“You see yourself as very average, ordinary. And there is nothing ordinary about you, Rachel."
(Something Borrowed)”

“You have ordinary moments and ordinary moments and more ordinary moments, and then, suddenly, there is something monumental right there. You have past and future colliding in the present, your own personal Big Bang, and nothing will ever be the same.”

“Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.”

“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place…I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”

“Fields medalists are nothing out of the ordinary at Princeton—you sometimes find yourself seated next to three or four of them at lunch!”

“Art is something out of the ordinary commenting on the ordinary.”

“Rose to Rachel:
You cry you get angry then you do something about it.”

“Ordinary, said Aunt Lydia, is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary.”

“What you admire in others will develop in yourself. Therefore, to love the ordinary in any one is to become ordinary, while to love the noble and the lofty in all minds is to grow into the likeness of that which is noble and lofty.”

“When you are older, you will learn that the first and foremost thing which any ordinary person does is nothing.”