Quotes about day
page 23

“Know what you want to do, hold the thought firmly, and do every day what should be done, and every sunset will see you that much nearer the goal.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

“Stuff that would be weird in the bright light of day just wasn't so much once you passed a certain hour.”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

Light

“That's what birthdays were. Days when you found out where you stood. Who was on your side and who wasn't. Nothing to do with how old you were.”

Rupert Thomson (1955) British writer

Source: The Five Gates of Hell

Birthday

“Call no day fortunate till it be ended.”
Nulla dies felix

Ford Madox Ford (1873–1939) English writer and publisher

The Fifth Queen Crowned

“That’s all I think about these days. Must be because I have so much time to kill every day. When you don’t have anything to do, your thoughts get really, really far out-so far out
you can’t follow them all the way to the end.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Way, Thinking, Time

“Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

“I saw the best minds of my generation who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade.”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

Time

“Considering the way the world is, one happy day is almost a miracle.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes

Happiness, World, Way

“If you can't think of what to write, tough luck; write anyway. If you can think of lots more when you've finished the three pages, don't write it; it'll be that much easier to get going next day.”

Philip Pullman (1946) English author

Thinking

“There was a DJ who stayed up for eleven days straight, the longest recorded period of time anyone has ever gone without sleep, and he started playing nothing by Phil Collins, and that's how they knew it was time to call the ambulance.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Sleep, Time

“I could not count the times during the average day when something would come up that I needed to tell him. This impulse did not end with his death. What ended was the possibility of response.”

Joan Didion The Year of Magical Thinking

Source: The Year of Magical Thinking

Death, Time

“Grief, as I read somewhere once, is a lazy Susan. One day it is heavy and underwater, and the next day it spins and stops at loud and rageful, and the next day at wounded keening, and the next day numbness, silence.”

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

Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

Silence, Rage, Reading

“How she still thought of Max every day and it was like someone had emptied her lungs of air, and she would catch at her heart, afraid she was dying.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Heart

“When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate.”

John Steinbeck book Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Failure, Sense

“Its best to live as if it were the first and last day of my life.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes

Life

“Another world is not only possible, she's on the way and, on a quiet day, if you listen very carefully you can hear her breathe.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

From a speech entitled Confronting Empire http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=51&ItemID=2919 given at the World Social Forum in Porto Allegre, 28 January 2003 <br class="br">Speeches <br class="br">Variant: Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing. <br class="br">Source: War Talk

World, Way

“Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day. That was the business of hiding a Jew.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Variant: Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.
Source: The Book Thief

Smile, Imagination, Business, Thinking

“I need to look like an idiot at least twice a day to keep myself humble.”

Janet Evanovich Twelve Sharp

Source: Twelve Sharp

“Find out what your hero or heroine wants, and when he or she wakes up in the morning, just follow him or her all day..”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

“No life goes past so swiftly as an eventless one, no clock spins like a clock whose days are all alike.”

Wallace Stegner book Angle of Repose

Source: Angle of Repose

Life, Past

“On motionless wing they emerge from the lifting mists, sweep a final arc of sky, and settle in clangorous descending spirals to their feeding grounds. A new day has begun on the crane marsh.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

Source: A Sand County Almanac

“It is a dangerous day when we can take the cross out of the church more easily than the flag. No wonder it is hard for seekers to find God nowadays.”

Shane Claiborne (1975) American activist

God

“I had become a perfect fake human, saying the stupid and pointless things that humans say to each other all day long.”

Jeff Lindsay book Dearly Devoted Dexter

Source: Dearly Devoted Dexter

Stupidity, Perfection

“Why live life from dream to dream? And dread the day when dreaming ends.”

Baz Luhrmann (1962) Australian film director, screenwriter and producer

Source: Moulin Rouge!: The Splendid Book That Charts the Journey of Baz Luhrmann's Motion Picture

Life, Dreams

“It is cold at six-forty in the morning on a March day in Paris, and seems even colder when a man is about to be executed by firing squad.”

Frederick Forsyth book The Day of the Jackal

Source: The Day of the Jackal

“You gotta be able to explain things to yourself when the lights go off and you get in the bed. You gotta deal with you at the end of the day.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

Light

“Work as if you were in the early days of a better nation.”

