Mask

“When people believe they have a good cause, the violence within them bursts forth unrestrained, as if their good angel has given permission for it to escape.”
― Fuminori Nakamura, quote from Evil and the Mask

“Deep down, people who deliberately distribute other people’s music and stuff feel contempt for professionals. And it’s not just culture — these days lots of people are contemptuous of everything. Without realizing it, they’re searching for things to despise.”
― Fuminori Nakamura, quote from Evil and the Mask

About the author

Popular quotes

“To-day the spirit of religious asceticism—whether finally, who knows?—has escaped from the cage. But victorious capitalism, since it rests on mechanical foundations, needs its support no longer. The rosy blush of its laughing heir, the Enlightenment, seems also to be irretrievably fading, and the idea of duty in one’s calling prowls about in our lives like the ghost of dead religious beliefs. Where the fulfillment of the calling cannot directly be related to the highest spiritual and cultural values, or when, on the other hand, it need not be felt simply as economic compulsion, the individual generally abandons the attempt to justify it at all. In the field of its highest development, in the United States, the pursuit of wealth, stripped of its religious and ethical meaning, tends to become associated with purely mundane passions, which often actually give it the character of sport.

No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or whether at the end of this tremendous development entirely new prophets will arise, or there will be a great rebirth of old ideas and ideals, or, if neither, mechanized petrification, embellished with a sort of convulsive self-importance. For of the last stage of this cultural development, it might well be truly said: “Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.”
― Max Weber, quote from The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

“Bo widzisz, najgorszą samotnością nie jest ta, która otacza człowieka, ale ta pustka w nim samym.”
― Bolesław Prus, quote from The Doll

“One of my greatest fears is family decline.There’s an old Chinese saying that “prosperity can never last for three generations.” I’ll bet that if someone with empirical skills conducted a longitudinal survey about intergenerational performance, they’d find a remarkably common pattern among Chinese immigrants fortunate enough to have come to the United States as graduate students or skilled workers over the last fifty years. The pattern would go something like this: • The immigrant generation (like my parents) is the hardest-working. Many will have started off in the United States almost penniless, but they will work nonstop until they become successful engineers, scientists, doctors, academics, or businesspeople. As parents, they will be extremely strict and rabidly thrifty. (“Don’t throw out those leftovers! Why are you using so much dishwasher liquid?You don’t need a beauty salon—I can cut your hair even nicer.”) They will invest in real estate. They will not drink much. Everything they do and earn will go toward their children’s education and future. • The next generation (mine), the first to be born in America, will typically be high-achieving. They will usually play the piano and/or violin.They will attend an Ivy League or Top Ten university. They will tend to be professionals—lawyers, doctors, bankers, television anchors—and surpass their parents in income, but that’s partly because they started off with more money and because their parents invested so much in them. They will be less frugal than their parents. They will enjoy cocktails. If they are female, they will often marry a white person. Whether male or female, they will not be as strict with their children as their parents were with them. • The next generation (Sophia and Lulu’s) is the one I spend nights lying awake worrying about. Because of the hard work of their parents and grandparents, this generation will be born into the great comforts of the upper middle class. Even as children they will own many hardcover books (an almost criminal luxury from the point of view of immigrant parents). They will have wealthy friends who get paid for B-pluses.They may or may not attend private schools, but in either case they will expect expensive, brand-name clothes. Finally and most problematically, they will feel that they have individual rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and therefore be much more likely to disobey their parents and ignore career advice. In short, all factors point to this generation”
― Amy Chua, quote from Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

“That's the nice thing about insanity: evil people kill you, but crazy ones try to make you understand.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from A Local Habitation

“الانسان وحش كاسر...انه يفعل مايختار. انه يسلك الطريق الذي يختاره لنفسه. امامه بوابه الجحيم وبوابه الفردوس متلاصقين, وهو يدخل ايهما يختار.. الشيطان لايدخل سوى النار , والملاك لايدخل سوى الفردوس . اما الانسان فأنه يدخل أيا منهما حسب اختياره”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, quote from Christ Recrucified

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.