Quotes about people
page 65

“The same boys who got detention in elementary school for beating the crap out of people are now rewarded for it. They call it football.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

School, Boy, Football

“DeWitt: Loneliness leads to nothing good, only detachment. And sometimes the people who most need to reach out are the people least capable of it.”

Jane Espenson (1964) American television writer and producer

Loneliness

“Teenagers who do not go to church are adored by God, but they don't get to meet some of the people who love God back.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

Love, God

“He’s body slammed enough people to start a new country. And there could be a neighbouring city for the people he’s punched in the throat”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Alice in Zombieland

Country

“It is very difficult to live among people you love and hold back from offering them advice.”

Anne Tyler (1941) American novelist

Love

“Ninety-eight percent of what goes on in people's heads is none of their smucking business.”

Stephen King book Lisey's Story

Source: Lisey's Story

Business

“For an instant she felt his touch on her cheek then he stepped back. There that was my ration for all eternity. People have died for less I dare say.”

Eva Ibbotson book A Countess Below Stairs

Source: A Countess Below Stairs

“Family isn't about the blood you share. It's about the people willing to bleed for you." ---Maris - Born of Fury”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of Fury

Family

“The greatest changes in history have come when people were able to shake off what others told them to do.”

Richelle Mead Bloodlines

Source: Bloodlines

History, Change

“I don't think the money people in Hollywood have ever thought I was normal, but I am dedicated to my work and that's what counts.”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

Money, Thinking

“If 180 million people want to be undead, that’s their funeral, but I happen to like being alive.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

“Stop thinking all the time that you're in the way, that you're bothering the person next to you. If people don't like it, they can complain. And if they don't have courage to complain, that's their problem.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

Way, Courage, Problem, Thinking

“Awaken people's curiosity. It is enough to open minds, do not overload them. Put there just a spark.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

“Our story is never written in isolation. We do not act in a one-man play. We can do nothing that does not affect other people, no matter how loudly we say, "It's my own business.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

Business

“People's fantasies are what give them problems. If you didn't have fantasies you wouldn't have problems because you'd just take whatever was there.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Problem

“You can't live your life for other people. You've got to do what's right for you, even if it hurts some people you love.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

Love, Life, Hurt

“Some people read books for fun.”

Richelle Mead Shadow Kiss

Source: Shadow Kiss

Books, Reading

“We come from long lines of people destined never to meet.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

“If you appear weak, people take advantage of you.”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl-A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship

Appearance

“I am worried about our tendency to over invest in things and under invest in people.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

“Old pictures look very rugged and young, and the people in the photographs always seem a lot happier than you are.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Will suspected Jem was in fact cleverer than he was himself - but he lacked Will's tendency to assume the absolute worst about people and proceed from there.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“What we don't let out traps us. We think, "No one else feels this way, I must be crazy." So we don't say anything. And we become enveloped by a deep loneliness, not knowing where our feelings come from or what to do with them. "Why do I feel this way? Last week, I was on top of the world and now my feelings don't make sense." Voicing it, getting it out and letting it other people hear it, helps to dissipate it. The fears and self-criticisms begin to leak. And we begin to heal.”

Sabrina Ward Harrison (1975) Canadian writer

Quoted by Katherine Martin in Women of Courage: Inspiring Stories from the Women Who Lived Them, p. 268 (1999)

World, Fear, Way, Feeling

“People who fail focus on what they will have to go through; people who succeed focus on what it will feel like at the end.”

Anthony Robbins (1960) Author, actor, professional speaker

Feeling

“The difference between how you look and how you see yourself is enough to kill most people. And maybe the reason vampires don’t die is because they can never see themselves in photographs or mirrors.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Haunted

Source: Haunted (2005)

“Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.”

Jane Smiley (1949) American novelist

Source: Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel

Books, Feeling

“people have character strength but they lack communication skills, and that undoubtedly affects the quality of relationships as well.”

Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

Communication

“Support bacteria - they're the only culture some people have.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Support

“Most people believe me when I lie. I've learned how to say the words just right. I have a trusting kind of face. But the boy in front of me was a trained operative, so Zach knew better. And besides, Zach new me.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Lie, Boy, Learning, Training

“My name is David Charleston.
I kill people with super powers.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: Firefight

“Baby," she says in a harsh whisper, "in this world, lots of people will try to grind you down. They need you to be small so they can be big. You let them think whatever they want, but you make sure you get yours. You get yours.”

Holly Black book Red Glove

Source: Red Glove

World, Thinking, Baby

“There are some people who will never understand what
loyalty means. They could tell you what it was, of course,
but they will never know. They will never see it from the inside.
They couldn't imagine a world where something like that was real.”

Jim Butcher book First Lord's Fury

Source: First Lord's Fury

World, Imagination, Understanding, Loyalty

“Our purest form of joy comes when people we envy get hurt. That most genuine form of joy.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Haunted

Source: Haunted

Joy, Envy, Hurt

“Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love a free man is never safe.”

Toni Morrison book The Bluest Eye

Source: The Bluest Eye

Love, Stupidity, Lovers

“When people have the freedom to choose, they choose wrong, every single time.”

Lois Lowry book The Giver

Source: The Giver

Freedom, Time

“We do not trust educated people and rarely, alas, produce them, for we do not trust the independence of mind which alone makes a genuine education possible.”

James Baldwin book Nobody Knows My Name

Source: Nobody Knows My Name

Education

“It was funny, though, the things you didn't learn about people until after they died.”

Cynthia Leitich Smith (1967) American writer and poet

Source: Tantalize

Learning

“It’s in Latin.”
“So? What does it say?”
“I don’t read Latin!”
“You’re kidding. I thought all geniuses read Latin. Isn’t that the international language for smart people?”

Rachel Caine book Glass Houses

Source: You're kidding. I thought all geniuses read Latin. Isn't that the international language for smart people?"-Shane (Glass Houses)

Reading

“Live your life in every way to earn and keep the respect of the people you respect.”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

Life, Way

“People, generally, suck.”

Christopher Moore (1957) American writer of comic fantasy

Source: The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror

“I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

Religion, Intelligence, Business

“George MacDonald gives me renewed strength during times of trouble--times when I have seen people tempted to deny God--when he says, "The Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like his.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

Death, Men, God, Suffering

“Living a connected life ultimately is about setting boundaries, spending less time and energy hustling and winning over people who don’t matter, and seeing the value of working on cultivating connection with family and close friends.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

Life, Family, Time

“His shoulder bumped mine again. "Can I ask you something?"
I didn't answer. He was going to ask me anyway. People don't say that if they don't want to pry something out of you.”

Lilith Saintcrow book Strange Angels

Source: Strange Angels

“Jason settled back on the bench. 'I hate to break this to you, but as a rule, wizards are nasty people. They're powerful, capricious, ruthless, egotistical, used to getting their own way. That's being kind.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Hate, Way

“The truth is, immigrants tend to be more American than people born here.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

Truth

“Sometimes it's easy to lose faith in people. And sometimes one act of kindness is all it takes to give you hope again.”

Randa Abdel-Fattah (1979) contemporary Australian writer of novels for young adults

Source: Does My Head Look Big In This?

Faith, Hope

“how can one respect, let alone adopt, the values of a people who do not, on any level whatever, live the way they say they do, or the way they say they should?”

James Baldwin book The Fire Next Time

Source: The Fire Next Time

Way

“Sometimes really, really bad things happen to people, and there is no explanation and no reason whatsoever.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

“Some people just don't have what it takes to appreciate a cookie.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Variant: Some poeple just don't have what it takes to appreciate a cookie.
Source: The Angel Experiment

“Whereas she wished more of the population were better educated, she also believed that education was largely wasted on the majority of the people she met.”

