Quotes from Independence Day

Richard Ford ·  464 pages

Rating: (13.4K votes)


“...the worst thing about regret is that it makes you duck the chance of new regret, just as you get a glimmer that nothing is worth doing unless it has the potential to fuck up your whole life.

― Richard Ford, quote from Independence Day


“Some idiotic things are well worth doing.”
― Richard Ford, quote from Independence Day


“For, how else to seize such an instant? How to shout out into the empty air just the right words, and on cue? Frame a moment to last a lifetime?”
― Richard Ford, quote from Independence Day


“But to anyone reasonable, my life will seem more or less normal-under-the-microscope, full of contingencies and incongruities none of us escapes and which do little harm in an existence that otherwise goes unnoticed.”
― Richard Ford, quote from Independence Day


“(My greatest human flaw and strength, not surprisingly, is that I can always imagine anything--a marriage, a conversation, a government--as being different from how it is, a trait that might make one a top-notch trial lawyer or novelist or realtor, but that also seems to produce a somewhat less than reliable and morally feasible human being.)”
― Richard Ford, quote from Independence Day



“Any rainy summer morning, of course, has the seeds of gloomy alienation sown in. But a rainy summer morning far from home - when your personal clouds don't move but hang - can easily produce the feeling of the world as seen from the grave. This I know.”
― Richard Ford, quote from Independence Day


“All this is a natural part of the aging process, in which you find yourself with less to do and more opportunities to eat your guts out regretting everything you have done.”
― Richard Ford, quote from Independence Day


“I don’t, after all, know what’s wrong with him, am not even certain anything is, or that wrong isn’t just a metaphor for something else, which may itself already be a metaphor. Though probably what’s amiss, if anything, is not much different from what’s indistinctly amiss with all of us at one time or another – we’re not happy, we don’t know why, and we drive ourselves loony trying to get better”
― Richard Ford, quote from Independence Day


“Though finally the worst thing about regret is that it makes you duck the chance of suffering new regret just as you get a glimmer that nothing's worth doing unless it has the potential of to fuck up your whole life”
― Richard Ford, quote from Independence Day


“when you’re young your opponent is the future; but when you’re not young, your opponent’s the past and everything you’ve done in it and the problem of getting away from it.”
― Richard Ford, quote from Independence Day



“Such narrowly missed human connection as this can in fact be fatal, no matter who's at fault, and often results in unrecoverable free fall and a too-hasty conclusion that 'the whole goddamn thing's not worth bothering with or it wouldn't be so goddamn confusing all the goddamn time,' after which one party (or both) just wanders off and never thinks to look toward the other again. Such is the iffiness of romance.”
― Richard Ford, quote from Independence Day


“« Voyez-vous, d’après mon expérience, c’est quand on a l’impression de ne pas progresser qu’on avance sans doute le plus. »”
― Richard Ford, quote from Independence Day


“And I had the feeling he was far out ahead of me then and in many things. Any time spent with your child is partly a damn sad time, the sadness of life a-going, bright, vivid, each time a last. A loss. A glimpse into what could’ve been. It can be corrupting. I”
― Richard Ford, quote from Independence Day


“Possibly this is one more version of "disappearing into your life", the way career telephone company bigwigs, overdutiful parents and owners of wholesale lumber companies are said to do and never know it. You simply reach a point at which everything looks the same but nothing matters much. There's no evidence you're dead, but you act that way.”
― Richard Ford, quote from Independence Day


“Though finally the worst thing about regret is that it makes you duck the chance of suffering new regret just as you get a glimmer that nothing’s worth doing unless it has the potential to fuck up your whole life. A”
― Richard Ford, quote from Independence Day



About the author

Richard Ford
Born place: in Jackson, Mississippi, The United States
Born date February 16, 1944
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Popular quotes

“Se antes de cada acto nosso nos puséssemos a prever todas as consequências dele, a pensar nelas a sério, primeiro as imediatas, depois as prováveis, depois as possíveis, depois as imagináveis, não chegaríamos sequer a mover-nos de onde o primeiro pensamento nos tivesse feito parar.”
― José Saramago, quote from Blindness


“لا تحيطوا أبدًا بالعدو تمامًا، ودعوا له مخرجًا للهرب، لأنه سيحارب أقوى وهو يائس إذا ما حوصر”
― Alex Haley, quote from Roots: The Saga of an American Family


“How can you still count yourself a knight, when you have forsaken every vow you ever swore?"

Jaime reached for the flagon to refill his cup. "So many vows...they make you swear and swear. Defend the king. Obey the king. Keep his secrets. Do his bidding. Your life for his. But obey your father. Love your sister. Protect the innocent. Defend the weak. Respect the gods. Obey the laws. It's too much. No matter what you do, you're forsaking one vow or the other.”
― George R.R. Martin, quote from A Clash of Kings


“Many of our tribe went to the cliff each night to count the number killed during the day. They counted the dead otter and thought of the beads and other things that each pelt meant. But I never went to the cove and whenever I saw the hunters with their long spears skimming over the water, I was angry, for these animals were my friends. It was fun to see them playing or sunning themselves among the kelp. It more fun than the thought of beads to wear around my neck.”
― Scott O'Dell, quote from Island of the Blue Dolphins


“Most neuroses and some psychoses can be traced to the unnecessary and unhealthy habit of daily wallowing in the troubles and sins of five billion strangers.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, quote from Stranger in a Strange Land


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