Quotes about being
page 43

“Because being comfortable meant she might lower her guard, and she could not let that happen.”

Source: Safe Haven

“That was the thing about being alone, in theory or in principle. Whatever happened-good, bad, or anywhere in between-it was always, if nothing else, all your own.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

“Vulnerability is not knowing victory or defeat, it’s understanding the necessity of both; it’s engaging. It’s being all in.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

Understanding, Victory

“A human being is like a television set with millions of channels…. We cannot let just one channel dominate us. We have the seed of everything in us, and we have to recover our own sovereignty.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

“For prayer is nothing else than being on terms of friendship with God.”

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) Roman Catholic saint

God, Friendship, Faith

“Romantics might like to think of themselves as being composed of stardust. Cynics might prefer to think of themselves as nuclear waste.”

Simon Singh book Big Bang

Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe, Fourth Estate, ISBN 0-00-716220-0

Thinking

“Pasteboard pies and paper flowers are being banished from the stage by the growth of that power of accurate observation which is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it…”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

1890s
Source: The World (18 July 1894), Music in London 1890-1894 being criticisms contributed week by week to The World (New York: Vienna House, 1973)

Flowers

“And Kingsley being Kingsley, he smiled as he pretended to pull the trigger.”

Melissa de la Cruz book Revelations

Source: Revelations

Smile

“An honor is not diminished for being shared.”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

Aftermaths (p. 253)
Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986)
Source: Shards of Honour

“There is no such thing as an average human being. If you have a normal brain, you are superior.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

“She didn't like being twelve. It felt like someplace between who she'd been and who she was about to be. It felt like no place at all.”

Alice Hoffman The Story Sisters

Source: The Story Sisters

“I have seen this too many times before. The unwarranted devotion. Putting up with the fear of being with the wrong person because you can’t deal with the fear of being alone. The hope tinged with doubt, and the doubt tinged with hope.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Fear, Hope, Time, Personality

“Since I was five, I've known that I was adopted, which is a politically correct term for being clueless about one's own origins.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

“The only two important things in life are real love and being at peace with yourself.”

Jonathan Carroll book Sleeping in Flame

Source: Sleeping in Flame

Love, Life, Peace

“A sex symbol becomes a thing. I hate being a thing.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Comment on her sex symbol status, quoted in Ms. magazine (August 1972) p. 40
Context: That's the trouble, a sex symbol becomes a thing. But if I'm going to be a symbol of something, I'd rather it be sex than some of the things we've got symbols of... I just hate to be a thing.

Hate, Sex

“Don’t.” She looks directly into my eyes. After a month of being forced to avoid her, I feel stripped bare by her gaze. “You can be as much of a charming bastard as you want, but you’re never going to bullshit your way into my heart again.”

Holly Black book Black Heart

Source: Black Heart

Way, Feeling, Heart

“I feel like I am floating in plasma
I need a teacher or a lover
I need someone to risk being involved with me.
I am so vain
and I am so masochistic.
How can they coexist?”

Francesca Woodman (1958–1981) American photographer

Feeling, Lovers, Teachers

“The best way of being kind to bears is not to be very close to them.”

Margaret Atwood book MaddAddam

Source: MaddAddam

Way

“She gives him what he can only call a sweet smile. 'So you are determined to go on being bad. Mad, bad, and dangerous to know. I promise, no one will ask you to change.”

J.M. Coetzee book Disgrace

Source: Disgrace

Smile, Change, Madness

“For me, books have always been a way to feel less alone while being alone.”

Jonathan Ames (1964) American novelist, memoirist

Books, Way, Feeling

“I am unable to believe in a God susceptible to prayer. I simply haven't the nerve to imagine a being, a force, a cause which keeps the planets revolving in their orbits, and then suddenly stops in order to give me a bicycle with three speeds.”

Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) writer, Actor

God, Imagination, Speed

“Being here alone with nothing to do, I've been thinking about myself too. Trying to understand why I hate myself so badly.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

Hate, Understanding, Thinking

“Good women always think it is their fault when someone else is being offensive. Bad women never take the blame for anything.”

Anita Brookner book Hotel du Lac

Source: Hotel du Lac

Women, Thinking

“me: you know what sucks about love?
o. w. g.: what?
me: that it's so tied to the truth.

I know it sucks, but in a way, it's good…. Love and truth being tied together, I mean. They make each other possible, you know?”

David Levithan book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Love, Truth, Way

“Well, what I mean is that I shouldn't mind being a bride at a wedding, if I could be one without having a husband.”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd

Wedding

“Life's greatest comfort is being able to look over your shoulder and see people worse off, waiting in line behind you.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Rant

Source: Rant

Life, People, Waiting

“They say - "they" being the great philosophers, or possibly the cast of Seinfeld - that breaking up is like pushing over a Coke machine. You can't just do it, you have to set the thing in motion, rock it back and forth a few times.”

Jennifer Weiner book Good in Bed

Source: Good in Bed

Time

“To know you will be lonely is not the same as being lonely.”

Peter Carey Oscar and Lucinda

Source: Oscar and Lucinda

“There were few things worse than being ordinary, in Evie’s opinion. Ordinary was for suckers.”

Libba Bray book The Diviners

Source: The Diviners

“The excellency of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship with beauty and truth.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Letter to G. and F. Keats (December 21, 1817)
Letters (1817–1820)

Truth, Beauty, Art

“She's letting out her feelings. The scary thing is not being able to do that. When your feelings build up and harden and die inside, then you're in big trouble.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Feeling

“We're of one mind, Grenville and I, and the mind is hers, on account of my being a man and not having one.”

Loretta Chase (1949) American writer

Source: The Last Hellion

“Man (and woman) has an infinite capacity for self-development. Equally, he has an infinite capacity for self-destruction. A human being may be clinically alive and yet, despite all appearances, spiritually dead.”

Idries Shah book Learning How to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality in the Sufi Way

Source: Learning How to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality in the Sufi Way

Appearance, Dead

“I don't know how you persist in being so stubborn-"
"It's a superpower. I was bitten by a radioactive mule.”

Shannon Hale (1974) American fantasy novelist

Source: The Actor and the Housewife

“I no longer feel any allegiance to these monsters called human beings, despise being one myself.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Feeling

“and i can't stand the idea of being alone.
i can't bear the thought of being free.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Survivor

Source: Survivor

Idea

“When he asked my grandmother if she would mind being poor, she said she would be happy just to have her daughter and himself: 'If you have love, even plain water is sweet.”

Jung Chang (1952) writer from China

Source: Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

Love, Happiness, Water, Daughters

“i suppose i have a really loose interpretation of "work", because i think that just being alive is so much work at something you don't always want to do. the machinery is always going. even when you sleep”

Andy Warhol book The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

Variant: I suppose I have a really loose interpretation of 'work,' because I think that just being alive is so much work at something you don't always want to do.
Source: 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), Ch. 6: Work
Source: The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
Context: I suppose I have a really loose interpretation of "work" because I think that just being alive is so much work at something you don't always want to do. Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery. People are working every minute. The machinery is always going. Even when you sleep.

Thinking, Sleep

“Jessamine flushed. "I do. I mean, I did not. I mean--ugh! Charlotte, Will's being vexing."
"And the sun has come up in the east," said Jem, to no one in particular.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Sun

“Nobody understands how hard it is, being a captain.”

Dave Barry book Peter and the Starcatchers

Source: Peter and the Starcatchers

Understanding

“Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.”

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

Book II, Ch. 17
Attributed

“See I'm the reckless and wild one who saves him from being boring. It's why we're perfect for each other. We balance. - Madame Selena”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Seize the Night

Perfection

“People in the countryside carry a sense of dignity. They wear it, don't they? Like a badge? I'm being genuine.”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

People, Sense

“As human beings, we have a natural compulsion to fill empty spaces.”

