Quotes about people
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“The more you try to be interested in other people, the more you find out about yourself.”

Thea Astley (1925–2004) Australian novelist

“Baby, I ain't trash. Trash is something you throw away. My people keep me.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infamous

“I'm telling you, I wanted to. But I was trapped. You of all people should know what it's like being caught between groups”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

“They were careless people… they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made….”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Variant: They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.
Source: The Great Gatsby

Money

“Water is important to people who do not have it, and the same is true of control.”

Joan Didion (1934) American writer

Water

“Most people are lucky to have even one great love in their life. You have found two.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Love, Life

“It is when people do wrong things wilfully that they are the more likely to do them again.”

George MacDonald book The Princess and the Goblin

Source: The Princess and the Goblin

“Perhaps; but I am a difficult person to live with. My difficulty consists in not wanting to live with other people.”

J.M. Coetzee book Summertime

Source: Summertime

Personality

“I've since discovered that many human beings need no supernatural mentoring to commit acts of savagery; some people are devils in their own right, their telltale horns having grown inward to facilitate their disguise.”

Dean Koontz Odd Thomas

Source: Odd Thomas

“It's just the most amazing thing to love a dog, isn't it? It makes our relationships with people seem as boring as a bowl of oatmeal.”

John Grogan (1958) American journalist

Source: Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog

Love, Dogs

“In Mexico people wear hummingbird amulets around their necks to show they are searching for love. Here people pretend that they aren’t. Searching.”

Francesca Lia Block (1962) American children's writer

Love, Search

“The important people in our lives leave imprints. They may stay or go in the physical realm, but they are always there in your heart, because they helped form your heart. There's no getting over that.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Help, Heart

“Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

“All the emotions have something in common. People are quite aware of the sorrow there always is in lust, but they are not so aware of the lust there is in sorrow.”

Graham Greene The Tenth Man

Source: The Tenth Man

“It’s not bad people I fear so much as good people. When a person is sure that he is good, he is nearly hopeless; he gets cruel- he believes in punishment.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Fear, Personality

“Killing one person makes you a murderer. Killing a million people makes you a king. Killing them all makes you God.”

Frank E. Peretti book House

Source: House

God, Personality

“If you had to pack your whole life into a suitcase-not just the practical things, like clothing, but the memories of the people you had lost and the girl you had once been-what would you take?”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

Life, Girl, Memory, Clothes

“The very people you trusted most could become like strangers in their longing…”

Lynne Reid Banks (1929) British writer

Source: The Secret of the Indian

“Nature was tough, it could be dangerous, but unlike Dr. Cable or shay, or peris-unlike people in general-it made sense. The problems it threw at you could be solved rationally.”

Scott Westerfeld book Pretties

Source: Pretties

Nature, Problem, Sense

“Piper patted his shoulder. “Trust me, Valdez. Beautiful people never lie.”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Lie, Beauty

“People of limited intelligence are fond of talking about "these days," imagining that they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of "these days" and that human nature changes with the times.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Imagination, Intelligence, Nature, Change

“Sometimes I am afraid for people like you who have to know things. Your kind will dig and hunt and worry at it until one day you will find what is hidden, waiting for you.”

Isobelle Carmody book Obernewtyn

Source: Obernewtyn

Waiting

“I've always believed in writing without a collaborator, because where two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worries and only half the royalties.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

Books

“Interesting people always have a past.”

Jeannette Walls (1960) American writer and journalist

Past

“People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.”

James Baldwin book No Name in the Street

No Name in the Street (1972)

Water

“If invisible people eat invisible food does invisible wind blow invisible trees?”

Cecelia Ahern book If You Could See Me Now

Source: If You Could See Me Now

Food, Tree

“People who say not to speak ill of the dead are hypocrites, because you can take it ot the bank they're thinking ill.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: High Noon

Thinking, Dead

“I fell in love with you," he said, "because you were one of the bravest people I've ever known. So how could I ask you to stop being brave just because I loved you?”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Love

“I do not like strangers because I do not like people I have never met before. They are hard to understand.”

Mark Haddon book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Source: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Understanding

“Annis had never been a people person, unless ‘people person’ was defined as a person who ate people.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: The Maleficent Seven: From the World of Skulduggery Pleasant

Personality

“Truly we work and live on a streetful of splendid people, whom we are to love and serve even if they are uninterested in us!”

Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) Mormon leader

Source: The Neal A. Maxwell Quote Book

Love

“For all the books in his possession, he still failed to read the stories written plain as day in the faces of the people around him.”

