Quotes about people
page 85

“On game shows, some people will take the trip to France, but most people will take the washer and dryer pair.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Game

“I had no choice. Love does funny things to people.”

Nicholas Sparks book True Believer

Source: True Believer

Love

“Never trust people who promise to make you rich in a day. They are generally crazy swindlers”

Carlo Collodi book The Adventures of Pinocchio

Source: Pinocchio

“Things changed, people changed, and the world went rolling along right outside the window.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

Source: Message in a Bottle

World, Change

“I’m not a bad person. I haven’t killed anyone. I (rarely) lie. I don’t kick little puppies. So why do people look at me as if the world would be a better place without me?”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Oh My Goth

Lie, World, Personality

“When people tell a lie about something, they have to make up a bunch of lies to go with the first one. ‘Mythomania’ is the word for it.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Lie

“If you don’t live though and drop dead from it, can the Simi eat you? Akri says the Simi can’t eat no living people, but he never said no doubt them newly dead people. Maybe that’s why he don’t let me near them fresh dead. (Simi)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infinity

Dead

“Panem et Circenses" translates into 'Bread and Circuses.' The writer was saying that in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

“Computers don't kill books; people do.”

Douglas Rushkoff (1961) writer, American media theorist

Books

“People see what they want to see when they need to.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

“Prostitution gives her an opportunity to meet people. It provides fresh air and wholesome exercise, and it keeps her out of trouble.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22

Exercises

“I often feel sorry for people who don't read good books; they are missing a chance to lead an extra life.”

Scott Corbett (1913–2006) American children's writer

Life, Books, Feeling, Chance

“Offended people still may experience miracles, words of utterance, strong preaching, and healing in their lives. But these are gifts of the Spirit, not fruits. We will be judged according to fruit, not gifting. A gift is given. Fruit is cultivated.”

John Bevere (1959) American author

Source: The Bait Of Satan: Living Free from the Deadly Trap of Offense

Strong

“You have grown abominably lazy, and you like gossip, and waste time on frivolous things, you are contented to be petted and admired by silly people, instead of being loved and respected by wise ones.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Love, Time

“We come from a generation of people who need their TV or stereo playing all the time. These people so scared of silence. These soundaholics, these quietophobics.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 3

Silence, Time

“people's emotions are rarely put into words, far more often they are expressed through other cues.
the key to intuiting another's feelings is in the ability to read nonverbal channels, tone of voice, gesture, facial expression and the like”

Daniel Goleman (1946) American psychologist & journalist

Source: Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ

Feeling, Reading

“Many people in the village wanted her to be more of a girl, and Peter had wanted her to be large and brave but a little less large and brave than him. But Pine Sap was sure enough to want her to be exactly who she was.”

Jodi Lynn Anderson American children's writer

Source: Tiger Lily

Girl

“Every relationship is an education. Each new person we welcome into our hearts is a chance to evolve into something radically different than we used to be. But what happens when those people disappear from our lives?”

Brian K. Vaughan (1976) American screenwriter, comic book creator

Source: Saga #30

Education, Chance, Heart, Personality

“A zoo is a good place to make a spectacle of yourself, as the people around you have creepier, more photogenic things to look at.”

David Sedaris When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Source: When You Are Engulfed in Flames

“It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Time, Motivational, Back To Work, Graduation

“People with ambition don't give a damn what other people think of them.”

Diane Setterfield (1964) English novelist

Thinking

“Maybe there was a magic stronger than spells. Maybe the soulmate principle was responsible, and if two people were meant to be together, nothing could keep them apart.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Night World, No. 1

“Most people who travel look only at what they are directed to look at. Great is the power of the guidebook maker, however ignorant.”

John Muir book Travels in Alaska

Source: Travels in Alaska

Travel

“Never judge anyone by another's opinions. We all have different sides that we show to different people.”

Jacqueline Susann book Valley of the Dolls

Source: Valley of the Dolls

“People are often frightened of Parisians, but an American in Paris will find no harsher critic than another American.”

