“Ghosts, unshriven souls, psychological hang-ups — they all exist in the mind to put people through hell — they're just different ways […] of looking at a given situation.”
The Wheel of Fortune (1984), Part 6: Hal
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Susan Howatch 36
British writer 1940Related quotes
“Maybe all the people who say ghosts don't exist are just afraid to admit that they do.”
Source: The Neverending Story
To G.M. Gilbert, about receiving the death sentence. Quoted in "Nuremberg Diary" by G. M. Gilbert - History - 1995
“The way they're treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell.”
As quoted in The New York Times (19 September 1957)]
Billy writing a letter to a newspaper describing the Tralfamadorians
Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
Context: The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.
When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes."
Edie : Girl On Fire (2006)
Context: But I really, since I exist, at all, I believe that it's possible for people... I've lived through impossible situations. So I believe in it. I just believe, and that's the magic... That's the whole thing, you talk about magic that there's to believe in, and it is there. But most people don't really believe in it. And I refuse, like, since I'm still alive and done the things I've done and seen things and understood things as far as I have, and I am alive, I mean physically intact. When I shouldn't be, according to medical reports and so forth. I mean I should be, not here. That's all there is to it. So the magic's working and it's a rare situation.