Emma Donoghue (1969) Irish novelist, playwright, short-story writer and historian

Source: Slammerkin

Books, Reading

“the best people have the rottenest luck”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

“Each snowflake was a sigh heard by an aggrieved woman somewhere in the world. All the sighs drifted up the sky, gathered into clouds, then broke into tiny pieces that fell silently on the people below. As a reminder of how women suffer.”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

Women, World, Suffering

“It’s a depressing habit you have of loving to sneeze and of eating apples as if they were juicier for you and being the first one to exclaim how good the movie is. You depress people. We like apples too.”

Leonard Cohen book Beautiful Losers

Source: Beautiful Losers

Love

“Creative people see Prometheus in a mirror, never Pandora.”

David Brin Brightness Reef

Source: Brightness Reef

“Most people call it The Book of the Dead,” he told me. “Rich Egyptians were always buried with a copy, so they could have directions through the Duat to the Land of the Dead. It’s like an Idiot’s Guide to the Afterlife.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Books, Dead

“We do not at present educate people to think but, rather, to have opinions, and that is something altogether different.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Education, Thinking

“People who are harder to love pose a challenge, and the challenge makes them easier to love. You're driven to love them. People who want their love easy don't really want love.”

Rachel Kushner book The Flamethrowers

Source: The Flamethrowers

Love

“People will listen to you only when they know you're dying, otherwise they're just waiting for their turn to talk.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

Waiting

“The only people who see the whole picture are the ones who step outside the frame.”

Salman Rushdie The Ground Beneath Her Feet

Source: The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999)

“People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Variant: People understand me so little that they do not even understand when I complain of being misunderstood.
Source: The Journals of Kierkegaard

Understanding

“I never thought of losing, but now that it's happened, the only thing is to do it right. That's my obligation to all the people who believe in me. We all have to take defeats in life.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

Statement before his fight with George Foreman (31 March 1973)

Life

“The thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Time

“I know very few young people, but it seems to me that they are all possessed with an almost fatal hunger for permanence.”

Evelyn Waugh book Vile Bodies

Source: Vile Bodies

Hunger

“The most sensible thing to do to people you hate is to drink their brandy.”

Elizabeth Taylor (1932–2011) British-American actress

Source: A View of the Harbour

Hate, Drink

“The problem ain't what people know. It's what people know that ain't so that's the problem.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

Problem

“They all talked at once, their voices insistent and contradictory and impatient, making of unreality a possibility, then a probability, then an incontrovertible fact, as people will when their desires become words.”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Source: The Sound and the Fury

“I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.”

Michael Cunningham book The Hours

Source: The Hours

Thinking

“How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

“I'm tired of making people sad and I'm tired of disappointing them and I'm tired of seeing them break. I have seen this too many times. He will be the last.”

James Frey book A Million Little Pieces

Source: A Million Little Pieces

Sadness, Disappointment, Time

“I just have one of those faces. People come up to me and say, "What's wrong?" Nothing. "Well, it takes more energy to frown than it does to smile." Yeah, you know it takes more energy to point that out than it does to leave me alone?”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Relentless (1992)

Smile

“the lonliest sound in the world is other people making love.”

David Benioff book City of Thieves

Source: City of Thieves

Love, World, Making love

“People don't resist change. They resist being changed.”

Peter M. Senge (1947) American scientist

Change

“When people looked at him they had the feeling of being shut out. He did not shut them out. He shut himself in.”

Jeanette Winterson book Lighthousekeeping

Source: Lighthousekeeping

Feeling

“Clichés so often befall vain people.”

Ann Beattie (1947) Short story writer, novelist, professor

Source: Walks with Men

“Some people will tell you werewolves can only shapechange under a full moon, but people also say there's no such things as ghosts.”

Patricia Briggs book Moon Called

Source: Moon Called

“People want to believe they know other people. Parents want to believe they know their kids. Wives want to believe they know their husbands.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

Parent

“People who are crazy rarely question whether they're crazy.”

Richelle Mead Shadow Kiss

Source: Shadow Kiss

Question

“People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don't know is what what they do does.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Source: Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason

“I just said, 'Well, the real people performing miracles every day are librarians,' and we all laughed ourselves off our chairs.”

Nancy Pearl (1945) American librarian and writer

“People had a habit of looking at me as if I were some kind of mirror instead of a person. They didn't see me, they saw their own lewd thoughts, then they white-masked themselves by calling me the lewd one.”

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

Variant: People had a habit of looking at me as if I were some kind of mirror instead of a person. They didn't see me, they saw their own lewd thoughts, then they white-masked themselves by calling me the lewd one.
Source: On Being Blonde (2007), p. 54

Personality