Quotes about people
page 50

“He was dead, all right. He had been shot, poisoned, stabbed, and strangled.

Either somebody had really had it in for him or four people had killed him. Or else it was the cleverest suicide I'd ever heard of.”

Richard S. Prather (1921–2007) American writer

Source: Take a Murder, Darling

Suicide, Dead

“I invent stories, confront one with another, and by this means I ask questions. The stupidity of people comes from having an answer to everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.”

Milan Kundera (1929–2023) Czech author of Czech and French literature

Wisdom, Stupidity, Question

“Dmitri was at a total loss. It was a common reaction for people when I agreed to do something reasonable.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

Loss

“Calvin: It seems like once people grow up, they have no idea what's cool.
p19”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

01 Aug 90
Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons
Source: The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

Idea

“Through my curtains I can see a big yellow moon. I’m thinking of all the people in the world who will be looking at that same moon.

I wonder how many of them haven’t got any eyebrows?”

Louise Rennison book Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging

Source: Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging

World, Thinking

“Some people feel like they don't deserve love. They walk away quietly into empty spaces, trying to close the gaps of the past.”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

Love, Feeling, Past

“The people who lie the most are nearly always the clumsiest at it, and they're easier to fool with lies than most people, too. You'd think they'd be on the look-out for lies, but they seem to be the very ones that will believe almost anything at all.”

Dashiell Hammett book The Thin Man

Source: The Thin Man

Lie, Fools, Thinking

“The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book I, Chapter X, Part II, p. 152.
Context: People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty or justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary.

“I view people two ways. They're either eye-for-an-eye people or they are turn-the-cheek people.”

Michael Connelly book The Lincoln Lawyer

Source: The Lincoln Lawyer

Way

“People want you to be ordinary.”

Robert Crais book The Last Detective

Source: The Last Detective

“I realize now that the reality of things is not something you convey to people but something you make.”

Haruki Murakami book The Elephant Vanishes

Source: The Elephant Vanishes

Reality

“The deepest wounds aren't the ones we get from other people hurting us. They are the wounds we give ourselves when we hurt other people.”

Isobelle Carmody book Alyzon Whitestarr

Source: Alyzon Whitestarr

Hurt

“People can't, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life.”

James Baldwin book Giovanni's Room

Pt. 1, Ch. 1 - p.4-5 [Page numbers per the 2007 Penguin Books paperback edition.]
Source: Giovanni's Room (1956)

Life, Lovers, Parent

“It's true: lives do drift apart for no obvious reason. We're all busy people, we can't spend our time simply trying to stay in touch. The test of a friendship is if it can weather these inevitable gaps.”

William Boyd book Any Human Heart

Source: Any Human Heart

Friendship, Business, Time, Weather

“It was right then and there that she'd realized there was no quota on misery for people, no quantifiable threshold that once reached, got you miraculously taken out of the distress pool.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Eternal

Source: Lover Eternal

“The coldest depth of Hell is reserved for people who abandon kittens.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Friday

Source: Friday

Hell

“Find people who share your values, and you'll conquer the world together.”

John Ratzenberger (1947) actor

World

“Cutting people out of your life is easy, keeping them in is hard.”

Walter Dean Myers (1937–2014) American writer

Source: Slam!

Life, For Bestfriend

“For most people, there are only two places in the world. Where they live and their TV set. If a thing happens on television, we have every right to find it fascinating, whatever it is.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

Source: White Noise

World

“Possibly. Basically, everything that happens in our life is our fault and ours alone. A lot of people go through the same difficulties we went through, and they react completely differently. We looked for the easiest way out: a separate reality.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

Life, Way, Reality

“If people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, I'll bet they'd live a lot differently.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Star, Night

“No brain at all, some of them [people], only grey fluff that's blown into their heads by mistake, and they don't Think.”

A.A. Milne book The House at Pooh Corner

Source: The House at Pooh Corner

Thinking

“An onion can make people cry, but there has never been a vegetable invented to make them laugh.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

As quoted in You Must Remember This (1975) by Walter Wagner, p. 175
As quoted in ...

Cry

“It is important for people to know that no matter what lies in their past, they can overcome the dark side and press on to a brighter world.”

Dave Pelzer (1960) American author

Source: A Child Called "It"

World, Past

“in china when you're one in a million, there are 1300 people just like you”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

“Sometimes if you let people do things to you, you're really doing it to them.”

Gillian Flynn book Sharp Objects

Source: Sharp Objects

“People can do great things. However, there are some things they just CAN'T do. I, for instance, have not been able to transform myself into a Popsicle, despite years of effort.”

Brandon Sanderson Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

Source: Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

Effort

“And who are all these people? There weren't this many when I fell asleep."
Alfie shrugged, indicating that the universe was mysterious and nothing would ever be fully understood.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Rise of the Hotel Dumort

Universe

“A friend once said, and I found to be true, That everyday people, they lie to God too, So what makes you think, that they won't lie to you.”

