“The best books, they don't talk about things you never thought about before. They talk about things you'd always thought about, but that you didn't think anyone else had thought about. You read them, and suddenly you're a little bit less alone in the world. You're part of this cosmic community of people who've thought about this thing, whatever it happens to be.”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
“You didn’t win the game of life by losing the least. That would be one of those—what were they called again?—Pyrrhic victories. Real winning was having the most to lose, even if it meant you might lose it all. Even though it meant you would lose it all, sooner or later.”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
“Those who have much to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
“Why had he assumed time was some sort of infinite resource? Now the hourglass had busted open, and what he’d always assumed was just a bunch of sand turned out to be a million tiny diamonds.”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
“You don’t wanna go out of this world with regrets. If there’s some-
thing you want to do, you do it. You take this life by the balls and you tell it that you existed.”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
“Do you think it is better to fail at something worthwhile, or succeed at something meaningless”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
“the fundamental rule of life: Things were never so bad that they couldn’t get worse.”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
“Beauty always made a target of its possessor. Every other human quality was hidden easily enough – intelligence, talent, selfishness, even madness – but beauty would not be concealed.”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
“The best books, they don't talk about things you never thought about before. They talk about things you'd always thought about, but that you didn't think anyone else had thought about. You read them, and suddenly you're a little less alone in the world.”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
“Red Rover, Red Rover, send Ardor right over," Eliza said. They laughed. The asteroid was a little bigger now, brighter, and still they went on laughing. Laughing in the face of what they couldn't predict or change or control. Would it be fire and brimstone? Would it be Armageddon? Or would it be a second chance? Eliza held tight to her friends, laughing, and a pair of hands land soft as feathers on her shoulders, like the hands of a ghost, laughing and laughing as Ardor swept along its fated course, laughing and through that laughter, praying. Praying for forgiveness. Praying for grace. Praying for mercy.
0”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
“They said no man was an island, and Anita figured that was probably true. But women were; they had to be. And even if someone bothered to sail over and disembark, he'd soon discover that there was always a castle at the center of the island, surrounded by a deep moat, with a rickety drawbridge and archers manning the battlements and a big pot of oil posed above the gate, ready to boil alive anyone who dared to cross the threshold.”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
“She was miserable because she kept hoping things would change. If she could eradicate the hope, she could eradicate the sadness.”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
“And there in the darkness of the hotel room, scarcely more than twenty-four hours before the maybe end of the world, the three of them managed to laugh together. It turned out that no amount of terror could stop the great human need to connect. Or maybe, Anita thought, terror was actually at the heart of that need. After all, every life ended in an apocalypse, in one way or another.”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
“Instead of a few months, the doctors gave him a year. That was how you could be lucky without being lucky. That was how you could be a winner and still lose.”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
“As a little kid, Peter had figured that once you reached a certain age, somebody just handed you all the knowledge you'd need in order to be an adult. But it turned out that wasn't how it worked.”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
“Anita felt like she finally understood why love was symbolized by the grotesque pumping organ, always threatening to clog, or break, or attack. Because the heart was the body's engine, and love was an act of the body. Your mind could tell you who to hate or respect or envy, but only your body--your nostrils and your mouth and the wide, blank canvas of your skin--could tell you who to love.”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
“Today was just another shit day in a life that sometimes felt like a factory specializing in the construction of shit days.”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
“Just another little piece of utterly irrelevant history, aspiring to permanence, doomed to oblivion.”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
“Was life too short? Of course- there was never enough time to do all the things you wanted to do. And of course not- if it were any longer, you'd appreciate it even less than you already did.