David Sedaris book Me Talk Pretty One Day

Source: Me Talk Pretty One Day

“DOES EVERYBODY THINK I am an asshole?” Curran asked. “Only people who know you or have met you.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Shifts

Thinking

“Life is change. If you aren't growing and evolving you're standing still, and the rest of the world is surging ahead. Most of these people are very immature. They lead "still" lives, waiting.”

Louise Penny book Still Life

Source: Still Life

Life, World, Change, Waiting

“Clary and Simon continued to stare judgmentally. It made Simon very happy. Judging people together was an essential part of best friendship.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Born to Endless Night

Friendship, Happiness, Parting

“Some people could look at a mud puddle and see an ocean with ships.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Their Eyes Were Watching God

Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God

“People will want you to behave a certain way, to make a certain choice because it reinforces the way they see the world… But you have to do what's right for you.”

Jennifer Weiner (1970) American writer

Source: Fly Away Home

World, Way

“People surprise you sometimes.”

Dennis Lehane book Sacred

Sacred

“So you really cant think of anyone else who might want to kill you?"asked Jace.
"Unlike in your case there arent actually all that many people who dislike me."said Simon.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Thinking

“We live in a pretty apathetic age, yet we’re surrounded by an enormous amount of information about other people. If you feel like it, you can easily gather that information about them. Having said that, we still hardly know anything about people.”

Haruki Murakami book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Age, Feeling

“People think they own time. They have watches and clocks and digital pulses. But they are wrong.”

Caroline B. Cooney Both Sides of Time

Source: Both Sides of Time

Thinking, Time

“People are hungry for stories. It's part of our very being. Storytelling is a form of history, of immortality too. It goes from one generation to another. -Studs Terkel”

Studs Terkel (1912–2008) American author, historian and broadcaster

History, Parting

“I can't get over this. Dad isn't Sam's dad? Dad is a friend? How was I supposed to know that? People shouldn't be allowed to sign themselves as Dad unless they are your dad. It should be the law.”

Sophie Kinsella book I've Got Your Number

Source: I've Got Your Number

Law

“People aren't born with kindness, it grows with them…”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

“… if more people had been organ donors, unwinding never would have happened… but people like to keep what's theirs, even after they're dead.”

Neal Shusterman book Unwind

Source: Unwind

Dead

“You can't always be pushing people away. Someday nobody'll come back.”

Jacqueline Woodson (1963) American writer

Source: The Dear One

“After departure, only invisible things are left, perhaps the life of the world is held together by invisible chains of memory and loss and love. So many things, so many people, depart! And we can only repossess them in our minds.”

James Baldwin book Going to Meet the Man

Source: Going to Meet the Man

Love, Life, World, Departure

“I hate how the people who reallyyou are the ones you can never hold on to for very long. And the ones who don’t understand youstick around.”

Marisha Pessl (1977) American writer

Source: Night Film

Hate, Understanding

“Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke.”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

Art

“… Writings can be stolen, or changed, or used for evil purposes. But isn't the risk worth taking? The more people who share knowledge, the greater safeguard for it. Isn't there more danger in ignorance than knowledge?”

Lloyd Alexander (1924–2007) American children's writer

Source: The Arkadians

Knowledge, Evil, Change

“How come all the harmless people were so lame? Maybe that was the definition of safe.”

Richelle Mead Vampire Academy

Source: Vampire Academy

“Very few people ever bother to find out what other people really think. They are willing to accept whatever they are told about anyone sufficiently distant.”

Kim Stanley Robinson Mars trilogy

Source: Red Mars

Thinking, Distant

“Somebody dies and people eat your food. Funny how that works.”

Sherman Alexie book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Source: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Food

“Some people seem quite destitute a sense of humour.”

George Grossmith book The Diary of a Nobody

The Diary of a Nobody

Sense

“I really believe that no matter how old people get, they tend to change in certain ways depending on how people treat them - they change their colors.”

