Quotes about anything
page 21

“A cat is there if you call her- if she doesn't have anything better to do.”

Bill Adler (1951) American journalist

Cats

“Anything which is physically possible can always be made financially possible; money is a bugaboo of small minds.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

Source: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Money

“[Myrnin to Claire about their costumes of Pierrot and Harlequin, respectively]
"Don't they teach you anything in your schools?"
"Not about."
"Pity. I suppose that's what comes of your main education flowing from Google.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Feast of Fools

Education, School

“nobody can save you but yourself and you’re worth saving. it’s a war not easily won but if anything is worth winning then this is it.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

War

“News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read. And it's only news until he's read it. After that it's dead.”

Evelyn Waugh book Scoop

Source: Scoop (1938)

Reading, Dead

“Our actions are in our own hands, but the consequences of them are not. Remember that, my dear, and think twice before you do anything.”

Louisa May Alcott book Jack and Jill: A Village Story

Source: Jack and Jill

Thinking

“Nobody's going to hand you anything. You don't get what you don't go after.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Exiled Queen

“Things are always different than what they might be… If you wait for them to change, you will never do anything.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

Change, Waiting

“One great thing about growing old is that nothing is going to lead to anything. Everything is of the moment.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Source: A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

“OKAY. So I was going to the library every Saturday. So what? So what? It's not like I was reading books or anything.”

Gary D. Schmidt book Okay for Now

Source: Okay for Now

Books, Reading

“But the only way never to do the wrong thing is never to do anything.”

Jim Butcher book White Night

Source: White Night

Way

“Today, I demand that a film express either theor the. I am not at all interested in anything in between; I am not interested in all those films that do not pulse.”

Francois Truffaut (1932–1984) film director

Source: The Films in My Life

“Love each other dearly always. There is scarcely anything else in the world but that: to love one another.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Love, World

“I am so fed up and joyless that not only have I nothing to fill my soul, I cannot even conceive of anything that could possibly satisfy it - alas, not even the bliss of heaven.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Soul

“The only alternative seems to be doing nothing…and doing nothing, I find, rarely accomplishes anything”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

“I don't believe in Heaven or anything. But I want to be the kind of person that qualifies for entry anyway.”

Nick Hornby book How to Be Good

Source: How to Be Good

Personality

“"There might simply be nothing going on that might activate it. Perhaps there isn't anything here that Alec is afraid of."
Magnus glanced at Alec and raised his eyebrows. "Boo."”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Luke and Magnus, pg. 285
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Ashes (2008)

“Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.”

Franz Kafka book The Trial

First lines, Ch. 1
Variant translation: Somebody must have slandered Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.
Source: The Trial (1920)
Context: Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning. His landlady's cook, who always brought him his breakfast at eight o'clock, failed to appear on this occasion. That had never happened before.

“The one thing that the racist can never manage is anything like discrimination: he is indiscriminate by definition.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Source: Hitch-22: A Memoir

“He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Waiting

“There are people whose souls have just withered, people who are willing to go along with anything evil - anything so as not to be suspected of disagreeing with whoever is in power.”

Vasily Grossman book Life and Fate

Source: Life and Fate

People, Soul, Evil

“She no longer believed in talk. It never rescued anything.”

Alice Sebold (1963) American writer

“I don't believe anything, but I have many suspicions.”

Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) American author and polymath

"RAW Thoughts" at rawilson.com http://www.rawilson.com/thoughts.html

“Every time you have to make a choice about anything, think "Does this go toward or away from what I want?" Always choose what goes toward what you want.”

Barbara Sher (1935) American writer

Source: I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was: How to Discover What You Really Want and How to Get It

Thinking, Time

“They will not let you have peace, they don't want you to have anything they don't have themselves.”

Margaret Atwood book Surfacing

Source: Surfacing

Peace

“Don't I ever do anything else but take soulful walks down the Bayswater Road, I thought, as I walked soulfully down the Baywater Road.”

Martin Amis book The Rachel Papers

Source: The Rachel Papers

Soul

“I don't have anything else to add. I just wanted to make sure I had the last word. I think I've earned that.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

Thinking

“There are no simple words. I don't know why I thought I could hide anything behind language.”

Patricia A. McKillip The Book of Atrix Wolfe

Source: The Book of Atrix Wolfe

“Her name's Prim. She's just twelve. And I love her more than anything.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Love

“Is it possible for a person to love without wanting love back? Is anything so pure? Or is love, by its nature, a reciprocity, like oceans and clouds, an evaporating of seawater and a replenishing by rain?”

