Quotes about people
page 77

“Maybe that’s what we do to the people we love: we take shots in the dark and realize too late we’ve wounded the people we are trying to protect.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Love

“When you find that people are not telling you the truth---look out!”

Agatha Christie book The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Source: The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Truth

“The memory of oppressed people is one thing that cannot be taken away, and for such people, with such memories, revolt is always an inch below the surface.”

Howard Zinn book A People's History of the United States

Source: A People's History of the United States

Memory

“The time to make up your mind about people, is never.”

Philip Barry The Philadelphia Story

Source: The Philadelphia Story

Time

“Their Maker, she said, gives them the sky to carry because they are strong. These people do not know who they are, but if you see a lot of trouble in your life, it is because you were chosen to carry part of the sky on your head. -pg. 25”

Edwidge Danticat (1969) Novelist, short story writer, memoirist

Life, Strong, Parting

“If you want to keep people subjugated, the last thing you place in their hands is a Bible. There's nothing more radical, nothing more revolutionary, nothing more subversive against injustice and oppression than the Bible.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

“Only boring people are bored.”

Katherine Neville book The Eight

Source: The Eight

“If you make my children, make any child, feel bad for who they are, I will teach you why people fear mama grizzlies more than papa grizzlies.”

Patricia Briggs book Dead Heat

Source: Dead Heat

Children, Fear, Feeling

“Meg, don't you think you'd make a better adjustment to life if you faced facts?"
I do face facts," Meg said.
They're lots easier to face than people, I can tell you.”

Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time

Source: A Wrinkle in Time

Life, Thinking

“Had I not created my whole world, I would certainly have died in other people’s.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

World

“People often ask me where I stand politically. It's not that I disagree with Bush's economic policy or his foreign policy, it's that I believe he was a child of Satan sent here to destroy the planet Earth. Little to the left.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Shock and Awe (2003)

“There doesn't need to be a God for me. There's something in people that's spiritual, that's godlike. I don't feel like doing things just because people say things, but I also don't really know if it's better to just not believe in anything, either.”

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

God, Feeling

“I get tired of hearing it's a crummy world and that people are no damned good. What kind of talk is that? I know a place in Payette, Idaho, where a cook and a waitress and a manager put everything they've got into laying a chicken-fried steak on you.”

Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

World, Cooking

“Stuffing people into boxes is for those who have issues about their own box.”

Kelley Armstrong (1968) Canadian writer

Source: Spell Bound

Box

“That’s why we get involved with other people, right? Not just for their bodies, but for everything else, too – their dreams and their scars and their stories.”

Tom Perrotta book The Leftovers

Source: The Leftovers

Dreams

“Some choices are forever…. Just because people aren't in our lives anymore, doesn't mean they stop thinking about us and vice versa.”

Wendy Mass Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life

Source: Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life

Thinking

“There are few things under heaven more unnerving than the silent, accumulating contempt and hatred of a people.”

James Baldwin book Nobody Knows My Name

Source: Nobody Knows My Name

“To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Readers Digest (1934)

Dogs

“Sometimes the thoughts and feelings I had didn't really agree with each other, so I decided I must be lots of different people inside my brain.”

Iain Banks book The Wasp Factory

Source: The Wasp Factory

Feeling

“You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

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

Traveling Mercies; on page 22 of Bird by Bird she attributes this to "my priest friend Tom"

God, Hate

“It's okay to accept things from people. It doesn't make you weak or helpless.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

“The true axis of evil in America is the brilliance of our marketing combined with the stupidity of our people.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

Stupidity, Evil

“Who are these people who think a book comes with a guarantee that they will like it?”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Source: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

Books, Thinking

“some people fall in love over and over again while some people can only do it once.”

Ann Brashares book Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood

Source: Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood

Love

“I won’t snatch, harm, or scare to death people with you or use checking up on you as an excuse to cause trouble. You’re worse than my mother, Rachel.”
“Mine, too,” Jenks muttered.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: White Witch, Black Curse

Death

“sometimes it’s okay to cheat on things - but don’t ever cheat on people. because once you start, it’s very hard to stop. you find out how easy it is to do.”

David Levithan book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Cheating

“… she starched and ironed her face, forming it into just what people wanted to see…”

Zora Neale Hurston book Their Eyes Were Watching God

Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God

“Rain didn't make things messy. People did that all on their own.”

Barbara Delinsky (1945) American writer

Source: The Secret Between Us

“For the first time, he heard something that he knew to be music. He heard people singing. Behind him, across vast distances of space and time, from the place he had left, he thought he heard music too. But perhaps, it was only an echo.”

Lois Lowry book The Giver

Source: The Giver

Music, Singing, Time

“There is no such thing as a weird human being. It's just that some people require more understanding than others.”

Tom Robbins book Another Roadside Attraction

Another Roadside Attraction (1971)

Understanding

“No' is golden. 'No' is the kind of power the good witch wields. It's the way whole, healthy, emotionally evolved people manage to have relationships with jackasses while limiting the amount of jackass in their lives.”