Lauryn Hill (1975) American singer, rapper, songwriter, record producer, actress

God, Lie, Thinking

“… and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”

John Steinbeck book The Grapes of Wrath

Source: The Grapes of Wrath

Soul, Failure

“But you can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can't last.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

World, Time

“You might as well learn right now, you two, that the poorest guide you can have in life is what people will say.”

Maud Hart Lovelace book Heaven to Betsy

Source: Heaven to Betsy

Life, Learning

“The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

"How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later" (1978)

Reality

“I was going to have to come up with a rank for myself besides Alpha's mate. In the pack, I was just Mercy- but if ten more people called me the Alpha's mate, I was going to hit someone. It sounded like a chess move.”

Patricia Briggs book Frost Burned

Source: Frost Burned

“And there is a chance that everything we did was incorrect, but stasis is itself criminal for those with the means to move, and the means to weave communion between people.”

Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher

Source: You Shall Know Our Velocity!

Chance

“Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don't you think?”

L. Frank Baum book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Source: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Thinking

“People have hope because they cannot see Death standing behind them.”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

Death, Hope

“People of Earth, I come in peace!”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Peace

“Some people are as fragile as butterflies and sensitive and it’s your responsibility not to destroy them. Just because you can”

Marisha Pessl Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Source: Special Topics in Calamity Physics

“We punch people, Valkyrie. That’s who we are. Embrace your inner lunatic. Fun times guaranteed.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Variant: Embrace your inner lunatic. Fun times guaranteed.
Source: Death Bringer

Time

“It's delicious to have people adore you, but it's exhausting, too. Particularly when your own feelings don't match theirs.”

Tasha Alexander (1969) American writer

Source: A Fatal Waltz

Feeling

“Every ruler should strive for his people to love him. But if they cannot love you, then make them fear you. Love is better, but fear will do the job.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Narcissus in Chains

Source: Narcissus in Chains

Love, Fear

“If you spend your life sparing people’s feelings and feeding their vanity, you get so you can’t distinguish what should be respected in them.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Source: Tender is the Night & The Last Tycoon

Life, Feeling

“Secret Notes:
He wrote secret notes to people he hadn't met yet. Some of them aren't even born, he said, but we live in a strange neighborhood & they will need help figuring things out & I won't always be around to explain it to them.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Secret, Help

“Most people in the world are Christ lovers. And then there are Christ haters. But all of them are fixated on Christ, and he perpetuates for ever.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

World, Lovers, Christ

“Just because people throw it out and don't have any use for it, doesn't mean it's garbage.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

“Sometimes things happen to people and they're not equipped to deal with them.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Katniss, pp. 31-32
Variant: Because sometimes things happen to people and they're not equipped to deal with them.
Like me, for instance. Right now.
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire (2009)

“People usually asked her if she had a belly button. Of course she had a belly button. She couldn't explain how. She didn't really want to know.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

“I think happiness is what makes you pretty. Period. Happy people are beautiful. They become like a mirror and they reflect that happiness.”

Drew Barrymore (1975) American actress, director and producer

Happiness, Beauty, Thinking, Happy

“People are working harder than ever, but because they lack clarity and vision, they aren’t getting very far. They, in essence, are pushing a rope… with all of their might.”

Stephen R. Covey book The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness

Source: The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness

“some soap opera, you know, real people pretending to be fake people with made-up problems being watched by real people to forget their real problems.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

Problem, Forgetting

“I think that's what people most always do with the stuff they can't make out - just forget it.”

Stephen King book The Green Mile

Source: The Green Mile

Thinking, Forgetting

“Suicides? Heart attacks? The papers didn't seem interested. The world was full of ways to die, too many to cover. Newsworthy deaths had to be exceptional. Most people go unobserved.”

Haruki Murakami book Dance Dance Dance

Source: Dance Dance Dance

Death, World, Way, Suicide

“Invest in the human family. Invest in people. Build a little community of those you love and who love you.”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

Love, Family, Communication

“… available people are the ones who are dangerous, because they confront us with the possibility of real intimacy.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Source: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"

“A boy got a splinter in his eye, and his heart turned cold. Only two people noticed. One was a witch, and she took him for her own. The other was his best friend. And she went after him in ill-considered shoes, brave and completely unprepared.”

Anne Ursu (1900) American writer

Source: Breadcrumbs

Shoe, Boy, Heart

“Things are as bad as you fear they are. People are as bad as you think they are. The Universe does not care.”

Charlie Huston Sleepless

Source: Sleepless

Fear, Thinking, Universe

“He liked the fact that Venice had no cars. It made the city human. The streets were like veins, he thought, and the people were the blood, circulating everywhere.”

Patricia Highsmith book The Talented Mr. Ripley

Source: The Talented Mr. Ripley

Cars

“We aren’t the things we collect, acquire, read. We are, for as long as we are here, only love. The things we loved. The people we loved. And these, I think these really do live on”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Source: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

Love, Thinking, Reading

“You can fool some of the people some of the time -- and that's enough to make a decent living.”