Alasdair Gray (1934–2019) Scottish writer and artist

Frontispiece Variants on this epigraph appear in other books by Alasdair Gray; one of them, "Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation", is now engraved on a wall of the Scottish Parliament building. http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/vli/holyrood/faq/answers/art006.htm They are all loose paraphrases of a couplet from Dennis Lee's "Civil Elegies": And best of all is finding a place to be in the early days of a better civilization. http://election.theherald.co.uk/homepage/electionnews/display.var.1370748.0.canadians_should_look_out_for_scottish_election.php Gray later devised a more distinct variant of this, because he believed the "nation" version should be credited to Lee: Work as if you live in the early days of a better world. As quoted in "Early Days of a Better Nation" by Harry Mcgrath, in Scottish Review of Books (28 March 2013) https://www.scottishreviewofbooks.org/2013/03/early-days-of-a-better-nation/ <br class="br">Unlikely Stories, Mostly (1983)

“Fear doesn't go away. The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

Fear

“If I learned anything Downtown, it's this: the only real difference between an enemy and a friend is the day of the week.”

Richard Kadrey (1957) San Francisco-based novelist, freelance writer, and photographer

Source: Sandman Slim

Learning

“I don't think we have a future. I know we do. I want to marry you and have kids and be a stay-at-home writer dad while you take Boston journalism by storm. I want to wake up beside you every day for the rest of my life.”

Shannon Stacey (1972) american writer

Source: Exclusively Yours

Life, Home, Thinking, Future

“Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.”

Scott Westerfeld book Behemoth

Source: Behemoth

“To live every day as if it had been stolen from death, that is how I would like to live.”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

Death

“I try to make everyone's day a little more surreal.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

The Essential Calvin and Hobbes
Source: The Essential Calvin and Hobbes: A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury

“My life is a rather grim one. One day I shall perhaps describe it to you in great detail.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

Life

“Tatiana: "Why did we spend two days fighting when we could have been doing this?"
Alexander: "That wasn't fighting, Tatiana. That was foreplay.”

Paullina Simons book The Bronze Horseman

Source: The Bronze Horseman

Fight

“My goal is to write every day. I say it is my ideal. I am careful not to pass judgment or create anxiety if I do not do it. No one lives up to his ideal.”

Natalie Goldberg (1948) American writer

“I will please shut the hell up the day you please drop the hell dead”

Augusten Burroughs book Running with Scissors

Source: Running with Scissors

Hell, Dead

“As hard as it was, as terrible and unfair as the way things turned out, i wouldn't have traded the few days i spent with him for anything”

Nicholas Sparks book Nights in Rodanthe

Source: Nights in Rodanthe

Way

“Reading is awesome and flexible and fits around chores and earning money and building the future and whatever else I’m doing that day. My attitude towards reading is entirely Epicurean—reading is pleasure and I pursue it purely because I like it.”

Jo Walton (1964) Welsh Canadian writer

Money, Pleasure, Reading, Future

“Fool! You may hate me… But I… I haven't stopped thinking of you for a single day.”

Rumiko Takahashi (1957) manga artist

Source: InuYasha: Stolen Spirit

Hate, Fools, Thinking

“I wasn't there that day to get on the three forty-seven to Yass", he says. "I was there to throw myself in front of it.”

Melina Marchetta book On the Jellicoe Road

Source: On the Jellicoe Road

“I'm not insecure. I've been through way too much f**king sh*t to be insecure. I've got huge balls. But I've been humbled. That makes you grateful for every day you have.”

Drew Barrymore (1975) American actress, director and producer

Way

“maybe there is more to a person than a body and a mind. maybe something else figures into the mix— not a soul, exactly, but a spirit that hints you might one day be greater, stronger than you are now. a promise; a potential.”

Jodi Picoult book Keeping Faith

Source: Keeping Faith

Soul, Personality

“He laid into me with the same gusto as a right-wing political pundit on the O'Reilly Factor defending President's Bush right to vacation six days out of the week.”

