“Sometimes pain can bring about clarity and remind us we’re still breathing.”
― Shane Kuhn, quote from The Intern's Handbook
“Clarity equals victory. Look at successful people. Do you really think they have seven effective habits? Fuck no. Who’s got time for that? They have one effective habit: DOING. When you are a ‘doer’ you lap the rest of the rats in the race.”
― Shane Kuhn, quote from The Intern's Handbook
“That's what I love about you. You're a freak. Like me.”
― Shane Kuhn, quote from The Intern's Handbook
“Everything is so fleeting and impermanent. It’s enough to drive you bat shit crazy.”
― Shane Kuhn, quote from The Intern's Handbook
“I’m beginning to get the feeling that confession is what we need in order to forgive ourselves.”
― Shane Kuhn, quote from The Intern's Handbook
“the more he learned, the more he realized that there is too much to learn in anyone’s lifetime.”
― Shane Kuhn, quote from The Intern's Handbook
“Monsters like us can learn to be human beings from watching movies”
― Shane Kuhn, quote from The Intern's Handbook
“I am wet shoes.
I am cold, damp breath.
I am sweating hands.
I am gravity crushing the grass beneath my boots.
I am Kevlar and metal and lead.
I am laser sighting.
I am death.
And I am coming.”
― Shane Kuhn, quote from The Intern's Handbook
“You always remember the things that rub you the right way or the wrong way. The positive and negative are both powerful memory reinforcement tools. Negative is more powerful than positive, which is based on your survival instincts. But you can't remember something that doesn't touch you in a positive or negative way. And this is our ultimate goal. We must learn from the wallflowers, life's most perfect unintentional losers.”
― Shane Kuhn, quote from The Intern's Handbook
“Our minds are not interested in truth. They are our private twenty-four hour news cycle putting a constant spin on reality. It's like The Matrix. Everyone is getting plugged into the Bullshit Express.”
― Shane Kuhn, quote from The Intern's Handbook
“The job is the job, and I have no choice but to get it done. Bitching about it will only distract me, and let's be honest, has bitching about anything ever helped anybody?”
― Shane Kuhn, quote from The Intern's Handbook
“Clarity equals victory. Look at successful people. Do you really think they have seven effective habits? F*** no. Who’s got time for that? They have one effective habit: DOING. When you are a “doer” you lap the rest of the rats in the race.”
― Shane Kuhn, quote from The Intern's Handbook
“Interns are invisible. You can tell an executive your name a hundred times and that executive will never remember it because they have no respect for someone at the bottom of the barrel, working for free.”
― Shane Kuhn, quote from The Intern's Handbook
“Fight or flight is bullshit. Flight is the default. Fight only happens when flight is not an option. Because fight requires a sharp committed mind that can think ten steps ahead.”
― Shane Kuhn, quote from The Intern's Handbook
“Above all, you must be humble. When you are humble, you are like a sponge, taking in the world and letting it fill you with the knowledge of what is real. Pride and arrogance are a dry sponge. You learn nothing. You think you know everything when it's not even possible to know everything. And then you're the dumbass with the surprised look on your face when someone puts a bullet in you.”
― Shane Kuhn, quote from The Intern's Handbook
“They're more interested in their fucking iPhones than doing their jobs. I can see the glow of their phone screens on their faces as they check e-mail, update their Facebook slaveware, dream of living, breathing, and fucking through the anonymity of text and memes.”
― Shane Kuhn, quote from The Intern's Handbook
“A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
― Shane Kuhn, quote from The Intern's Handbook
“Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.”
― Shane Kuhn, quote from The Intern's Handbook
“People love to talk about themselves, especially white people.”
― Shane Kuhn, quote from The Intern's Handbook
“We are not antiheroes with a silver lining. And we are sure as hell not relatable or sympathetic.”
― Shane Kuhn, quote from The Intern's Handbook
“Sometimes you can get a shark to eat itself if you fill the water with enough blood.”
― Shane Kuhn, quote from The Intern's Handbook
“Sometimes doing what's necessary seems crazy but it's the highest form of sanity.”
― Shane Kuhn, quote from The Intern's Handbook
“However, I'm beginning to get the feeling that confession is what we need in order to forgive ourselves.”
― Shane Kuhn, quote from The Intern's Handbook
“Not only did I rise above my drooling-hunchback-in-the-dungeon status, but I also made our meeting seem like a chance encounter, one of the most powerful aphrodisiacs known to man. Thanks to chick flicks, the concept of true love being orchestrated by the rough, construction worker hands of fate is an easy sell.”
