Quotes about the trip
page 42

Orson Scott Card photo
John Flanagan photo
Jenny Han photo

“i worried he'd let go, but he didn't. We held hands like this the whole rest of the way home.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: It's Not Summer Without You

Mark Helprin photo
Anne Sexton photo

“I burn the way money burns.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States
Oswald Chambers photo
Charles Baudelaire photo

“Unable to do away with love, the Church found a way to decontaminate it by creating marriage.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Ne pouvant supprimer l'amour, l'Église a voulu au moins le désinfecter, et elle a fait le mariage.
Journaux intimes (1864–1867; published 1887), Mon cœur mis à nu (1864)

David Nicholls photo
Edna St. Vincent Millay photo
Marcus Aurelius photo

“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

V.20
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book V
Context: In a sense, people are our proper occupation. Our job is to do them good and put up with them. But when they obstruct our proper tasks, they become irrelevant to us--like sun, wind, and animals. Our actions may be impeded by them, but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. (Hays translation)

Jessica Mitford photo
Martin Amis photo

“Fiction is the only way to redeem the formlessness of life”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

Source: Essays

Rachel Caine photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Hunter S. Thompson photo
Terence McKenna photo

“And ordering me around is exactly the wrong way to make me do what you want.”

Lilith Saintcrow (1976) American writer

Source: Betrayals

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
David Foster Wallace photo
Aristophanés photo

“Sausage-Seller: You [demagogues] are like the fishers for eels; in still waters they catch nothing, but if they thoroughly stir up the slime, their fishing is good; in the same way it's only in troublous times that you line your pockets.”

tr. O'Neill 1938, Perseus http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Aristoph.+Kn.+864
ὅπερ γὰρ οἱ τὰς ἐγχέλεις θηρώμενοι πέπονθας.
ὅταν μὲν ἡ λίμνη καταστῇ, λαμβάνουσιν οὐδέν·
ἐὰν δ᾽ ἄνω τε καὶ κάτω τὸν βόρβορον κυκῶσιν,
αἱροῦσι· καὶ σὺ λαμβάνεις, ἢν τὴν πόλιν ταράττῃς.
Knights, line 864-867
Dialog aimed at the politician Cleon, symbolizing demagogues for the author.
Knights (424 BC)
Source: The Knights

David Foster Wallace photo
Sidney Poitier photo
Anne Lamott photo
Charles Bukowski photo

“At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves.”

Ham On Rye (1982)
Source: Ham on Rye
Context: The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole goddamned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves. I had no interests. I had no interest in anything. I had no idea how I was going to escape. At least the others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn't understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go.

Jorge Luis Borges photo

“Time can't be measured in days the way money is measured in pesos and centavos, because all pesos are equal, while every day, perhaps every hour, is different.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

"Juan Muraña", in Brodie's Report (1970); tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998)

Gloria Steinem photo
Gloria Steinem photo

“You're always the* person you were when you were born," she says impatiently. "You just keep finding new ways to express it.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

My Life on The Road
Source: My Life on the Road

Sylvia Day photo
Barbara Kingsolver photo
Alison Goodman photo
Dorothy Canfield Fisher photo
Hunter S. Thompson photo
Roberto Bolaño photo
Jenny Holzer photo
Stephen Chbosky photo
Laura Ingalls Wilder photo

“The true way to live is to enjoy every moment as it passes, and surely it is in the everyday things around us that the beauty of life lies.”

Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867–1957) American children's writer, diarist, and journalist

Source: Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farm Journalist: Writings from the Ozarks

Isaac Asimov photo

“The easiest way to solve a problem is to deny it exists.”

Section 3, Chapter 10, p. 236
The Gods Themselves (1972)

Will Rogers photo
Jennifer Egan photo
Milan Kundera photo
Grant Morrison photo

“I couldn't think of one clever way to stop this guy, so I just trusted to mindless violence.”

Grant Morrison (1960) writer

Source: Doom Patrol, Vol. 1: Crawling from the Wreckage

Gillian Flynn photo

“Alive. Alive in the way that death is alive.”

Source: The Collector

Meg Wolitzer photo
Ani DiFranco photo
Michael Ondaatje photo
Rick Riordan photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Ann Brashares photo
Jodi Picoult photo
George Harrison photo

“Without looking out of my window
I could know the ways of heaven”

George Harrison (1943–2001) British musician, former member of the Beatles
Scott Westerfeld photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
Paul Theroux photo

“You go away for a long time and return a different person - you never come all the way back”

Paul Theroux (1941) American travel writer and novelist

Variant: You go away for a long time and return a different person - you never come all the way back.
Source: Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town

John Grisham photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Candace Bushnell photo

“Once you learn what life is about, there is no way to erase that knowledge. If you try to do something else with your life, you will always sense that you are missing something”

James Redfield (1950) American author, lecturer, screenwriter and film producer

Source: The Celestine Prophecy: A Pocket Guide to the Nine Insights

Lawrence Durrell photo

“Henceforth I will look upon all things with love and I will be born again. I will love the sun for it warms my bones; yet I will love the rain for it cleanses my spirit. I will love the light for it shows me the way; yet I will love the darkness for it shows me the stars.”

Source: The Greatest Salesman in the World (1968), Ch. 9 : The Scroll Marked II, p. 59.
Context: Henceforth I will look upon all things with love and I will be born again. I will love the sun for it warms my bones; yet I will love the rain for it cleanses my spirit. I will love the light for it shows me the way; yet I will love the darkness for it shows me the stars. I will welcome happiness because it enlarges my heart; yet I will endure sadness because it opens my soul. I will acknowledge rewards because they are my due; yet I will welcome obstacles because they are my challenge.
I will greet this day with love in my heart.

Mitch Albom photo
Annie Dillard photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Alyson Nöel photo
Jenny Han photo

“Sometimes I think I’ll never trust another girl the way I trust you.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: We'll Always Have Summer

Robert Greene photo
Giacomo Leopardi photo
Jean Genet photo
Eoin Colfer photo

“I'm LEP. A captain. No rent-a-cop gnome is going to stand in the way of my orders.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Arctic Incident

Alyson Nöel photo
Walker Percy photo
Sophie Kinsella photo
Malcolm Gladwell photo
Robert Jordan photo
Sarah Dessen photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo

“By the way, don’t breathe on the upholstery or I may have to gut you. (Nick)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infinity

Rachel Cohn photo

“Things change all the time, mostly in little ways.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Jacques Lacan photo
Nora Roberts photo
Richelle Mead photo