“It's no good telling somebody they're trying too hard. It's very much like ordering a child to go stand in a corner for a half hour and never once think about elephants.”
Travis McGee series, (1965)
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John D. MacDonald 39
writer from the United States 1916–1986Related quotes

“Don't tell them too much about your soul. They're waiting for just that.”
Source: Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954

Variant: You drink a little too much and try a little too hard. And you go home to a cold bed and think, That was fine. And your life is a long line of fine.
Source: Gone Girl
In response https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YdfpDyRpNyypivgdu/aalwa-ask-any-lesswronger-anything#miERerX6pSgG4ac5x to the question "Do you think that most people should be very uncertain about their values, e.g. altruism?", March 2014

2003-02-10
[O'Reilly: "We Do Not Speculate Here", FAIR.org, 2005-06-10, http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2543, 2010-11-19]

Source: Radio Interview, July 6 2001 http://www.geocities.jp/bobbby_b/mp3/F_18_1.MP3

"Pirx's Tale" in More Tales of Pirx The Pilot (1983)
Context: Oh, I read good books, too, but only Earthside. Why that is, I don't really know. Never stopped to analyze it. Good books tell the truth, even when they're about things that never have been and never will be. They're truthful in a different way. When they talk about outer space, they make you feel the silence, so unlike the Earthly kind — and the lifelessness. Whatever the adventures, the message is always the same: humans will never feel at home out there.

Imperfection http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/21399/Imperfection
From the poems written in English