Will Shortz (1952) American puzzle creator and editor

Nature

“Because i've suffered. Because many times in my life i have tried to love with all my heart, and my love has wound up being trampled or betrayed.”

Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Love, Life, Suffering, Time

“Human beings are free except when humanity needs them. Maybe humanity needs you. To do something. Maybe humanity needs me—to find out what you're good for. We might both do despicable things, Ender, but if humankind survives, then we were good tools.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

“[On writing:] "There's a great quote by Julius Irving that went, 'Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing them.'"

(, interview with Budd Mishkin;, March 25, 2007.)”

David Halberstam (1934–2007) American writer, journalist, historian

Source: Everything They Had: Sports Writing

Love, Feeling, Quotes

“Being sixteen forever sounded good until you really thought about it. Then it didn't seem like such a great prospect.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

“Memory is the only thing that binds you to earlier selves; for the rest, you become an entirely different being every decade or so, sloughing off the old persona, renewing and moving on. You are not who you were, he told her, nor who you will be.”

Sebastian Faulks book Charlotte Gray

Source: Charlotte Gray

Memory

“Sometimes being an adult means doing the right thing, even if it's not what you want.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

“There is something incredibly arousing about being wanted. I pulled my hand back and sucked in a deep breath. “Adam,” I said.”

Patricia Briggs book Silver Borne

Source: Silver Borne

“People don't like being around despair. Our tolerance for the truly hopeless, for those who are irredeemably broken by life is strictly limited. The sob stories we like are the ones that end before we're bored.”

Salman Rushdie The Ground Beneath Her Feet

Source: The Ground Beneath Her Feet

Life, People, Despair

“This did not annoy Amanda for it had long been her theory that human beings were invented by water as a device for transporting itself from one place to another.”

Tom Robbins book Another Roadside Attraction

Source: Another Roadside Attraction

Water

“You cannot help being a female, and I should be something of a fool were I to discount your talents merely because of their housing.”

Laurie R. King book The Beekeeper's Apprentice

Source: The Beekeeper's Apprentice

Fools, Help, Housing

“Sadness at being caught, at the incontrovertibe knowledge that she will never forgive you.”

Junot Díaz book This Is How You Lose Her

Source: This Is How You Lose Her

Sadness, Forgiveness, Knowledge

“What we have not chosen we cannot consider either our merit or our failure… To rebel against being born a woman seemed as foolish to her as to take pride in it.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Failure

“Maybe the truth is, there's a little bit of loser in all of us. Being happy isn't having everything in your life be perfect. Maybe it's about stringing together all the little things.”

Ann Brashares The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Source: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Life, Happiness, Truth, Perfection

“Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe that utterly dwarfs — in time, in space, and in potential — the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors.”

Carl Sagan book Pale Blue Dot

Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994), p. 53
Context: Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe that utterly dwarfs — in time, in space, and in potential — the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors. We gaze across billions of light-years of space to view the Universe shortly after the Big Bang, and plumb the fine structure of matter. We peer down into the core of our planet, and the blazing interior of our star. We read the genetic language in which is written the diverse skills and propensities of every being on Earth. We uncover hidden chapters in the record of our origins, and with some anguish better understand our nature and prospects. We invent and refine agriculture, without which almost all of us would starve to death. We create medicines and vaccines that save the lives of billions. We communicate at the speed of light, and whip around the Earth in an hour and a half. We have sent dozens of ships to more than seventy worlds, and four spacecraft to the stars. We are right to rejoice in our accomplishments, to be proud that our species has been able to see so far, and to judge our merit in part by the very science that has so deflated our pretensions.

Fear, Universe, Time

“Knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart; intelligence is not information alone but also judgement, the manner in which information is coordinated and used.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos

Intelligence