“The point was to learn what it was we feared more: being misunderstood or being betrayed.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions
“Why do we weep once we know that everything will be alright? We weep because the only way everything could ever be alright is in fiction. We weep because what we've seen can't be true, no matter how badly we wish it were. We weep at the truth.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions
“If I'd thought she was uninterested, I never would have worried so much - the prospect of screwing something up is much more daunting than that of screwing nothing up. I definitely thought there was something there, and so there was something to lose, you see.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions
“It is dangerous to exist in the world. To exist is to be threatened. We must live with threats.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions
“You only taste your own dignity right before you puke it up.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions
“Without pain, there is no call for anger, much less rampaging.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions
“Regarding vengeance and arch-enemies, one must not only be timely but prideful, and pride exacts propriety.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions
“Easy as a child breathes a wish at a dandelion...is exactly how hard it would be for me to tear your limbs from their sockets.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions
“...I might mention my belief that girls who like Woody Allen movies are nicer girls than girls who don't...”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions
“Were there always to be more damage, damage would be an aspect of perfection. We would all be angels, one-legged and faceless, seething with endless, hopeless praise. Bless Adonai for making us better than angels. Blessed is Adonai for making us human.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions
“Go ahead and flunk me for begging the question, then go ahead and fuck yourself for asking it.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions
“All the word's indeed a page and we must loudly tear it.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions
“Don't you feel as though you could love everything starting tomorrow, and everything could love you, if only you took an action to set into motion the coming of our new tomorrow and its tomorrow and that one's tomorrow? Shotgun loaded hand on the pump and no matter who you damage you're still a false prophet, but we drink chocolate milk and then we get muscles and smash down the droves with fists like hammers and then we pump the fists in the air for victory. I be the prophet of the doom that is you. You are the mess in messiah.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions
“..it is good to do justice because God will kill you and your family whether you do justice or not.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions
“You can render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, but if you don't keep from Caesar that which is yours, Caesar will take some, and than take some more, and if you don't put a stop to it, though you won't lose everything - you can't lose everything; there's things he can't take, at least one or two - a time will soon come when you'll think you've lost everything, when you'll think all is Caesar's, and by then you'll be too weak to take what's yours back, too tired to remember what was yours to begin with, and you'll end up, perversely, scheming for his leavings and, even more perversely, grateful when you get them.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions
“Maholtz asked me, “Why do you hate me?”
I said, Everyone hates you.
“I know,” he said. “I know that,” he said, “but they hate me cause I scared them or had what they wanted. You weren’t ever scarend of me. You never wanted what I had. Except for the sap. And then you took it, and now I don’t have it, so why do you hate me?”
Maybe it’s your accent.
“I’m from Pinttsburgh,” he said.
Maybe you shouldn’t be.
“I can’t help where I’m from.”
We turned at Main Hall. Feld was talking to Forrest Kenilworth and Cody. The chair sat dripping in front of the door.
So maybe it’s your face. The way you look at girls like you’re scheming to corner them.
“I was borng this way, though. I can’t help how my face loonks.”
So maybe it’s all the banced thing that you say.
“They just come out of me. I’m hated, I feel it. I say those things without thinking, from hurnt. I can’t help that either. It’s not my faulnt.”
I guess, then, I hate you for being so helpless.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions
“Since bad timing could mean almost anything, it was a certain kind of truth. A low kind.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions
“If you know your mom is a great killer, and you think of your mom as a great killer, and you know she would kill for you, not just metaphorically, but really end lives for you, without hesitation, you don't want to make her sad and worried because how can you repay her for all the things she's willing to do? You can't.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions
“Underdog stories are easy to tell. It is best to be suspicious of underdog stories.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions
“Let us be as the Cage has never been able to make us. Let us now all at once face forward in our boxes, still and silent as nightmares.
We did.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions
“Gurion would lament: What is the good of trying to do justice if God will kill me and my family whether or not I do justice?”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions
“..and if you're reckless enough to back talk me, you're reckless enough to think you understand girls like June Watermark, and you don't understand her because she's crazy and crazy people-they're misunderstood. It's why they are called crazy. And you probably think you're in love with her-it's what Boystar told me you said in the Office, and that's a fine thing to say to a girl, but if you think you mean it, it's a different story. Because what's love without understanding Gurion? A fucken lie it is.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions
“He described the experience as being 'a little bit less fun, perhaps, than chain-smoking for ninety minutes while handcuffed to a dowager with asthma who used to teach Health and smells incontinent.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions
“The fly was on my desk, his hose in the candy dust. I cupped my hand and covered him, then brushed him past the edge to see where he’d go. He returned to the dust, as if I hadn’t just demonstrated that I could kill him, as if I hadn’t just shown him right there in the dust.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions
“Nonetheless, he is a boy. Despite his talents, a boy. And a boy is more idealistic than a man, and high ideals in the hands of children can be as dangerous as weapons. He thought he was in the right, and because he thought he was in the right, he thought there would be an exception. That's that.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions
“While I did that, my own eyes got wet, not fakely, and I blinked the wetness away because it was not my privilege to be sad. Leonard Brodsky was the one who was hurt, and I was the one who’d hurt him, and it didn’t matter that I hadn’t wanted to hurt him or that I didn’t know how I’d hurt him. It didn’t matter that I knew not what I did to him. It didn’t need a name to be wrong. It didn’t need reasons I could understand. Verbosity is like the iniquity of idolatry.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions
“The goodness of our intentions was in direct correlation to the heights from which we condescended to each other.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions
“I feel like a millionaire on the back of an armored jet-ski my samurai girlfriend who loves me is charging at a cartel speedboat to win a game of chicken. Isn’t this the day’s best part? You don’t even have to remember to enjoy it. It enjoys you into itself.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions
“Reasonable of you, John. Reasonable of you, Dick. No two Israelites had ever pattered so goyischely.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions
Adam Levin
Born place: The United States
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“Our DNA does not fade like an ancient parchment; it does not rust in the ground like the sword of a warrior long dead. It is not eroded by wind or rain, nor reduced to ruin by fire and earthquake. It is the traveller from an ancient land who lives within us all.”