― Shane Kuhn, quote from The Intern's Handbook
“We are in our own dark Eden where the snake is not selling the Tree of Knowledge. He is selling love, and if you take a bite of that apple, you will go the way of Abel when this is clearly the land of Cain.”
― Shane Kuhn, quote from The Intern's Handbook
“Rule #11: Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.”
― Shane Kuhn, quote from The Intern's Handbook
“So when I'm up here it feeds, for lack of a better word, nostalgia about my youth. Some people get that way when they see a baseball field or smell trout on the grill. I get that feeling from vertigo and the Freudian fantasy of falling to my certain death on the pavement.”
― Shane Kuhn, quote from The Intern's Handbook
“Butt fucking the American dream so you can buy cheap T-shirts at Old Navy. Isn't life beautiful?”
― Shane Kuhn, quote from The Intern's Handbook
“I'm Marcus Hunter. Who are you?”
― Shane Kuhn, quote from The Intern's Handbook
“The Queen has been guillotined, accused of crimes beyond imagining. Last night she appeared to me in a dream, handing me her head.”
― Sandra Gulland, quote from The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.
“In the final analysis, the question of why bad things happen to good people translates itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it has happened.
Are you capable of forgiving and accepting in love a world which has disappointed you by not being perfect, a world in which there is so much unfairness and cruelty, disease and crime, earthquake and accident? Can you forgive its imperfections and love it because it is capable of containing great beauty and goodness, and because it is the only world we have?
Are you capable of forgiving and loving the people around you, even if they have hurt you and let you down by not being perfect? Can you forgive them and love them, because there aren't any perfect people around, and because the penalty for not being able to love imperfect people is condemning oneself to loneliness?
Are you capable of forgiving and loving God even when you have found out that He is not prefect, even when He has let you down and disappointed you by permitting bad luck and sickness and cruelty in His world, and permitting some of those things to happen to you? Can you learn to love and forgive Him despite His limitations, as Job does, and as you once learned to forgive and love your parents even though they were not as wise, as strong, or as perfect as you needed them to be?
And if you can do these things, will you be able to recognize that the ability to forgive and the ability to love are the weapons God has given us to enable us to live fully, bravely and meaningfully in this less-than-perfect world?”
― Harold S. Kushner, quote from When Bad Things Happen to Good People
“He grabbed her, laughing, into his arms and whirled her around with abandon, and whenever the tempo allowed, pressed his cheek close against hers, whispering in conspiratorial amusement, “Your brother is frowning at us.” “I wonder why that is.” She laughed. “I don’t think he wants you near a man so like himself,” Mike speculated. That seemed to amuse her a great deal. She tipped her head back and laughed a little wildly. “Don’t flatter yourself,” she said. “It has nothing to do with your great success with women. You’re a man, near his baby sister. That’s enough.” “You’re no baby,” he said, pulling her closer. “And I think you’re having too much fun with this, getting him riled up. Don’t you realize he has a dangerous temper?” Unmistakably, she held him tighter. “Not toward me,” she whispered. “There’s a devil in you,” he said, and looked death in the face by kissing her neck. “There’s a fool in you,” she said, tilting her head just slightly to give him more of her neck. In years gone by he would have found a way to get her alone, seduced her, made love to her in ways she’d dream about later. But three bullets had decided a few things. Even if he could spirit her away from her brother’s protective stare, he wouldn’t be able to perform. So he said, “You’re trying to get me shot again.” “Oh, I doubt he’d actually shoot you. But I haven’t been to a good old-fashioned wedding brawl in ages.” When they’d said goodbye he had hugged her briefly, her sweet scent like a cinch around his mind, feeling her cheek against his, his arms around her waist, pulling her close. A bit more than just a friendly gesture—a suggestive one, which she returned. He assumed she was having fun with the flirtation, stirring things up a little bit, but it meant far more than that to him. Brie held his thoughts in a disturbing way that suggested if he were capable of giving her love, she would capture his heart and mind in that powerful way that wipes all other women out of the past. He really didn’t have that to offer anymore. Although that didn’t keep him from thinking about her, wanting her. He”
― Robyn Carr, quote from Whispering Rock
“Do we say to the wind, do you wish not to blow? Do we say to the thunder, would you rather be silent? No. We never think of these things.”
― Amanda Grange, quote from Mr. Darcy, Vampyre
“A surprising percentage of your own society, with all your heritage of murder, would like to believe that Life survives by going to the supermarket. So the ideal would be to train cattle to make butcher knives and take turns cutting each other up at a convenient location.”
― Spider Robinson, quote from Callahan's Crosstime Saloon
BookQuoters 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.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.