Banana Yoshimoto book Asleep

Source: Asleep

Color, Way, Change, Dependency

“behind the mask of ice that people wear, there beats a heart of fire.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Warrior of the Light

Heart

“Marriage… is the union of two people of different sexes with a view to the mutual possession of each other's sexual attributes for the duration of their lives.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Marriage, Sex

“That’s why; he’s worried about how his life is turning out, and he’s lonely, and lonely people are the bitterest of them all”

Nick Hornby book High Fidelity

Source: High Fidelity

Life

“Sometimes people can be too intellegent for their own good. Too much thinking could confuse things.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: The Siege of Macindaw

Thinking

“We're broken. It's like we have all these jagged edges that scare other people off, but when we're with each other, our jagged edges fit together and we're almost whole.”

Sarra Manning (1950) British writer

Source: Unsticky

“You should never apologize for existing, Lev. Not even to all those people out there who wish you didn't.”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

Source: UnSouled

“Sitting on my stool I thought of a bumper sticker: "If Mean People Suck, Why Isn't My Dick In Your Mouth?”

Paul Neilan American novelist

Source: Apathy and Other Small Victories

“You meet people who are in pain in life and love and you forgive them for behaving the way they do.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Source: Adverbs

Love, Life, Pain, Way

“We are what we are. Nothing more, nothing less. There is good and evil among every kind of people. It's the evil among us who rule now.”

Anne Bishop (1955) American fiction writer

Source: Daughter of the Blood

Evil

“Hey show some respect. They’re real people with names. Carla and Krissy” He frowned. “Or was it Missy?”

Richelle Mead Bloodlines

Source: Bloodlines

“After all, people judge one another according to their own feelings. It is only the miser who sees other enticed by money, the lustful who see others obsessed by desire.”

Irène Némirovsky (1903–1942) French novelist who died at the age of 39 in Auschwitz

Source: Suite Française

Money, Feeling

“I am not here to entertain straight people.”

Sarah Schulman (1958) American writer

“There are two kinds of people in the world Ms. Lane: those who survive no matter the cost and those who are walking victims.”

Karen Marie Moning book Darkfever

Source: Darkfever

World

“It takes away a lot of the thrill of killing yourself when people are looking for you and you're disappointing them, because it is a lot of fun when you're out there killing yourself.”

Anthony Kiedis book Scar Tissue

Source: Scar Tissue

Disappointment

“Most people, after one success, are so cringingly afraid of doing less well that they rub all the edge off their subsequent work.”

Beatrix Potter (1866–1943) English children's writer and illustrator

Success

“Blindness separates people from things;
deafness separates people from people.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

“Like I, of all people, didn't know better than to lead a total stranger to the point where they could hurt me most, knowing how easily they'd be able to find their way back to it.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

Way, Hurt

“I know this simple fact to be true, for I myself have abandoned people who did not want me to go, and I myself have been abandoned by those whom I begged to stay.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

“When we really want to go for something better, we shall smash the old. Until then, any sort of proposal, or making proposals, is no more than a tiresome game for self-important people.”

D.H. Lawrence book Women in Love

Source: Women in Love

Game

“People label themselves with all sorts of adjectives. I can only pronounce myself as 'nauseatingly miserable beyond repair'.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Source: Diaries of Franz Kafka

“It cannot be that the people should grow in grace unless they give themselves to reading. A reading people will always be a knowing people.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

Reading

“I envy paranoids; they actually feel people are paying attention to them.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Source: "Susan Sontag Finds Romance," interview by Leslie Garis, The New York Times (2 August 1992)

Feeling, Envy

“What's really important here," I whispered loudly to myself,"is not the big things other people have thought up, but the small things you, yourself have”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

“People, you'll find, aren't usually all good or bad. Sometimes they're just a little bit good and a whole lot bad. And sometimes they're mostly good with a dash of bad. And most of us, well, we fall in the middle somewhere.”

Gabrielle Zevin book Elsewhere

Source: Elsewhere

“Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Way

“The world is full of people who all want the same thing, and you have to do a little something extra to make them remember you.”