Alan Lightman (1948) Physicist, science writer, essayist, novelist

Love, Nature, Personality

“Don’t spend your time on and give your heart to any guy who makes you wonder about anything
related to his feelings for you”

Greg Behrendt (1963) American comedian

Source: He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys

Guy, Feeling, Time, Heart

“If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself not to worry. Worry never fixes anything.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Training

“People will believe anything if it means they can go on with their lives and not have to think too hard about it.”

Libba Bray book The Diviners

Source: The Diviners

People, Thinking

“Distance might not solve anything, no matter how far you run.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

“Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.”

Jean Paul Sartre The Flies

Act 1
The Flies (1943)

Fear

“… the more he did nothing, the less time he had to do anything.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

Time

“Eventually, I told myself not to expect anything from him, and as a result it has gotten easier for me to take what comes.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

“Tears stung her eyes. She sank her knees next to the sleeping bench and gently raked strands of golden hair from him forehead.
"Don't you die. don't you dare. I forbid it." As if Han Alister had ever listened to anything she said.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Gray Wolf Throne

Tear, Sleep

“At first, writing for The New Yorker was very scary to me. I couldn't imagine anything that I would write in that typeface.”

David Sedaris (1956) American author

Imagination

“If anything happens, Marcus will save you. Won't you, Marcus? Hale asked, looking up at the man, who nodded.

It would be an honor, Miss.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Uncommon Criminals

“He felt his heart, which no longer beat, contract, and he wondered if there was anything in the world as painful as not being able to protect the people you loved.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Love, Pain, People, World

“Banned! My eyes light up, I think I see stars. Anything that has been banned by anyone must be something I’d like.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel (1967–2020) American author and journalist

Source: More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction

Star, Thinking, Light

“Americans will put up with anything provided it doesn't block traffic.”

Dan Rather (1931) Journalist, Anchor

“To bring anything into your life, imagine that it's already there.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

Life, Imagination

“I'm going to take off your gag. And if you try to bite me or grab me or anything, I'll hit you with this thing as hard as I can as many times as I can. Understood?”

Holly Black book The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Source: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Time

“Never say anything about yourself you don't want to come true”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

“I don't see why human people make such a heavy trip out of sex. It isn't anything complex, it is simply the best thing in life, even better than food.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Friday

Source: Friday

Life, People, Food, Sex

“Izzy. My sister. She told me you liked me. me, liked me.”
“you, liked you?” Magnus buried his grin in the cat’s fur. “Sorry. Are we twelve now? I don’t recall saying anything to Isabelle…”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Cats, Sister

“He was marrying my girl, and I couldn’t do anything about it. I just had to watch it happen, because he was my brother, because I promised..”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: We'll Always Have Summer

Girl

“I didn't really care much about anything, so I guess I felt fine.”

Megan Whalen Turner The Thief

Source: The Thief

“How are you?"
"Perfectly fine," he said.
"Are your ribs broken?"
"Probably not. Cracked at most. We fought very carefully."
"Did this settle anything?"
"It made me feel better," he said, sitting up. "Did you see me kick him in the kidneys?"
"I saw.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: On the Edge

Feeling

“Let me hold on to this the way it was, before I knew anything else.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: How They Met, and Other Stories

Way

“Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

Life

“Nobody knows anything…… Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what's going to work. Every time out it's a guess and, if you're lucky, an educated one.”

William Goldman book Adventures in the Screen Trade

Source: Adventures in the Screen Trade

Education, Time, Personality

“I hated him more than anything. I loved him more than anything. Because, he was everything. And I hated that, too.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: It's Not Summer Without You

Love, Hate

“Fletch then kisses me on the forehead before opening the cabinet under the coffeemaker to grab placemats and napkins. Retrieving these items is his job because I kind of don't like to bend. I also refuse to carry anything heavier than my purse.”

Jen Lancaster (1967) American writer

Kiss

“Doubt may be a poor encouragement to do anything, but it is a bad reason for doing nothing.”

George MacDonald book Lilith

Source: Lilith

“On the day of his mother’s funeral, to the boy I loved more than I had ever loved
anything or anyone, I said, “Go to hell.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: It's Not Summer Without You

Love, Boy, Hell

“If a person is confident enough in the way they feel, whether it's an art form or whether it's just in life, it comes off---you don't have anything to prove; you can just be who you are.”

