Sue Townsend · 272 pages
Rating: (34.9K votes)
“There's only one thing more boring than listening to other people's dreams, and that's listening to their problems.”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“8.45 a.m. My mother is in the hospital grounds smoking a cigarette. She is looking old and haggard. All the debauchery is catching up with her.”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“Adrian Mole's diary
Easter
Poor Jesus, it must have been dead awful for him. I wouldn't have the guts to do it myself.”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“I used to be the sort of boy who had sand kicked in his face, now I'm the sort of boy who watches somebody else have it kicked in their face”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“I have a problem. I am an intellectual, but at the same time I am not very clever.”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“My skin is dead good. I think it must be a combination of being in love and Lucozade.”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“Had a note from Mr Cherry asking me when I can resume my paper round. I sent a note back to say that due to my mother's desertion I am still in a mental state. This is true. I wore odd socks yesterday without knowing it. One was red and one was green. I must pull myself together. I could end up in a lunatic asylum.”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“Mrs O'Leary said, 'Tis the child I feel sorry for', and all the people looked up and saw me, so I looked especially sad, I expect the experience will give me a trauma at some stage in the future. I'm all right at the moment, but you never know.”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“I asked her about my Family Allowance today, she laughed and said she used it for buying gin and cigarettes.”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“said he ‘would rather go without’.”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“Measured my ‘thing’. It was eleven centimetres.”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“My grandma let the dog out of the coal shed. She said my mother was cruel to lock it up. The dog was sick on the kitchen floor. My grandma locked it up again.”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“Just measured my thing. It has grown one centimetre. I might be needing it soon.”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“She is just straight all the way up and down, including her nose and mouth and hair.”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“He was standing very still with his arms folded, staring with poached egg eyes.”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“I had my first wet dream!”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“I have a problem. I am an intellectual, but at the same time I am not very clever.”
― Sue Townsend, quote from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
“Greek philosophers looked upon the past and the future as the primary evils weighing upon human life, and as the source of all the anxieties which blight the present. The present moment is the only dimension of existence worth inhabiting, because it is the only one available to us. The past is no longer and the future has yet to come, they liked to remind us; yet we live virtually all of our lives somewhere between memories and aspirations, nostalgia and expectation. We imagine we would be much happier with new shoes, a faster computer, a bigger house, more exotic holidays, different friends … But by regretting the past or guessing the future, we end up missing the only life worth living: the one which proceeds from the here and now and deserves to be savoured.”
― Luc Ferry, quote from A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living
“The path taken by the authorities in their so-called Rauschgiftbekämpfung, or “war on drugs,” lay less in an intensification of the opium law, which was simply adopted from the Weimar Republic,21 than in several new regulations that served the central National Socialist idea of “racial hygiene.” The term Droge—drug—which at one point meant nothing more than “dried plant parts,”* was given negative connotations. Drug consumption was stigmatized and—with the help of quickly established new divisions of the criminal police—severely penalized. This new emphasis came into force as early as November 1933, when the Reichstag passed a law that allowed the imprisonment of addicts in a closed institution for up to two years, although that period of confinement could be extended indefinitely by legal decree.22”
― quote from Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany
“To be understood is to prostitute oneself”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from Poems of Fernando Pessoa
“What must it be like? To meet someone, to forge a connection, all in the span of one golden afternoon—only to find out that for her, each passing minute was a year. Each second, an hour. She would be dead before the sun rose the next day. A keen, quiet pain twisted my heart.”
― Margaret Rogerson, quote from An Enchantment of Ravens
“I almost felt,” he says, “ungrateful—’cause I had everything I’d always wanted.” At”
― James Wallman, quote from Stuffocation: Living More with Less
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