Chelsea Handler book Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea

Are You There Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea (2008)
Source: Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea

“Soon man will count all his days, and then smaller segments of the day, and then smaller still—until the counting consumes him, and the wonder of the world he has been given is lost.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The Time Keeper

World

“Eggs," said Henry dreamily, looking at his plate. "I do love eggs. I could eat them all day.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Love

“Oh yeah, Scooby, it does. You and I have gone round many a day. I’m the reason you keep thinking you’ve had alien abductions. (Caleb)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infinity

Thinking

“If you want to be a writer, you have to write every day… You don't go to a well once but daily. You don't skip a child's breakfast or forget to wake up in the morning…”

Walter Mosley (1952) American writer

Forgetting

“A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.”

Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic

Life, Truth, Beauty, Search

“I welcome each new day with a hopeful expectancy that I, too, will rise above the ordinary. For I am not content to live a merely "normal" life or settle for an average existence. No, I am destined for more--much, much more.”

Melody Carlson (1956) American writer

Source: Finding Alice

Life, Hope

“On some days you get what you want, and on others, you get what you need.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Source: Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century

“This is not to say, there never comes a day I'll take my chances and start again. And when I look behind on all my younger times, I'll have to thank the wrongs that led me to a love so strong.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

Source: John Mayer - Battle Studies

Love, Strong, Chance, Time

“Every day I wonder how many things I am dead wrong about. -- True North”

Jim Harrison (1937–2016) American novelist, poet, essayist

Dead

“Every day is a lie. But you are dying. That is not a lie.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Source: The Road

Lie

“There was also a rumor that later in the day, she walked fully clothed into the Amper River and said something very strange.
Something about a kiss.
Something about a Saumensch.
How many times did she have to say goodbye?”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Kiss, Time, Clothes

“Who do you love?
It's a question anyone should be able to answer. A question that defines a life, creates a future, guides most minutes of one's days. Simple, elegant encompassing.
Who do you love?”

Lisa Gardner (1956) American author

Love, Life, Question, Future

“What did a happy ending even mean in real life, anyway? In stories you simply said, 'They lived happily ever after,' and that was it. But in real life people had to keep on living, day after day, year after year.”

Scott Westerfeld book Afterworlds

Source: Afterworlds

Life, Happiness, People

“I was in the shopping mall because that's where I go lately. For the last couple of weeks, I've been going there every day, trying to figure out why people go there. It's kind of a personal project.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

People, Personality

“To love is to enter into the inevitability of one day not being able to protect what is most valuable to you.”

Mohsin Hamid book Exit West

Source: Exit West

Love

“I thought I'd pay you a visit, my dear. Since you're so interesting."

My mouth shifted into high gear, leaving my brain behind. "You know, you're the second guy in a few days to call me that. You should be more creative.”

Lilith Saintcrow book Strange Angels

Source: Strange Angels

Guy

“most days go
nowhere
but the avoidance
of pain and
dissolution are
lovely.”

Charles Bukowski book Betting on the Muse: Poems and Stories

Source: Betting on the Muse: Poems and Stories

Love, Pain

“Lord, how the day passes! It's like a life - so quickly when we don't watch it and so slowly when we do.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

Life

“These days, most of the people you hear laughing are dead.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby

People, Dead

“She was disappearing a little more each day, so thin, so frail, a wisp of smoke. One day she would surely vanish altogether, and there was no way to stop her.”

Alice Hoffman (1952) Novelist, young-adult writer, children's writer

Source: Green Heart

Way

“I told you, Ms. Lane, never believe anything is dead-"
"- I know, I know, until you've 'burned it, poked around in its ashes, and then waited a day or two to see if anything rises from them.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Variant: Don't celebrate yet, Ms. Lane. Don't believe anything is dead until you've burned it, poked around in its ashes, and then waited a day or two to see if anything rises from them.
Source: Bloodfever

Waiting, Dead

“Lazarevo drips you into my soul, dawn drop by moonlight drop from the river Kama. When you look for me, look for me there, because that's where I'll be all the days of my life.”

Paullina Simons (1963) Russian writer

Life, Soul

“There was always a quest for more minutes, more hours, faster progress to accomplish more in each day. The simple joy of living between summers was gone.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The Time Keeper

Joy, Summer

“Children don’t know the meaning of yesterday, of the day before yesterday, or even of tomorrow, everything is this, now: the street is this, the doorway is this, the stairs are this, this is Mamma, this is Papa, this is the day, this the night.”