John Irving book A Widow for One Year

Source: A Widow for One Year

Education

“Huge organizations and me don't get along. They're too inflexible, waste too much time, and have too many stupid people.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Stupidity, Time

“There are two types of people in this world. People who hate clowns… and clowns. (Bobby Pendragon)”

D.J. MacHale The Quillan Games

Variant: There are two types of people in this world. People who hate clowns... and clowns. -Bobby Pendragon
Source: The Quillan Games

Hate, World

“Answer me this, did you hesitate at all or did you see the giant, go ‘Wheee!’ and run toward it?”
“She ran toward it,” Juke quipped.
“He was biting people in half.”
“I rest my case,” Curran said. “A note wouldn’t have made any difference.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Shifts

“The existence of other people is essentially awkward.”

Lionel Shriver book Checker and the Derailleurs

Source: Checker and the Derailleurs

“All the events of your past have formed a lens, or paradigm, through which you see the world. And since no one's past is exactly like anyone else's, no two people see alike.”

Sean Covey (1964) author; business executive

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens: The Ultimate Teenage Success Guide

World, Past

“There are too many people in the world as it is, but the supply of ancient manuscripts is severely limited.”

Elizabeth Peters Crocodile on the Sandbank

Source: Crocodile on the Sandbank

World

“What did a happy ending even mean in real life, anyway? In stories you simply said, 'They lived happily ever after,' and that was it. But in real life people had to keep on living, day after day, year after year.”

Scott Westerfeld book Afterworlds

Source: Afterworlds

Life, Happiness

“To make someone an icon is to make him an abstraction, and abstractions are incapable of vital communication with living people.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

Source: Consider the Lobster and Other Essays

Communication

“I'm sorry,' he says simply. 'People make mistakes, Gemma. We take the wrong action for the right reasons, and the right action for the wrong reasons.”

Libba Bray book The Sweet Far Thing

Source: The Sweet Far Thing

“Generally, people who are good at writing letters have no need to write letters. They've got plenty of life to lead inside their own context.”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 13, The Rat's First Letter

Life

“A friend of mine, the most innocuous dreamer who ever lived, once set a forest on fire to see, as he said, if it would catch as easily as people said. The first ten times the experiment was a failure; but on the eleventh it succeeded all too well.”

Charles Baudelaire book Le Spleen de Paris

Source: Paris Spleen

Failure, Time

“I was in the shopping mall because that's where I go lately. For the last couple of weeks, I've been going there every day, trying to figure out why people go there. It's kind of a personal project.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Personality

“It is hard to accept being different, hard to have people avoid looking at you, and still believe in yourself.”

Patricia Briggs (1965) American writer

Source: The Hob's Bargain

“Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Act V
1910s, The Doctor's Dilemma (1911)
Source: The Doctor's Dilemma: A Tragedy

Life

“Everyone has their weak spot. The one thing that despite your best efforts, will always bring you to your knees, regardless of how strong you are otherwise. For some people, it's love. Others, money or alcohol. Mine was even worse: calculus.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

Love, Money, Alcohol, Effort

“Everyone has crap in their background, everyone has things they wish they could undo. But most people don't go around doing their best to screw up their present lives because of it.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Rescue

Source: The Rescue

“I am an emotional plagiarist, stealing other people's pain, subsuming it into my own until I can't remember whose it is any more.”

Sarah Kane (1971–1999) playwright from England

Pain

“She was reflecting back on a truth she had learned over the years: that people heard what they wanted to hear, saw what they wanted, believed what they wanted.”

Jeffery Deaver book The Bodies Left Behind

Source: The Bodies Left Behind

Truth, Learning

“I normally can't stand vice-free people. They conflate a narcissistic instinct for self-preservation with moral superiority. Plus they suck the life right out of a party.”

Dennis Lehane book Moonlight Mile

Source: Moonlight Mile

Life

“When you start separating people from their rivers, what have you got? Bureaucracy!”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

“People changed. Even the people you thought you knew as well as you knew yourself.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Change

“I should be a success and I'm not and other people- younger people- are. Younger people than me are on TV and getting their lives in order. I'm still a nobody. When am I going to not be a nobody?”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

Success

“These days, most of the people you hear laughing are dead.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby

Dead

“So few people know what they're capable of.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Mermaid Chair

Source: The Mermaid Chair

“I wish I could take away your pain. I wish I could go back to when you were born and take you somewhere safe. Far away from all the people who’ve hurt you. (Kiara)
You’re doing that now. (Nykyrian)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of the Night

Pain, Hurt

“It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.”