Cheryl Strayed book Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

Source: Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

Way

“The barriers between reality and fiction are softer than we think; a bit like a frozen lake. Hundreds of people can walk across it, but then one evening a thin spot develops and someone falls through; the hole is frozen over by the following morning.”

Jasper Fforde book The Eyre Affair

Source: The Eyre Affair

Thinking, Reality

“Find out what people want to do, then tell them to do it. They'll think you're a genius.”

Connie Brockway (1954) American writer

Source: The Bridal Season

Thinking

“I could never leave,' Pine Sap said.
'Why?' she asked.
Pine Sap shrugged, and gestured in the direction of the village. 'Because I think people must be the same everywhere. Only these people are my bones.”

Jodi Lynn Anderson American children's writer

Source: Tiger Lily

Thinking

“I see dead people. But, then by God, I do something about it!”

Dean Koontz Odd Thomas

Source: Odd Thomas

God, Dead

“The truth was, history repeated itself on a daily basis; mistakes were made over and over. People were haunted by what they had done, and by what they hadn't had time to do.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Truth, History, Time

“A jewel's just a rock put under enourmous heat and pressure. Extraordinary things are always hiding in places people never think to look.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Thinking

“Better to stay alive," I said. "At least while there's a chance to get free." I thought of the sleeping pills in my bag and wondered just how great a hypocrite I was. It was so easy to advise other people to live with their pain.”

Octavia E. Butler book Kindred

Source: Kindred

Pain, Sleep, Chance

“People struggle to live, not to commit suicide”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Veronika Decides to Die

Suicide

“Bren MacGuff: Well, honey, doctors are sadists who like to play God and watch lesser people scream…”

Diablo Cody (1978) Screenwriter and author

Source: Juno: The Shooting Script

God

“Too many people seem to believe that silence was a void that needed to be filled, even if nothing important was said.”

Nicholas Sparks book Nights in Rodanthe

Source: Nights in Rodanthe

Silence

“If you want someone to tell you what to think…"

"You will never be short of people willing to do so.”

Frances Hardinge book Fly by Night

Source: Fly by Night

Thinking

“If you always make the right decision, the safe decision,
the one most people make, you will be the same as everyone else.”

Paul Arden (1940–2008) writer

Decision

“When time passes, it's the people who knew you whom you want to see; they're the ones you can talk to. When enough time passes, what's it matter what they did to you?”

John Irving book The Cider House Rules

Source: The Cider House Rules

Time

“I have a real soft spot in my heart for librarians and people who care about books.”

Ann Richards (1933–2006) American politician

Books, Heart

“People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don't deserve them, or that they'll be unable to achieve them.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Dreams, Feeling

“Do the right thing by whoever crosses your path. Those coincidental people are your people.”

Maxine Hong Kingston book Tripmaster Monkey

Source: Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book

“If you hit bottom, there's a whole lot of people here to help you up”

Suzanne Collins book Gregor and the Code of Claw

Source: Gregor and the Code of Claw

Help

“The truth is, what I learned this year is that life is hard… Good people die for no reason. Little kids get sick. The people that are supposed to love you end up leaving.”

Jennifer Weiner (1970) American writer

Source: Certain Girls

Love, Life, Truth, Learning

“I reflected that for all the people you lost touch with or couldn't hold on to, life occasionally made up for it by giving you the right person at the right time.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Smooth Talking Stranger

Life, Time, Personality

“Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

Source: An Economist's Protest: Columns in Political Economy (1966), p. 107

Problem

“Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously…. Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them.”

Edwidge Danticat (1969) Novelist, short story writer, memoirist

Life, Reading, Parting

“Love isn't how you feel. It's what you do. I've never had a feeling in my life. As a matter of fact, I matter only with earth people.”

Madeleine L'Engle A Wind in the Door

Source: A Wind in the Door

Love, Life, Feeling

“He was swimming in a sea of other people’s expectations. Men had drowned in seas like that.”

Robert Jordan The Wheel of Time

Source: New Spring

Men, Sea

“I think housework is far more tiring and frightening than hunting is, no comparison, and yet after hunting we had eggs for tea and were made to rest for hours, but after housework people expect one to go on just as if nothing special had happened.”

Nancy Mitford (1904–1973) British writer

Thinking, Tea

“Like letting spiders live because they eat mosquitoes,
Clary thought. "So they're good enough to let live, good enough to make your food for you, good enough to flirt with-but not really good enough? I mean, not as good as people.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Food

“I'm the most important person in the lives of almost everyone I know and a good number of the people I've never even met.”

David Sedaris (1956) American author

Personality

“Language, she said, was just our way to explain away the wonder and glory of the world. To deconstruct. To dismiss. She said people can't deal with how beautiful the world really is. How it can't be explained and understood.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

World, Beauty, Way

“I recommend limiting one's involvement in other people's lives to a pleasantly scant minimum.”

Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) writer, Actor

“I would rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Manhattan phone book than the entire faculty of Harvard.”

William F. Buckley Jr. (1925–2008) American conservative author and commentator

Books

“These days, Clarissa believes, you measure people first by their kindness and their capacity for devotion. You get tired, sometimes, of wit and intellect; everybody's little display of genius.”