Elena Ferrante book My Brilliant Friend

Source: My Brilliant Friend

Children, Night

“There comes a day when, for someone who has persecuted us, we feel only indifference, a weariness at his stupidity. Then we forgive him.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)
Source: Il mestiere di vivere: Diario 1935-1950

Stupidity, Feeling, Forgiveness, Indifference

“It is youth’s felicity as well as its insufficiency that it can never live in the present, but must always be measuring up the day against its own radiantly imagined future”

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

Source: The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, and Other Stories

Youth, Imagination, Future

“She's like a prisoner inside stone walls, and every day the walls get a little thicker, the doorways a little narrower."
"And?" Eddis prompted.
"Well," said Eugenides, "it's a challenge.”

Megan Whalen Turner The Queen of Attolia

Source: The Queen of Attolia

“When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 12, “Puzzle Pieces Fitting” (p. 88)

Children, Thinking, Future, Childhood

“[Stephanie Plum]Jeez. No True Love"
[Grandma Mazur] There's always been true love, but in my day, you either talked yourself into thinking you had it, or you talked yourself into thinking you didn't need it.”

Janet Evanovich (1943) Novelist

Source: Explosive Eighteen

Love, Thinking, Grandma

“Step by step
Moment by moment
We live through
Another day”

Anne McCaffrey book Dragon Harper

Source: Dragon Harper

“i usedta live in the world
really be in the world
free & sweet talkin
good mornin & thank-you & nice day
uh huh
i cant now
i cant be nice to nobody
nice is such a rip-off
regular beauty & a smile in the street
is just a set-up”

Ntozake Shange for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf

Source: for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf

World, Smile, Beauty

“Plan your work for today and every day, then work your plan”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

“I want him to burn for me, to not be able to go a day without touching me, holding me, caressing me. He’ll be an excellent lover. I want a man who knows how to please me”

Maya Banks (1964) Author

Source: The Tycoon's Rebel Bride

Lovers

“The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, I Have A Dream (1963)
Source: I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World
Context: The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

Justice

“He wanders, like a day-appearing dream,
Through the dim wildernesses of the mind; Through desert woods and tracts, which seem Like ocean, homeless, boundless, unconfined.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Dreams, Appearance

“So many words get lost. They leave the mouthand lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days you can hear their chorus rushing past.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Courage, Past, Dead

“It wasn't my day. My week. My month. My year. My life. God damn it.”

Charles Bukowski book Pulp

Variant: It wasn’t my day. My week. My month. My year. My life. God damn it.
Source: Pulp

Life, God

“One day all of this will be proof, proof that we were here, proof that we loved each other. It’s the guarantee that no matter what happens to us in the future, this time was ours. When”

Jenny Han book Always and Forever, Lara Jean

Source: Always and Forever, Lara Jean

Love, Time, Future

“I am a person who is unhappy with things as they stand. We cannot accept the world as it is. Each day we should wake up foaming at the mouth because of the injustice of things.”

Hugo Claus (1929–2008) Belgian author

World, Personality

“It was a spring day, the sort that gives people hope: all soft winds and delicate smells of warm earth. Suicide weather.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Girl, Interrupted (1994)

People, Hope, Spring, Suicide

“Two weeks to change the world, fourteen days to destroy it.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

World, Change

“On some of my darkest days, Lucifer's the one who comes and gives me an ice cream.”

Tori Amos (1963) American singer

“I love being a wizard. Every day is like Disneyland.”

Jim Butcher Turn Coat

Source: Turn Coat

Love

“The human being, whether he realises it or not, is trusting someone or something every moment of the day.”

Idries Shah (1924–1996) writer and Sufi teacher

Source: Sufi Thought and Action

“It isn’t about looks; gorgeous women get dumped every day.”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl—A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship

Women

“Every day you play with the light of the universe.”

Pablo Neruda book Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Source: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Light, Universe

“They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for ones country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. Sweet and glorious it is to die for our country. ~ Horace in Odes, Book 3, Ode 2, Line 13, as translated in The Works of Horace by J. C. Elgood
Notes on the Next War (1935)

War, Dogs, Country