“People who keep stiff upper lips find that it's damn hard to smile.”
― quote from Ordinary People
“Feeling is not selective, I keep telling you that. You can’t feel pain, you aren’t gonna feel anything else, either.”
― quote from Ordinary People
“Riding the train gives him too much time to think, he has decided. Too much thinking can ruin you.”
― quote from Ordinary People
“. . . crazy world or maybe it's just the view we have of it, looking through a crack in the door, never being able to see the whole room, the whole picture.”
― quote from Ordinary People
“Depending on the reality one must face, one may prefer to opt for illusion.”
― quote from Ordinary People
“The small seed of despair cracks open and sends experimental tendrils upward to the fragile skin of calm holding him together.”
― quote from Ordinary People
“Life is not a series of pathetic, meaningles actions. Some of them are so far from pathetic, so far from meaningless as to be beyond reason, maybe beyond forgiveness.”
― quote from Ordinary People
“And do not be paralyzed. It is better to move than to be unable to move, because you fear loss so much: loss of order, loss of security, loss of predictability.”
― quote from Ordinary People
“People have a right to be the way they are.”
― quote from Ordinary People
“And what about tomorrow then? And all the tomorrows to come? Why can't we talk about it? Why can't we ever talk about it?”
― quote from Ordinary People
“She hands him his coffee; crosses to the doorway; motes of dust flutter nervously in her wake.”
― quote from Ordinary People
“with grief? There is no dealing; he knows that much. There is simply the stubborn, mindless hanging on until it is over. Until you are through it. But something has happened in the process. The old definitions, the neat, knowing pigeonholes have disappeared. Or else they no longer apply. His eyes move again to the calendar. Wednesday, November fifth. Of course. Obvious. All the painful self-examination ; the unanswered questions. At least he knows what is wrong today. Today is Jordan’s birthday. Today he would have been nineteen.”
― quote from Ordinary People
“He hangs on now, pressing his hand lightly against the wall, below the window, waiting for the familiar arrow of pain. Only there is none. An oddly pleasant swell of memory, a wave of warmth flooding over him, sliding back, slowly. It is a first”
― quote from Ordinary People
“Everything seems excessive, now, and too intense, too important.”
― quote from Ordinary People
“People use people according to their own needs. Or don't use them. When a primary need is one of safety.”
― quote from Ordinary People
“Because it has always been easier to believe himself capable of evil than to accept evil in others.”
― quote from Ordinary People
“It has always been easier to believe himself capable of evil than to accept evil in others.”
― quote from Ordinary People
“And once I wanted to be a fireman. Then”
― quote from Ordinary People
“Geez, if I could get through to you, kiddo, that depression is not sobbing and crying and giving vent, it is plain and simple reduction of feeling. Reduction, see? Of all feeling. People who keep stiff upper lips find that it's damn hard to smile.”
― quote from Ordinary People
“fast. Get those months, days, hours, minutes out of the way, it can’t be quick enough.”
― quote from Ordinary People
“Always taking an adversative stance can result in avoiding situations one might really enjoy. And always accommodating can result in accepting situations one would really rather avoid. One man described to me what he and his former wife called the I-like-chicken-backs phenomenon. When his family ate a chicken for dinner, someone had to eat the back, and in his family it was always his wife, who assured the others, 'I like chicken backs.' But, as this man commented to me, nobody really likes chicken backs. She had convinced herself that she liked chicken backs—and broken egg yolks and burned toast—to be accommodating. But years of accommodating built up to mounting frustration that they both believed had contributed to their eventual divorce.”
― Deborah Tannen, quote from You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation
“Let no one think of me that I am humble or weak or passive; let them understand I am of a different kind: dangerous to my enemies, loyal to my friends. To such a life glory belongs.”
― Euripides, quote from Medea and Other Plays
“If you’re worried arresting my sister will come between us — really, that’s not a problem. I’m pretty sure it will bind us tighter together. Besides, we made plans…involving Missy’s desk.”
“You know I was only torturing your sister.”
“So you were just using me?” He actually sounded wounded. “Like a whore?”
“Mace…” She stopped and rubbed her eyes. Of all the places he could be doing this, her precinct should not be one of them.
“You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Trying to make me crazy.”
The look he gave her was pure predatory male. “I like you crazy.”
― quote from The Mane Event
“I really dislike the sort of people who aren't like other people. It's true other people are so boring. But so are the ones who aren't like them.”
― Antal Szerb, quote from Journey by Moonlight
“He never described himself as a poet or his work as poetry. The fact that the lines do not come to the edge of the page is no guarantee. Poetry is a verdict, not an occupation. He hated to argue about the techniques of verse. The poem is a dirty, bloody, burning thing that has to be grabbed first with bare hands. Once the fire celebrated Light, the dirt Humility, the blood Sacrifice. Now the poets are professional fire-eaters, freelancing at any carnival. The fire goes down easily and honours no one in particular.”
― Leonard Cohen, quote from The Favorite Game
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The Dragon RebornBookQuoters 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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