Clint Eastwood (1930) actor and director from the United States

Life, Art, Way, Feeling

“Anyone who's really interested in anything spends time alone.”

Curtis Sittenfeld book Prep

Source: Prep

Time

“Say me aye," he whispered against her mouth. "Say me aye."

How could she say anything else?”

Lynn Kurland (2000) American writer

Source: A Garden in the Rain

“So please don't think that I am renouncing anything, I am reasonably faithful in my unfaithfulness and though I have changed, I am the same, and what preys on my mind is simply this one question: what am I good for, could I not be of service or use in some way, how can I become more knowledgeable and study some subject or other in depth?”

Vincent Van Gogh book The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

1880s, 1880, Letter to Theo (Cuesmes, July 1880)
Source: The Letters of Vincent van Gogh
Context: So please don't think that I am renouncing anything, I am reasonably faithful in my unfaithfulness and though I have changed, I am the same, and what preys on my mind is simply this one question: what am I good for, could I not be of service or use in some way, how can I become more knowledgeable and study some subject or other in depth? That is what keeps preying on my mind, you see, and then one feels imprisoned by poverty, barred from taking part in this or that project and all sorts of necessities are out of one's reach. As a result one cannot rid oneself of melancholy, one feels emptiness where there might have been friendship and sublime and genuine affection, and one feels dreadful disappointment gnawing at one's spiritual energy, fate seems to stand in the way of affection or one feels a wave of disgust welling up inside. And then one says “How long, my God!”

Unfaithfulness, Faith, Way, Question

“The only teacher that's worth anything to you is your enemy.”

Orson Scott Card book Xenocide

Source: Xenocide

Teachers

“Stay a little while longer, and let everyone congratulate you - including the ones who clearly don't want to: in fact, especially the ones who clearly don't want to. You don't have to say anything but 'thank you”

Robin McKinley (1952) American fantasy writer

Source: Pegasus

“For as much as I hate the cemetery, I’ve been grateful it’s here, too. I miss my wife. It’s easier to miss her at a cemetery, where she’s never been anything but dead, than to miss her in all the places where she was alive.”

John Scalzi book Old Man's War

Source: Old Man's War

Hate, Dead

“In these days of widespread illiteracy, functional illiteracy… anything that keeps people stupid is a felony.”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

People, Stupidity

“Gale is mine. I am his. Anything else is unthinkable.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

“you can't escape the world, and you're not responsible for how you look, if you look beauticious or butt ugly. you're not responsible for how you feel or what you say or how you act or anything you do. it's all out of your hands.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

World, Feeling

“The worth of things can't be measured by what they cost but by what the cost you to get it, that if anything costs you your faith or your family, then the price is too high, and that there are some things that will never wear out.”

Bob Dylan book Chronicles: Volume One

Source: Chronicles: Volume One

Family, Faith

“remembering is a great invention of the mind, and if you try hard enough you can remember anything, whether it really happened or not.”

Rodman Philbrick book Freak the Mighty

Source: Freak the Mighty

“We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

"Why We Need To Understand Science" in The Skeptical Inquirer Vol. 14, Issue 3 (Spring 1990) http://www.csicop.org/si/show/why_we_need_to_understand_science

Science, Dependency

“You have to go wholeheartedly into anything in order to achieve anything worth having.”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

“Think of love as a state of grace not as a means to anything… but an end in itself.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Love in the Time of Cholera

Variant: It had to teach her to think of love as a state of grace: not the means to anything but the alpha and omega, an end it itself.
Source: Love in the Time of Cholera

Love, Thinking

“That's another reason I keep putting marriage off. I know I want something like what you two share, and I'm not sure I've found it yet. I'm not sure I ever will. And with love like that… they say anything's possible, right?”

Nicholas Sparks book The Choice

Source: The Choice

Love, Marriage

“We learn to make a shell for ourselves when we are young and then spend the rest of our lives hoping for someone to reach inside and touch us. Just touch us—anything more than that would be too much for us to bear.”

Bill Russell (1934) American professional basketball player and coach

Hope, Learning

“Being human means losing everything we love best in the world," she murmured as she released me. "But would you ask to be anything else?”

Alice Hoffman book The Dovekeepers

Source: The Dovekeepers

Love, World

“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. What I’ve learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head.”

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

Effort, Learning

“An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a definite proposition… A contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says."

