Quotes from Leaving Las Vegas

John O'Brien ·  200 pages

Rating: (3.6K votes)


“There will always be dark characters, but her life is good; it is as she wishes it to be.”
― John O'Brien, quote from Leaving Las Vegas


“That which begins will also end.”
― John O'Brien, quote from Leaving Las Vegas


“He sits at the filthy bar and silently witnesses the change of watch from his will to his independently operating motor skills.”
― John O'Brien, quote from Leaving Las Vegas


“If he drinks one hundred dollars a day--and he can--he's got one hundred days to drink. It's just an arithmetic operation, simple logic.”
― John O'Brien, quote from Leaving Las Vegas


“Purity of execution will only add to the artistic aspects of the whole wretched mess.”
― John O'Brien, quote from Leaving Las Vegas



“His point was made, and he moved along, in keeping with the tangential nature that must consume at least one of them. There is a bottle in his future--perhaps sooner a glass--elsewhere on the line.”
― John O'Brien, quote from Leaving Las Vegas


“He knew that being handy is the kind of conspicuous skill that makes it easier for others to tolerate you. They tolerated, and even liked him, for as long as they could.”
― John O'Brien, quote from Leaving Las Vegas


About the author

John O'Brien
Born place: in Oxford, Ohio, The United States
Born date May 21, 1960
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Popular quotes

“Where do I come into all of this? Am I just some animal or dog?' And that started them off govoreeting real loud and throwing slovos at me. So I creeched louder still, creeching: 'Am I just to be like a clockwork orange?”
― Anthony Burgess, quote from A Clockwork Orange


“My muscles informed me they did not want to go through any more exercise today. So I suggest that maybe he should let me off this time. He laughed, and I'm pretty sure it was at me...not with me.
"Why is that funny?"
"Oh," he said, his smile dropping. "You were serious."
"Of course I was! Look, I've technically been awake for two days. Why do we have to start this training now? Let me go to bed." I whined. "It's just one hour."

"How do you feel right now?"
"I hurt like hell."
"You'll feel worse tomorrow."
"So?"
"So, better get a jump on it while you still feel...not as bad."
"What kind of logic is that?" I retorted.”
― Richelle Mead, quote from Vampire Academy


“But his kind will always lose in the end. I know this, and now I know why. Whether it's wife or nation they occupy, their mistake is the same: they stand still, and their stake moves underneath them.... Chains rattle, rivers roll, animals startle and bolt, forests inspire and expand, babies stretch open-mouthed from the womb, new seedlings arch their necks and creep forward into the light. Even a language won't stand still. A territory is only possessed for a moment in time. They stake everything on that moment, posing for photographs while planting the flag, casting themselves in bronze.... Even before the flagpole begins to peel and splinter, the ground underneath arches and slides forward into its own new destiny. It may bear the marks of boots on its back, but those marks become the possessions of the land.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Poisonwood Bible


“Words do not express thoughts very well. they always become a little different immediately they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another.”
― Hermann Hesse, quote from Siddhartha


“Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live--that productive work is the process by which man's consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one's purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the earth in the image of one's values--that all work is creative work if done by a thinking mind, and no work is creative if done by a blank who repeats in uncritical stupor a routine he has learned from others--that your work is yours to choose, and the choice is as wide as your mind, that nothing more is possible to you and nothing less is human--that to cheat your way into a job bigger than your mind can handle is to become a fear-corroded ape on borrowed motions and borrowed time, and to settle down into a job that requires less than your mind's full capacity is to cut your motor and sentence yourself to another kind of motion: decay--that your work is the process of achieving your values, and to lose your ambition for values is to lose your ambition to live--that your body is a machine, but your mind is its driver, and you must drive as far as your mind will take you, with achievement as the goal of your road--that the man who has no purpose is a machine that coasts downhill at the mercy of any boulder to crash in the first chance ditch, that the man who stifles his mind is a stalled machine slowly going to rust, that the man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap, and the man who makes another man his goal is a hitchhiker no driver should ever pick up--that your work is the purpose of your life, and you must speed past any killer who assumes the right to stop you, that any value you might find outside your work, any other loyalty or love, can be only travelers you choose to share your journey and must be travelers going on their own power in the same direction.”
― Ayn Rand, quote from Atlas Shrugged


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