James Baldwin book This Morning, This Evening, So Soon

Source: This Morning, This Evening, So Soon

Truth, Personality

“Life there was hard and it made people hard.”

Jeannette Walls book The Glass Castle

Source: The Glass Castle

Life, For women

“There were some people who hit your life so hard, they left a stain on your future.”

Jodi Picoult book The Tenth Circle

Source: The Tenth Circle

Life, Future

“You get used to people being a certain way; you depend on it. And when they surprise you, for better or worse, it can shake you to your core.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Source: Saint Anything

Way, Dependency

“I've always done whatever I felt like doing in life. People may try to stop me, and convince me I'm wrong, but I won't change.”

Haruki Murakami book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Life, Change

“I can't praise a young lady who is alive only when people are admiring her, but as soon as she is left alone, collapses and finds nothing to her taste--one who is all for show and has no resources in herself”

Leo Tolstoy book Family Happiness

Source: Family Happiness

“Satire is people as they are; romanticism, people as they would like to be; realism, people as they seem with their insides left out.”

Dawn Powell (1896–1965) American writer

“Some people are settling down, some people are settling and some people refuse to settle for anything less than butterflies.”

Candace Bushnell book Sex and the City

Source: Sex and the City

“I changed my mind. I don’t want to be an inveshtigative journalist anymore. I want to be a professional rum drinker.”

“There are people who do that,” Duff said. He’d barely sipped his rum.

“Really? What do you call them?”

“Alcoholics.”

Libba Bray (1964) American teen writer

Source: Beauty Queens

Alcohol, Change

“And he understands. He understands why people hold hands: he’d always thought it was about possessiveness, saying This is mine. But it’s about maintaining contact. It is about speaking without words. It is about I want you with me and don’t go.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Understanding

“Some people are just born human, the rest of us, we take a lifetime to get there.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Rant

Source: Rant

“Always stick to the story. It was when you started backtracking that people got in trouble. Interrogation 101.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Lucky One

Source: The Lucky One

“Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)
Context: Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know.

Wisdom, Failure

“Certainly no one has ever died of an unrequited passion—it's usually the ones that are requited that get people in trouble.”

Mercedes Lackey (1950) American novelist and short story writer

Source: Four & Twenty Blackbirds

Passion

“Age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered. As the elders said, if a child washed his hands he could eat with kings.”

Chinua Achebe book Things Fall Apart

Source: Things Fall Apart

Age

“I have no idea how people function without near-constant internal chaos. I'd lose my mind.”

Dave Eggers book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Idea

“Happiest are the people who give most happiness to others.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

As quoted in Happyology by Harald W. Tietze, p. 28

Happiness

“Who snitched?"
"We have people monitoring police radio frequencies. They gave Jim a heads-up in case our security had to storm PAD offices and bust you out of there. I found out when I saw Jim walking down the hallway snickering to himself.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Slays

“It was possible to feel superior to other people and feel like a misfit at the same time.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Marriage Plot

Source: The Marriage Plot

Feeling, Time

“A secret's a secret because you don't let people in on it.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Secret

“God knows we’re all drawn toward what’s beautiful and broken; I have been, but some people cannot be fixed. Or if they can be, it’s only by love and sacrifice so great it destroys the giver.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Love, God, Beauty

“… handsome people are always interesting to watch. But a handsome person in crisis is riveting.”

Augusten Burroughs book Dry

Source: Dry

Personality

“I want to make a difference with people who want to make a difference, doing something that makes a difference.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

“The young, brash and impatient, must always break the silence. It is a waste, for silence is pure. Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit with out speaking. This is the great paradox.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

Silence, Drawing

Quotes about people page 65

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Quotes about people
page 65