No, it's not…”

Graham Chapman (1941–1989) English comedian, writer and actor

Personality

“Stop calling your akri your daddy. It makes my wings droop. (Xirena)
My akri is my daddy. He said so and it is so, so your wings can droop all they want, ‘cause it won’t change anything! (Simi)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Devil May Cry

Change

“A man could get used to anything if he had to.”

Richard Matheson (1926–2013) American fiction writer

Source: I Am Legend and Other Stories

“And don't you let your guard down for a second because you think anything's inevitable.”

Suzanne Collins book Gregor and the Code of Claw

Source: Gregor and the Code of Claw

Thinking

“And if anyone knows anything about anything," said Bear to himself,
"it's Owl who knows something about something," he said, "or my name's not Winnie-the-Pooh," he said. "which it is," he added. "so there you are.”

A.A. Milne book Winnie-the-Pooh

Source: Winnie-the-Pooh

“It never seemed fair that just when you're old enough to do anything you want, you can't. You have to start working, so there's no time. And if there is time, you're not working, so there's no money.”

Terri Farley (1950) American writer

Source: Seven Tears Into the Sea

Money, Time

“That's what I love about fire, how it would kill me as quick as anybody else. How it can't know I'm its mother. It's so beautiful and powerful and beyond feeling anything for anybody, that's what I love about fire.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Love, Beauty, Feeling

“We all belong here equally… Just by being born onto the earth we are accepted and the earth supports us. We don't have to be especially good. We don't have to accomplish anything. We don't even have to be healthy.”

Polly Horvath (1957) Author

Source: My One Hundred Adventures

Support

“Oliver: Fear is the natural state of anything that dies.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Last Breath

Fear, Nature

“I am a great believer that anything not expressly forbidden is explicitly allowed.”

Garth Nix (1963) Australian fantasy writer

Source: Clariel

“I'm still there, watching those possessed children, as far away from the mystery now as I was then. I've never written, though I thought I wrote, never loved, though I thought I loved, never done anything but wait outside the closed door.”

Marguerite Duras book The Lover

Source: The Lover

Love, Children, Waiting

“I'd been in hairier situations than this one. Actually, it's sort of depressing, thinking how many times I'd been in them. But if experience had taught me anything, it was this: No matter how screwed up things are, they can get a whole lot worse.”

Jim Butcher book Blood Rites

Source: Blood Rites

Thinking, Time

“Anytime you feel love for anything, be it stone, tree, lover, or child, you are touched by the Goddess's magick…”

Cate Tiernan (1961) American novelist

Source: Book of Shadows

Love, Feeling, Lovers, Tree

“If you zoom close-if you get really close to someone, if you really get close to yourself-then you lose the other person, you lose yourself entirely. You get so close you can't see anything anymore.”

David Levithan book Every You, Every Me

Source: Every You, Every Me

Personality

“He expects nothing, she thought, because he's never had anything. And nothing was expected of him. He was free in a way she never would be.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Way

“Too much of anything is bad, but too much Champagne is just right.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

New Year

“Anything?" She laughed. "Like what kind of anything did you want?"
"Well, when I was five, I wanted to take a bath in spaghetti."
-Clary & Jace, pg.310-”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

“I didn’t want to be prideful anymore. I wanted to be as hard as and brittle as the stones I carted into the woods. Stones that could not feel or cry or see. I wished not to feel anything at all.

In no time, what I wished for, I became.”

Alice Hoffman book Green Angel

Source: Green Angel

Feeling, Time, Cry

“You realize that there's no point in doing anything if nobody's watching.
You wonder, if there had been a low turnout at the crucifixion, would they have rescheduled?”

Chuck Palahniuk book Survivor

Source: Survivor

“you grab at any sign of hope. You grab it with both hands and breathe life into it, day after day. You do anything to keep it alive.”

Melina Marchetta Finnikin of the Rock

Source: Finnikin of the Rock

Life, Hope

“Never say love is "like" anything… It isn't.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Source: The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh

Love

“Sometimes I felt like I was waiting for my life to begin and more than anything, in that moment, I wanted to force some kind of beginning. I wanted things to be different than usual. I wanted to bend reality.”

Holly Black (1971) American children's fiction writer

Source: My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories

Life, Reality, Waiting

“The truth is that nobody is owed an apology for anything. Apologies are lovely when they happen. But they change nothing. They do not reverse actions or correct damage. They are merely nice to hear.”

Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer

Source: This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.

Love, Truth, Change

Quotes about anything page 21

Quotes about anything
page 21