Candace Bushnell book The Carrie Diaries

Source: The Carrie Diaries

World

“No friend had I made there, but I wasn't with this group to make friends, and besides, he sneered too much. I've found that people who sneer are almost always sneering at me.”

Megan Whalen Turner The Thief

Source: The Thief

“She understood what it was like to stand right in front of people you loved, even though they could not see you.”

Jodi Picoult book Second Glance

Source: Second Glance

Love

“Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity; and fashion will drive them to acquire any custom.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Killing For Sport, Preface (1914)
1910s

Fashion

“Why do we people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

“This made him a grad student, and grad students existed not to learn things but to relieve the tenured faculty members of tiresome burdens such as educating people and doing research.”

Neal Stephenson book Cryptonomicon

Source: Cryptonomicon

Education, Learning

“Charm is the ability to insult people without offending them; nerdiness the reverse.”

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

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 30

“When you steal a people's language, you leave their soul bewildered.”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Soul

“It's easy to look back and see it, and it's easy to give the advice, but the sad fact is, most people don't look beneath the surface until it's too late.”

Wendelin Van Draanen Flipped

Source: Flipped (2001)

Sadness

“When any two young people take it into their heads to marry, they are pretty sure by perseverance to carry their point, be they ever so poor, or ever so imprudent, or ever so little likely to be necessary to each other's ultimate comfort.”

Jane Austen book Persuasion

Source: Persuasion

Perseverance

“Well, for one thing, the culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. We're teaching the wrong things. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it. Create your own. Most people can't do it.”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

Feeling, Strong

“I do not believe, from what I have been told about this people, that there is anything barbarous or savage about them, except that we all call barbarous anything that is contrary to our own habits.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Source: The Complete Essays

“Oh, no. It costs a lot more than your life. To murder innocent people?" says Peeta. "It costs everything you are.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Variant: It costs your life,” says Caesar.

“Oh, no. It costs a lot more than your life. To murder innocent people?” says Peeta. “It costs everything you are.
Source: Mockingjay

Life

“I love people. I love my family, my children … but inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that's where you renew your springs that never dry up.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

As quoted in The New York Post (26 April 1959)

Love, Children, Family, Spring

“We'll just have to get along. That's what people do, you know? They just get along. And try to help each other.”

Stephen King book Cujo

Source: Cujo

Help

“Your most important task as a leader is to teach people how to think and ask the right questions so that the world doesn't go to hell if you take a day off.”

Jeffrey Pfeffer (1946) American academic

World, Hell, Question, Thinking

“The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Variant: You only ask people about themselves so you can tell them about yourself.
Source: Invisible Monsters

“I want people to bow as they see me and say he is gifted with poetry, he has seen the presence of the creator.”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

“Free societies… are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction. Free people strike sparks, and those sparks are the best evidence of freedom's existence.”

Salman Rushdie (1947) British Indian novelist and essayist

Freedom

“How can two people hate so much without knowing each other?”

Alan Moore book Batman: The Killing Joke

Source: Batman: The Killing Joke

Hate

“People don't make good Anchors, though, Craig. They change.”

Ned Vizzini (1981–2013) American writer

Change

“People under seventy and over seven are very unreliable if they are not cats.”

Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) Mexican artist, surrealist painter and novelist

Source: The Hearing Trumpet

Cats

“A great deal of the chaos in the world occurs because people don't appreciate themselves.”

Chögyam Trungpa book Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior

Source: Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior

World

“The only people we can think of as normal are those we don't yet know very well.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Thinking

“The trouble with people is they don't understand people.”

David Goodis (1917–1967) Novelist, screenwriter

Understanding

“Should, is the worst word
in the English language. People always think things "should" be a certain way, and when they're
not, they're disappointed.”

Candace Bushnell book Summer and the City

Source: Summer and the City

Disappointment, Way, Thinking

“One thing about great art: it made you love people more, forgive them their petty transgressions. It worked in the way that religion was supposed to, if you thought about it.”

Nick Hornby book Juliet, Naked

Source: Juliet, Naked

Love, Religion, Art, Way

Quotes about people page 85

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Quotes about people
page 85