“If you want to really relax sometime, just fall to rock bottom and you'll be a happy man. Most all troubles come from having standards.”
― Thomas Berger, quote from Little Big Man
“You got to knock a man down and put your knife at his throat before he'll hear you, like I did to that trooper. The truth seems hateful to most everybody.”
― Thomas Berger, quote from Little Big Man
“The truth is always made up of little particulars which sound ridiculous when repeated.”
― Thomas Berger, quote from Little Big Man
“Believe me, the real romantic person is him who ain't done anything but imagine. If you have actually participated in disasters, like me, you get conservative.”
― Thomas Berger, quote from Little Big Man
“I expect Custer was crazy enough to believe he would win, being the type of man who carries the whole world within his own head and thus when his passion is aroused and floods his mind, reality is utterly drowned.”
― Thomas Berger, quote from Little Big Man
“It was strange how in no time at all everybody went from fear to being excruciatingly bored, and the very women who yesterday had been helpless victims and just minutes earlier were howling in fright, now began to advance on him threatening with their fists and saying: 'Git on out of here, you old skunk!' Which shows something about the way a female is put together; she will suffer any outrage so long as it is interesting, but bore her and she don't know fear.”
― Thomas Berger, quote from Little Big Man
“I love her still, for if you know anything about that kind of feeling, you know how close it is connected to hopelessness and thus is about the only thing in civilization that don't degenerate with time.”
― Thomas Berger, quote from Little Big Man
“The buffalo eats grass, I eat him, and when I die, the earth eats me and sprouts more grass. Therefore nothing is ever lost, and each thing is everything forever, though all things move.”
― Thomas Berger, quote from Little Big Man
“When you run into a story of more than three against one and one winning, then you have heard a lie.”
― Thomas Berger, quote from Little Big Man
“You might have thought the colonel would be interested in my experiences of five years’ barbarism, but he wasn’t. I wasn’t long in discovering that it is a rare person in the white world who wants to hear what the other fellow says, all the more so when the other fellow really knows what he is talking about.”
― Thomas Berger, quote from Little Big Man
“…What it means is you will fight until you’re all used up. Far from being sour, life is so sweet you will live it to the hilt and be consumed by it.”
― Thomas Berger, quote from Little Big Man
“For he was big, and I don’t care what you say, for every inch a man grows over five foot five, his brain diminishes proportionately. All my life I have had a prejudice against overgrown louts.”
― Thomas Berger, quote from Little Big Man
“Hickok and the others now returned from looking at the saloon sign, and this suck-up who had been talking to me, he asked what happened and another man says: “He put all ten inside the hole of the O, by God!” And everybody was whistling and gasping at the wonder of it—well, not exactly everybody, for there was other scouts and gun-handlers around, people like Jack Gallagher, Billy Dixon, Old Man Keeler, and more who was well known in them days, and they looked thoughtful so as not to display jealousy. As elsewhere in life, there are specialists on one hand, and the audience on the other.”
― Thomas Berger, quote from Little Big Man
“Most of the people I have really cared about in this world, I have elected to the position. I have a belief that a man’s real relatives are scattered throughout the universe, and seldom if ever belong to his immediate kin.”
― Thomas Berger, quote from Little Big Man
Thomas Berger
Born place: in Cincinnati, Ohio, The United States
Born date July 20, 1924
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“A here exists only in relation to a there, not the other way around. There's this only because there's that; if we don't look up, we'll never know what's down. Think of it, boy. We find ourselves only by looking what we're not. You can't put your feet on the ground until you've touched the sky.”
― Paul Auster, quote from Moon Palace
“Broken love is the most dangerous love. It will slice you open with every touch.”
― Tiffany Reisz, quote from The Siren
“He watched his booted feet, dark and distant hillocks, waver before him as he was borne aloft. Feet first, it would have to be feet first. He barely felt the prick of the first IV in his arm. He heard Elena’s voice, raised tremblingly behind him. “All right you clowns! No more games. We’re going to win this one for Admiral Naismith!” Heroes. They sprang up around him like weeds. A carrier, he was seemingly unable to catch the disease he spread. “Damn it,” he moaned. “Damn it, damn it, damn it . . .” He repeated this litany like a mantra, until the medtech’s second sedative injection parted him from his pain, frustration, and consciousness.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, quote from The Warrior's Apprentice
“I met someone.' And the leaves fell from the trees, landing to float in the calm black waters.”
― Leslye Walton, quote from The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender
“To make great art, you had to expose your soul, and some things should be left safely in the dark.”
― Patricia Briggs, quote from Hunting Ground
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Hunt the MoonBookQuoters 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.
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