Quotes about difference
page 19

“Phillip is the Paul McCartney of our family: better-looking than the rest of us, always facing a different direction in pictures, and occasionally rumored to be dead.”

Jonathan Tropper (1970) American writer

Source: This is Where I Leave You

Family, Dead

“And as he held his first true lover against him, feeling that familiar difference in their heights and smelling that wonderful cologne, part of him wanted to debate this break up until they both gave in and kept trying.
But that wasn’t fair.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover at Last

Feeling, Lovers, Parting

“Women were different, no doubt about it. Men broke so much more quickly. Grief didn't break women. Instead it wore them down, it hollowed them out very slowly.”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkdeath

Women, Men

“When we went into the ocean, I watched his body as he dove into the waves, and it gave me a feeling in my stomach that wasn't an ache but something different.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Feeling

“The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”

Jon Krakauer (1954) American outdoors writer and journalist

Life, Change, Sun, Joy

“Things aren't different. Things are things.”

William Gibson book Neuromancer

Source: Neuromancer

“Be different.”

Craig Groeschel (1967) American priest

Weird: Because Normal Isn't Working

“I think there are two different oceans - the one that plays with you in the summer, and the one that gets so mad in the winter.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Thinking, Winter, Summer, Madness

“What I learned

The well-documented difference
Between alone and lonely
The comfort of knowing”

David Levithan The Realm of Possibility

Source: The Realm of Possibility

Learning

“Music is the great uniter. An incredible force. Something that people who differ on everything and anything else can have in common.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

People, Music

“Maybe there were a hundred different ways to fall in love.”

Mary E. Pearson book The Kiss of Deception

Source: The Kiss of Deception

Love, Way

“A womans mistakes are different from a girls”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Girl

“Sometimes I remind myself that I almost skipped the party, that I almost went to a different college, that the whim of a minute could have changed everything and everyone. Our lives, so settled, so specific, are built on happenstance.”

Anna Quindlen (1952) journalist, Novelist

Source: Every Last One

Change

“Don't you long for something different to happen, something so exciting and new it carries you along with it like a great tide, something that lets your life blaze and burn so the whole world can see it?”

Juliet Marillier book Son of the Shadows

Source: Son of the Shadows

Life, World

“You can't ever guess at life, at pain. All pain is real, and all pain is personal. It's the most personal thing we have. It eats each of us differently.”

Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher

Source: You Shall Know Our Velocity!

Life, Pain, Personality

“To be alone is to be different, to be different is to be alone.”

Suzanne Gordon (1945) American journalist

“Hunger of the body is altogether different from the shallow, daily hunger of the belly. Those who have known this kind of hunger cannot entirely love, ever again, those who have not.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

Love, Hunger

“I return to problems i can't solve, not because i am an idiot, but because the real problems can't be solved. The universe is expanding. The more we see, the more we discover there is to see. Always a new beginning, a different end.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

Problem, Universe

“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Thinking, Personality

“Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infamous

Life, Pain

“So what's the plan?” Ben asked.

“Go inside. Look around. Improvise.”

“Brilliant." Hi stroked his chin. “Quick question: Is having no plan the same as having a terrible plan, or are those different categories?”

Kathy Reichs book Exposure

Source: Exposure

Question

“You didn't fail. You just opted out. There's a difference.”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

“If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Study, Past

“Now… well, after what happened in Tartarus, it seemed like Percy had graduated to a totally different level of butt-kickery.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

“Besides, the normal people here wouldn’t see it. That was what “different” meant. It’s just another word for lonely.”

Lilith Saintcrow (1976) American writer

Source: Jealousy

People

“Equality is treating everyone the same. But equity is taking differences into account, so everyone has a chance to succeed.”

Jodi Picoult book Small Great Things

Source: Small Great Things

Chance

“when you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.”

A.A. Milne book Winnie-the-Pooh

Source: The House at Pooh Corner (1928), Chapter Six - "In which Pooh invents a new game and Eeyore joins in".
Source: Winnie-the-Pooh

People, Thinking

“Every relationship is different. Everyone loves differently.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

Love

“Siobhan says that if you raise one eyebrow it can means lots of different things. It can mean 'I want to do sex with you' and it can also mean 'I think what you just said was very stupid.”