― Bryan Sykes, quote from The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry
“Lần đầu tiên tôi thoáng nhìn thấy thế giới mới, tôi khiếp hãi. Tôi đã hiểu ra thế nào là cô đơn, là không chỗ gối đầu, thế nào là để cho thiên hạ và để cho chính mình được tự do, thế nào là yêu thương tất cả chứ không sủng ái riêng ai - bởi tình yêu là thế. Trời chiếu nắng trên cả kẻ tốt và người xấu, trời đổ mưa trên tội nhân cũng như thánh nhân.
Làm sao hoa hồng có thể nói: “tôi sẽ tỏa hương cho người lành chứ không tỏa hương cho kẻ dữ ngửi tôi”? Hoặc có thể nào ngọn đèn lại nói: “tôi sẽ tỏa ánh sáng cho những người tốt trong phòng này, chứ không cho những kẻ xấu”? Hay một bóng cây, làm sao có thể chỉ che mát cho người tốt và từ chối đối với người xấu? Tình yêu cũng như vậy đó.
Tình yêu ấy vẫn luôn có mặt và trực diện chúng ta nơi Thánh Kinh, dù chúng ta chưa bao giờ chú ý ngắm nhìn nó - bởi chúng ta quá đắm chìm trong những thứ mà văn hóa của chúng ta gọi là tình yêu, với những khúc tình ca, những bài thơ tình... nhưng kỳ thực đó không phải là tình yêu mà là đối nghịch với tình yêu. Đó là sự khát khao, sự kiểm soát và chiếm hữu. Đó là sự tính toán đòn phép, và sợ hãi, và lo âu - không phải tình yêu. Người ta bảo chúng ta rằng hạnh phúc là một làn da trắng mịn, là một khu nghỉ mát. Hạnh phúc đâu phải thế, song chúng ta lại có những phương cách khôn khéo để bắt hạnh phúc của chúng ta tùy thuộc vào những thứ khác - cả bên trong lẫn ở ngoài chúng ta. Chúng ta nói: - “Tôi không hạnh phúc được khi còn mang trong người chứng loạn thần kinh”. Tôi báo tin vui cho bạn đây: Bạn có thể hạnh phúc ngay bây giờ đấy, với chứng loạn thần kinh của bạn. Bạn còn đòi gì nữa không? Chỉ có một lý do giải thích vì sao chúng ta không cảm nghiệm được cái mà tiếng Ấn Độ gọi là “anand” - hạnh phúc hoàn toàn trọn vẹn. Chỉ có một lý do vì sao chúng ta không nếm cảm được hạnh phúc trọn vẹn đó ngay trong giây phút hiện tại này - đó là vì ta mải lo nghĩ hoặc bận tâm đến những cái ta không có. Giá bạn đừng lo nghĩ như thế thì hẳn bạn đã có được hạnh phúc trọn vẹn. Bạn bận tâm đến những gì mình không có. Thế mà, ngay chính lúc này bạn đang có mọi sự cần thiết để được hạnh phúc trọn vẹn.”
― Anthony de Mello, quote from Awareness: Conversations with the Masters
“The eagle had two natural enemies: storms and serpents. He embraced the storm, waiting on the rock for the right thermal current and then using that to carry him higher. While other birds were taking cover, the eagle was soaring. An eagle would never fight against the storms of life.”
― Karen Kingsbury, quote from A Time to Dance
“He thought of the grammar of Gaelic, in which you did not say you were in love withsomeone, but that you “had love toward” her, as if itwere a physical thing you could present and hold—a bundle of tulips, a golden ring, a parcel of tenderness.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Mercy
“It would cause nothing but madness, Thomas thought. Men would fight for it, lie for it, cheat for it, betray for it and die for it. The Church would make money from it. It would cause nothing but evil, he thought, for it stirred horror from men's hearts,”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Heretic
Nemesis
Shut Out
Unbreakable
Come Away with Me
Skin Game
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