Was it better to live primarily for the good of yourself, or for the good of others? For the good of yourself, of course- it was madness to take responsibility for other people's happiness. And for others, of course- selfishness was just another way to isolate yourself, when everyone knew that true happiness was all about friendship and love.”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
“Karass: A group of people linked in a cosmically significant manner, even when superficial linkages are not evident”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
“Then I'll just tell you that it doesn't matter whose fault it is. Blame is just a way to keep score, and adults don't play games like that.”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
“The end of the world revealed the futility of all commemorative plaques.”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
“That was how you could be lucky without being lucky. That was how you could be a winner and still lose.”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
“She looked up toward the sky, toward the implacable sparkle of good old Ardor, and saw that the two of them—she and the asteroid—were caught up I a battle of wills. In that moment, she stopped being afraid of it, even dared it to come, because she knew thre was mo way it could crave death as much as she craved life.”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
“This is the twenty-first century. The oceans are rising. Mad dictators have access to nuclear weapons. Corporatism and the dumbing down of the media have destroyed the very foundations of democracy. Anyone who isn’t afraid is a moron.” There”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
“She believed photography to be the greatest of all art forms because it was simultaneously junk food and gourmet cuisine, because you could snap dozens of pictures in a couple of hours, then spend dozens of hours perfecting just a couple of them.”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
“It occurred to Anita that hatred and dislike and even indifference were all luxuries, born of the mistaken belief that anything could last forever.”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
“The best books, they don’t talk about things you never thought about before. They talk about things you’d always thought about, but that you didn’t think anyone else had thought about. You read them, and suddenly you’re a little bit less alone in the world. You’re part of this cosmic community of people who’ve thought about this thing, whatever it happens to be.”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
“He was the kind of guy who had a unique facial expression dedicated to thinking.”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
“Fiction described reality better than non-fiction.”
― Tommy Wallach, quote from We All Looked Up
Tommy Wallach
Born place: in Stamford, CT, The United States
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“those newbies after you in the first place?”
― Stuart Gibbs, quote from Evil Spy School
“Steris,” he whispered, “I’ve been considering how to proceed once we decide how to infiltrate. I’ve thought about bringing you in with us, and I just don’t see that it’s feasible. I think it would be best if you stayed and watched the horses.”
“Very well.”
“No, really. Those are armed soldiers. I can’t even fathom how I’d feel if I brought you in there and something happened. You need to stay out here.”
“Very well.”
“It isn’t subject to—” Wax hesitated. “Wait. You’re all right with this?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” she asked. “I barely have any sense of where to point a gun, and have hardly any capacity for sneaking—that’s really quite a scandalous talent if you think about it, Lord Waxillium. While I do believe that people tend to be safest when near you, riding into an enemy compound is stretching the issue. I’ll stay here.”
Wax grinned in the darkness. “Steris, you’re a gem.”
“What? Because I have a moderately healthy sense of self-preservation?”
“Let’s just say that out in the Roughs, I was accustomed to people always wanting to try things beyond their capacity. And they always seemed determined to do it right when it was the most dangerous.”
“Well, I shall endeavor to stay out of sight,” Steris said, “and not get captured.”
“I doubt you need to worry about that all the way out here.”
“Oh, I agree,” she said. “But that is the sort of statistical anomaly that plagues my life, so I’ll plan for it nonetheless.”
― Brandon Sanderson, quote from The Bands of Mourning
“It was just a coat, I know, but I held onto it for so long. I’m not even sure why I kept it. It was with me every day. It kept me warm and dry, and billowed behind me as I rode my bike across the lot in the wee hours of the night. I can’t help feeling a little sad it’s gone. [But], the coat has served its purpose. The sun is blazing, and I don’t need it to keep me warm anymore. Rather than mourn the loss of my jacket, I will be thankful for the time we had together. I thank it for all it did for me, and then I let it go.”
― Lauren Graham, quote from Talking as Fast as I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls, and Everything in Between
“Un día, los hombres descubrirán un alfabeto en los ojos de las calcedonias, en los pardos terciopelos de la falena, y entonces se sabrá con asombro que cada caracol manchado era, desde siempre, un poema.”
― Alejo Carpentier, quote from The Lost Steps
“The Christian is not superficial in any sense, but is fundamentally serious and fundamentally happy. You see, the joy of the Christian is a holy joy, the happiness of the Christian is a serious happiness. ... it is a solemn joy, it is a holy joy, it is a serious happiness; so that, though he is grave and sober-minded and serious, he is never cold and prohibitive.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, quote from Studies in the Sermon on the Mount
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The Feynman Lectures...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.
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