W.C. Fields (1880–1946) actor

Fools, Time

“We like companionship, see, but we can't stand to be around people for very long. So we go get ourselves lost, come back for a while, then get the hell out again.”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

Hell

“But new love only lasts so long, and then you crash back into the real people you are, and from as high as we were, it's a very long fall, and we hit the ground with a thud.”

Marya Hornbacher (1974) American journalist

Source: Madness: A Bipolar Life

Love

“The first duty of the novelist is to entertain. It is a moral duty. People who read your books are sick, sad, traveling, in the hospital waiting room while someone is dying. Books are written by the alone for the alone.”

Donna Tartt (1963) American writer

Books, Sadness, Travel, Waiting

“Do the people in Australia call the rest of the world 'Up Over'?”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

World

“Don't ever take for granted when people look in your eyes; you have no idea how important it is to be acknowledged. Even if it's an angry stare, because it's when they ignore you, when they look right through you, that you should start worrying.”

Cecelia Ahern book If You Could See Me Now

Source: If You Could See Me Now

Idea

“The trouble with forgiveness is that some people don't want to be forgiven.”

Graham Joyce (1954–2014) British writer

Source: How to Make Friends with Demons

Forgiveness

“I have always liked the phrase "nursing a grudge " because many people are tender of their resentments as of the thing nearest their hearts.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Source: Gilead

Heart

“My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people.”

Patricia Highsmith (1921–1995) American novelist and short story writer

Imagination

“Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems. In”

James C. Collins book Good to Great

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

Problem

“A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

Way, Learning, Reading

“I live my life you live yours. If you're clear about what u want then you can live anyway you please. I don't give a damn what people say. They can be reptile food for all I care.”

Haruki Murakami book Dance Dance Dance

Source: Dance Dance Dance

Life, Food

“These people make my family look easy to get along with.”

Megan Whalen Turner The King of Attolia

Source: The King of Attolia

Family

“The best way to boost the economy is to redistribute wealth downward, as poorer people tend to spend a higher proportion of their income.”

Ha-Joon Chang book 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

Source: 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

Way, Wealth

“What organized dating sites fail to understand is that the people are far more interesting in what they don't say about themselves.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Understanding

“Some people represent authority without ever possessing any of their own.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Source: Wall and Piece

“Sometimes, I look outside, and I think that a lot of other people have seen this snow before. Just like I think that a lot of other people have read those books before. And listened to those songs.
I wonder how they feel tonight.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Books, Feeling, Thinking, Reading

“This is what divorce is: Taking things you no longer want from people you no longer love.”

Zadie Smith book White Teeth

Source: White Teeth (2000)

Love

“No one looks too closely at a librarian. People are afraid of going blind from the glare of-ssso much compressed wisdom.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Source: NOS4A2

Wisdom

“I hope I make people feel better. I hope I take people out of their situations a little bit and make them happier. That's really why I do what I do.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Hope, Feeling

“Danger lurks when people are dissociated and detached from their own story or feelings.”

Eve Ensler (1953) American playwright, performer, feminist, activist and artist

Source: Insecure at Last

Feeling

“That’s the thing when people leave us too suddenly, isn’t it? We always have so many questions.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The First Phone Call from Heaven

Question

“It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us… There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you… We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

God, Feeling, Light

“People who have goals succeed because they know where they're going. It's that simple.”

Earl Nightingale (1921–1989) American motivational speaker

Source: How to Completely Change Your Life in 30 Seconds

“People who can change and change again are so much more reliable and happier than those who can’t”

Stephen Fry book Moab Is My Washpot

Source: Moab Is My Washpot

Change

“Nothing like being with people you’ve known almost your entire life. Having a shared history is something you just can’t create with the new ones. No matter how much you like that, it just isn’t the same.”

Jane Green (1968) British writer

Source: Second Chance

Life, History

“The very existence of flamethrowers proves that sometime, somewhere, someone said to themselves, 'You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

“If I stayed here, something inside me would be lost forever—something I couldn't afford to lose. It was like a vague dream, a burning, unfulfilled desire. The kind of dream people have only when they're seventeen.”

Haruki Murakami book South of the Border, West of the Sun

Source: South of the Border, West of the Sun

Dreams

“But some people can't tell where it hurts. They can't calm down. They can't ever stop howling.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Hurt

“There are all these people here I don't know by sight or by name. And we pass alongside each other and don't have any connection. And they don't know me and I don't know them. And now I'm leaving town and there are all these people I will never know.”

Carson McCullers book The Member of the Wedding

Source: The Member of the Wedding

“People are basically irritating. Myself included.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Devil May Cry

“Love this job," Sanya murmured. "Just love it."
"I need to challenge more people to duels," Thomas said in agreement.
"Men are pigs," Murphy said.
"Amen," said Molly.
Lea gave me a prim look and said, "I've not sacrificed a holy virgin in ages.”

Jim Butcher book Changes

Source: Changes

Love, Men, Age

“All the lives I could live, all the people I will never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That is all that the world is.”

Aleksandar Hemon The Lazarus Project

Variant: All the lives we could live, all the people we will never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That is what the world is.
Source: The Lazarus Project

World