Mark Haddon book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Source: El curioso incidente del perro a medianoche

Stupidity, Sex, Thinking

“he might die for her, but living for her would be quite different.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

“In India we celebrate the commonality of major differences; we are a land of belonging rather than of blood.”

Shashi Tharoor (1956) Indian politician, diplomat, author

"The Shashi Tharoor column: The creation of India," 2001

“Music sounds different to the one who plays it. It is the musician's curse.”

Patrick Rothfuss (1973) American fantasy writer

Music

“How different our lives are when we really know what is deeply important to us, and keeping that picture in mind, we manage ourselves each day to be and to do what really matters most.”

Stephen R. Covey (1932–2012) American educator, author, businessman and motivational speaker

“Beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: Killing Rage: Ending Racism

World, Communication

“The weapons an author has at her disposal are flawed. There are words that feel shapeless and overused. Love, for example. I could write the word love a thousand times and it would mean a thousand different things to different readers.”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

Love, Feeling, Time

“Let's face it: a date is a job-interview, that lasts all night. The only difference between a date and a job interview is: not many job-interviews is there a chance you'll end up naked at the end of it.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

I'm Telling You for the Last Time (1998)
Context: What is a date, really, but a job interview that lasts all night? The only difference is there aren't many job interviews where there's a chance you'll end up naked at the end of it. "Well, Bill, the boss thinks you're the right man for the job; why don't you strip down and meet some of the people you'll be working with?"

Chance, Night

“Men who believe that they are accomplishing something by speaking speak in a different way from men who believe that speaking is a waste of time.”

Neal Stephenson book Cryptonomicon

Source: Cryptonomicon

Men, Way, Time

“Difference in opinions has cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine.”

Jonathan Swift book Les Voyages de Gulliver

Source: Gulliver's Travels

Wine

“When first love ends, most people eventually know there will be more to come. They are not through with love. Love is not through with them. It will never be the same as the first, but it will be better in different ways.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Love, People, Way

“Ian shrugged like he didn't care, though his reddened face indicated differently.
- 'Tis always the same. Either they're no' interested because they think I'm a child, or they are interested because they think I'm a child, which is even worse.”

Kerrelyn Sparks (1955) American writer

Thinking

“Humankind differs from the animals only by a little and most people throw that away.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

People, Animals

“A tiny change today brings a dramatically different tomorrow.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: One

Change

“I know what every colored woman in this country is doing.... Dying. Just like me. But the difference is they dying like a stump. Me, I'm going down like one of those redwoods. I sure did live in this world.”

Toni Morrison book Sula

Sula (1973)

World, Color, Country

“His books are kept on freestanding shelves hung at different angles on a sea-green wall. They defy gravity, as good books should.”

David Levithan Boy Meets Boy

Source: Boy Meets Boy

Books, Sea

“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

“I mean she's Cleopatra… shouldn't she and Antony have known better? They were so different…"
"Variety is the spice of life"
"And from a thousand miles apart"
"Absence makes the heart grow fonder”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Uncommon Criminals

Life, Heart

“Knowing and feeling are two different things, and feeling is what counts.”

François Lelord book Hector and the Search for Happiness

Source: Hector and the Search for Happiness

Feeling

“Two separate beings, in different circumstances, face to face in freedom and seeking justification of their existence through one another, will always live an adventure full of risk and promise." (p. 248)”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Second Sex

Source: The Second Sex

Freedom

“That's the difference between girls and women: Girls find men fascinating. Women know better.”

Candace Bushnell book One Fifth Avenue

Source: One Fifth Avenue

Women, Men, Girl

“I think we look for the differences in people because it makes us less lonely.”

Carson McCullers (1917–1967) American writer

People, Thinking

“Day followed day, each one a little different from the one before… but the little house stayed just the same.”

Virginia Lee Burton book The Little House

Source: The Little House

Housing

“If faces were different when lit from above or below -- what was a face? What was anything?”

William Golding book Lord of the Flies

Source: Lord of the Flies

“I shook my tambourine the whole time, because it helped me remember that even though I was going through different neighborhoods, I was still me.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Time, Help

“You know what the difference is between a dream and a goal?… A plan.”

Jodi Picoult book Lone Wolf

Source: Lone Wolf

Dreams

“Men and boys always want to go fight. They are always looking for a reason to go to war. It is the saddest thing. They have this abiding notion that war is fun. And no history lesson will convince them differently.”

Kate DiCamillo book Because of Winn-Dixie

Source: Because of Winn-Dixie

Men, War, History, Boy

“The thing about changing the world… Once you do it, the world's all different.”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film

Source: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Long Way Home

World, Change

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.”

T.S. Eliot book The Sacred Wood

Source: "Philip Massinger", a biographical essay in The Sacred Wood (1920)

“He wants to be grown-up. How different dreams can be! Nature will soon grant your wish.”

Cornelia Funke book The Thief Lord

Source: The Thief Lord

Dreams, Nature

“It's of no use to look back and say, "I should have been different." At any given moment, we are the way we are, and we see what we're able to see. For that reason, guilt is always inappropriate.”

Charlotte Joko Beck (1917–2011) US American Zen Teacher

Source: Nothing Special

Way

“What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real or not?”

Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American writer

Song of Solomon (1977)

“Why is any one book different from any other book? They are different, A. J. decides, because they are. We have to look inside many. We have to believe. We agree to be disappointed sometimes so that we can be exhilarated every now and again.”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Source: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

Books, Disappointment

“The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it much.”

Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-British writer

Source: Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer

“Mom loved my brother more. Not that she didn't love me - I felt the wash of her love every day, pouring over me, but it was a different kind, siphoned from a different, and tamer, body of water. I was her darling daughter; Joseph was her it.”

Aimee Bender (1969) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Love, Moms, Water, Daughters

“We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.”

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

“God leads us. God will do the right thing at the right time. And what a difference that makes.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Source: Traveling Light: Releasing the Burdens You Were Never Intended to Bear

God, Time

“The whole thing of what I’ve been trying,” you said, “is that you’re different, and you keep asking about the other girls, but what I mean is that I don’t think about them, because of the way you are.”

Daniel Handler book Why We Broke Up

Source: Why We Broke Up

Way, Girl, Thinking

“But whatever you do, find the God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated passion of your life, and find your way to say it and live for it and die for it. And you will make a difference that lasts. You will not waste your life.”

John Piper (1946) American writer

Source: Don't Waste Your Life

Life, God, Way, Passion

“And the very act of living is a tide; at first it seems to make no difference at all, and then one day you look down and see how much pain has eroded”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Pain

“Everything looks different when you're older, not staring up at the world but down upon it.”

Sarah Dessen book That Summer

Source: That Summer

World

“So, what, you got cigarette burns, too?" Gitanes said.

Chip showed his palm, "It's nothing."

"Self-inflicted. You pathetic American."

"Different kind of prison" Chip said.”

Jonathan Franzen book The Corrections

Source: The Corrections

“Chosen motherhood is the real liberation. The choice to have a child makes the whole experience of motherhood different, and the choice to be generative in other ways can at last be made, and is being made by many women now, without guilt.”

Betty Friedan book The Feminine Mystique

Source: The Feminine Mystique

Women, Way

“It's because I'm alone.. If I could just feel it, it would be different, because I would not be alone. But if I were not alone, everybody would know it. And he could do so much for me, and then I would not be alone. Then I could be all right alone.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying

Feeling

“He sighed. "I don't think an apology will do, Mercy. Because an apology implies that you wouldn't do it again. And, under the circumstances, you wouldn't do anything differently, would you?

"No.”

Patricia Briggs (1965) American writer

Thinking

“A live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles. Structurally, there's no discernible difference. Life and death are unquantifiable abstracts. Why should I be concerned?”

Alan Moore book Watchmen

Source: Watchmen

Life, Death, Dead

“Regrets are about decisions that you know you should have done different.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Bullet

Source: Bullet

Decision

“Nights without beginning that had no end. Talking about a past as if it'd really happened. Telling themselves that this time next year, this time next year, things were going to be different.”

Raymond Carver (1938–1988) American short story author and poet

Time, Past, Night

“This thing about looking for someone less different… It only really worked, he realized, if you were convinced that being you wasn't so bad in the first place.”

Nick Hornby About a Boy

Source: About a Boy

“It may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

History, Universe

“The world is full of people who think different is synonymous with wrong.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Two Boys Kissing

People, World, Thinking

“Does she stay because she loves him as meat loves salt? Or does she stay because he has now promised her the kingdom? It is hard for her to tell the difference.”

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Source: We Were Liars

Love

“The purpose of life is not to be happy—but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you lived at all.”

Leo Rosten (1908–1997) American writer

"The Myths by Which We Live", in The Rotarian, Vol. 107, No. 3 (September 1965), p. 55
Variant: The purpose of life is not to be happy at all. It is to be useful, to be honorable. It is to be compassionate. It is to matter, to have it make some difference that you lived.

Life, Happiness

“Without community, there is no liberation… but community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

Communication

“Sometimes it's the tiniest things that can mean the difference between life and death.”

Anthony Horowitz book Ark Angel

Source: Ark Angel

Life, Death

“I really look at my childhood as being one giant rusty tuna can that I continue to recycle in many different shapes.”

Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer

Childhood

“This Snow Crash thing--is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?”

Juanita shrugs. “What's the difference?”

Neal Stephenson book Snow Crash

Source: Snow Crash

Religion

“Ninety percent of the children’s books patronize the child and say there’s a difference between you and me, so you listen to this story. I, for some reason or another, don’t do that. I treat the child as an equal.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Children, Books

“Small changes can make huge destination differences.”

Sean Covey (1964) author; business executive

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens: The Ultimate Teenage Success Guide

Change

“Karrin, eh?" Thomas asked.

I nodded. "She's real serious about order. A man dying, she can understand. A man coming back. That's different."

"Isn't she Catholic?" Thomas asked. "Don't they have a guy?”

Jim Butcher book Cold Days

Source: Cold Days

Guy, Understanding

“We all live in our own world. But if you look up at the starry sky - you'll see that all the different worlds up there combine to form constellations, solar systems, galaxies.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

World

“My mother says men are different from us. She says we want to be in love, but only with the one we want; a man needs to be in love, but he will love the first woman to tie a string to his heart. - Egwene, speaking to Elayne”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Love, Men, Heart

“We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.”

Sean Covey (1964) author; business executive

Pain, Suffering

“I am not exuding anything," said Holly through gritted teeth.

Orion tapped her shoulder. "I beg to differ. You're exuding right now, a wonderful aura. It's pastel blue with little dolphins.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Atlantis Complex

“You give her all your french fries, even when she won't give you back onion rings,' Sophie says. 'And when you say her name it sounds different.'

How?'

Sophie thinks. 'Like it's covered with blankets.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Vanishing Acts

Thinking

“I have wandered all my life, and I have also traveled; the difference between the two being this, that we wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

As quoted in Lifetime Speaker's Encyclopedia (1962) edited by Jacob Morton Braude, p. 829
As quoted in Traveling for Her: An Inspirational Guide (2008) by Amber Israelsen, p. 2
Variant: I have wandered all my life, and I have traveled; the difference between the two is this — we wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.

Life, Travel

“CHOOSING WELL IS DIFFICULT, AND MOST DECISIONS HAVE SEVERAL different dimensions.”

Barry Schwartz (1946) American psychologist

The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

Decision

“There are many different ways to be poor in the world but increasingly there seems to be one single way to be rich.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie book Americanah

Source: https://sheleadsafrica.org/20-powerful-chimamanda-adichie-quotes-for-todays-boss-women/

World, Way

“I never consider a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

As quoted in The Life and Writings of Thomas Jefferson : Including All of His Important Utterances on Public Questions (1900) by Samuel E. Forman, p. 429
Posthumous publications

Religion

“But there's an enormous difference between an audience that's watching you because they can't wait to see what comes next and an audience that's watching you because they're waiting for you to fail.”

Jodi Picoult book Sing You Home

Source: Sing You Home

Waiting