“I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked awful, but I always look awful in the mirror. I keep myself going with the firm belief that my real face is much better looking.”
― George Alec Effinger, quote from When Gravity Fails
“if I examine myself closely enough, I find hints of every objectionable quality known to man.”
― George Alec Effinger, quote from When Gravity Fails
“Drugs are your friends, treat them with respect. You wouldn’t throw your friends in the garbage. You wouldn’t flush your friends down the toilet. If that’s the way you treat your friends or your drugs, you don’t deserve to have either. Give them to me. Drugs are wonderful things. I won’t listen to anybody trying to get me to give them up. I’d rather give up food and drink—in fact, on occasion, I have.”
― George Alec Effinger, quote from When Gravity Fails
“It was one of those rare times of shared happiness, of perfect contentment. We had a feeling of expectation, that what was already wonderful would only get better and better as time went on. These moments are one of the rarest, most fragile things in the world. You have to seize the day; you have to recall all the rotten, dirty things you endured to earn this peace. You have to remember to enjoy each minute, each hour, because although you may feel like it's going to last forever, the world plans otherwise. You want to be grateful for every precious second, but you simply can't do it. It's not in human nature to live life to the fullest. Haven't your ever noticed that equal amounts of pain and joy are not, in fact, equal in duration? Pain drags on until you wonder if life will ever be bearable again; pleasure, though, once it's reached its peak, fades faster than a trodden gardenia, and your memory searches in vain for the sweet scent.”
― George Alec Effinger, quote from When Gravity Fails
“The longer I observe the way people really act, the happier I am that I never pay attention to them.”
― George Alec Effinger, quote from When Gravity Fails
“Drugs are your friends, treat them with respect. You wouldn’t throw your friends in the garbage. You wouldn’t flush your friends down the toilet. If that’s the way you treat your friends or your drugs, you don’t deserve to have either. Give them to me.”
― George Alec Effinger, quote from When Gravity Fails
“I closed my eyes and wished I believed in something enough to pray to it.”
― George Alec Effinger, quote from When Gravity Fails
“The longer I observe the way people really act, the happier I am that I never pay attention to them. The”
― George Alec Effinger, quote from When Gravity Fails
“After sex, all animals are sad; after any kind of pleasure, really. We’re not built for pleasure. We’re built for agony and for seeing things too clearly, which is often a terrible agony in itself. I loathed myself then, and I loathed myself now. Dr.”
― George Alec Effinger, quote from When Gravity Fails
“The two women looked at me as if I were the Messiah returning with their personal salvations sealed in separate envelopes.”
― George Alec Effinger, quote from When Gravity Fails
“I don't carry a weapon, Mr. Bogatyrev. Not usually. I've never been in a situation where I needed one. Either the other guy has one, and I do what he says, or he doesn't, and I make him do what I say.”
― George Alec Effinger, quote from When Gravity Fails
“it is the nature of religions to put a higher premium on your proper attention to ritual than on your convenience.”
― George Alec Effinger, quote from When Gravity Fails
“I rolled over and faced the cracked green wall. I regretted that simple action immediately; it had felt like a slow-motion film with every other frame missing.”
― George Alec Effinger, quote from When Gravity Fails
George Alec Effinger
Born place: in Cleveland, The United States
Born date January 10, 1947
See more on GoodReads
“Pain is good. Heartache is good. These things will provide you with knowledge that will help you grow and deal with future struggles. To waste a painful moment and let emption overwhelm you so much that you gain absolutely no insight is to get hurt inefficiently.”
― Lilly Singh, quote from How to Be a Bawse: A Guide to Conquering Life
“I get too self-conscious. Especially about things that mean a lot to me. I feel like if I hold things close, never share, then I never give anyone the opportunity to judge me.”
― Kasie West, quote from P.S. I Like You
“The Arabs can lose every war, if only they win the last one.”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Drifters
“Sometimes I sets and thinks, and sometimes I just sets.” The former is easy enough, and is what even an accomplished loafer has to go through before he reaches the latter and more blissful state. It takes years of practice to relax sufficiently to be able to “just set.” I’d learned it years ago. But”
― Theodore Sturgeon, quote from The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Volume II: Microcosmic God
“What’s it about?” Danny seemed authentically curious.
“The night. It’s got its own set of rules.”
“Day’s got rules too.”
“Oh, I know,” Joe said, “but I don’t like them.” They stared through the mesh at each other for a long time.
“I don’t understand,” Danny said softly.
“I know you don’t,” Joe said. “You, you buy into all this stuff about good guys and bad guys in the world. A loan shark breaks a guy’s leg for not paying his debt, a banker throws a guy out of his home for the same reason, and you think there’s a difference, like the banker’s just doing his job but the loan shark’s a criminal. I like the loan shark because he doesn’t pretend to be anything else, and I think the banker should be sitting where I’m sitting right now. I’m not going to live some life where I pay my fucking taxes and fetch the boss a lemonade at the company picnic and buy life insurance. Get older, get fatter, so I can join a men’s club in Back Bay, smoke cigars with a bunch of assholes in a back room somewhere, talk about my squash game and my kid’s grades. Die at my desk, and they’ll already have scraped my name off the office door before the dirt’s hit the coffin.”
“But that’s life,” Danny said.
“That’s a life. You want to play by their rules? Go ahead. But I say their rules are bullshit. I say there are no rules but the ones a man makes for himself.”
― Dennis Lehane, quote from Live by Night
Walking on Water: Re...
Sleeping Freshmen Ne...
Angels Watching Over...
Stand Still Like the...
Small Wonder
The Purloined LetterBookQuoters 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.