Michael Cunningham book The Hours

Source: The Hours

“Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite. This is a very comforting thought — particularly for people who can never remember where they have left things.”

Woody Allen book Side Effects

"The UFO Menace".
Side Effects (1980)

“In a whisper he began begging for—and, as the sun set, received—the concession people always beg for: a little more time.”

Zadie Smith On Beauty

Unspecified edition, p. 398.
Source: On Beauty (2005)

Time, Sun

“People are secretive when they have secrets.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Secret Life of Prince Charming

Secret

“People quickly grow accustomed to being the slaves of mystery.”

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) French poet

Source: The Cubist Painters

“You need to keep people close. You need to give them access to your heart.”

Mitch Albom For One More Day

Source: For One More Day

Heart

“You cannot know where your people are going if you don't know where your people have been.”

Forrest Carter book The Education of Little Tree

Source: The Education of Little Tree

“To trust people is a luxury in which only the wealthy can indulge; the poor cannot afford it.”

E.M. Forster book Howards End

Source: Howards End

“He who becomes a Prince through the favour of the people should always keep on good terms with them; which it is easy for him to do, since all they ask is not to be oppressed”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince

“Other people have shrubbery in their gardens. You have a bottomless pit.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

“Maybe the truly handicapped people are the ones that don't need God as much.”

Joni Eareckson Tada (1949) American artist

Source: The God I Love: A Lifetime of Walking with Jesus

God

“People who advocate simplicity have money in the bank; the money came first, not the simplicity. (from inside the cover)”

Douglas Coupland The Gum Thief

JPod (2006)
Source: The Gum Thief

Money

“If you are trying to transform a brutalized society into one where people can live in dignity and hope, you begin with the empowering of the most powerless. You build from the ground up.”

Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) American poet, essayist and feminist

Hope

“Ugly people kill people all the time. But when pretty people did, it got attention.”

Chelsea Cain (1972) American journalist and writer

Source: Kill You Twice

Time

“Anybody can be charming if they don't mind faking it, saying all the stupid, obvious, nauseating things that a conscience keeps most people from saying. Happily, I don't have a conscience. I say them.”

Jeff Lindsay book Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Source: Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Stupidity

“rules exist for a reason. Rules exist because when people don't follow them, people get hurt.”

Ally Carter book Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Source: Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Hurt

“And maybe you should stop pitying yourself,” he said. “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

“True love. Is it normal
is it serious, is it practical?
What does the world get from two people
who exist in a world of their own?”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

Source: View With a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems

Love, World

“People with weaknesses get killed by the people who lack them. Notice I'm not dead.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Dead

“Whenever I look at the ocean, I always want to talk to people, but when I'm talking to people, I always want to look at the ocean.”

Haruki Murakami book Hear the Wind Sing

Source: Hear the Wind Sing

“A life without stories would be no life at all. And stories bound us, did they not, one to another, the living to the dead, people to animals, people to the land?”

Alexander McCall Smith In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

Source: In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

Life, Animals, Dead

“In a way fighting was just like using magic. You said the words, and they altered the universe. By merely speaking you could create damage and pain, cause tears to fall, drive people away, make yourself feel better, make your life worse.”

Lev Grossman The Magicians

Source: The Magicians

Life, Pain, Way, Feeling

“The images I had were of people being driven mad by living in the city. Images of parents who were so hungry and unfulfilled that they ate their own children.”

Bret Easton Ellis book Less Than Zero

Source: Less Than Zero

Children, Parent, Madness

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

World

“As long as you hate, there will be people to hate.”

George Harrison (1943–2001) British musician, former member of the Beatles

Hate

“People take love's continuity for granted, just as they take their body's continuity for granted. They don't realize that the best thing about love is its regular presence. Once you can establish that, it's an added foundation to your life.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Love, Life

“People could put up with being bitten by a wolf but what properly riled them was a bite from a sheep.”

James Joyce Ulysses

Source: Ulysses

Wolf

“There is very little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. The little difference is attitude.”

W. Clement Stone (1902–2002) American New Thought author

Attitude

“It's the people who seem weak who are always suprisingly strong, and the ones who seem strong who are unexpectledly weak.”

Lisa Jewell (1968) British writer

Source: Ralph's Party

Strong

“What she mostly wanted, he learned, was the same thing many people want--someone to notice she was there.”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

Learning

“People need to be educated so that they can make intelligent moral choices”

Gary L. Francione (1954) American legal scholar

Education, Intelligence

“People say: idle curiosity. The one thing that curiosity cannot be is idle.”

Leo Rosten (1908–1997) American writer

“It is strange how few people make more than a casual cult of enjoying Nature.”

John Cowper Powys book A Glastonbury Romance

Source: The Meaning of Culture (1929), p. 178
Source: A Glastonbury Romance
Context: It is strange how few people make more than a casual cult of enjoying Nature. And yet the earth is actually and literally the mother of us all. One needs no strange spiritual faith to worship the earth.

Nature

“Don't let those people steal your day”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron