Quotes about doing
page 99

“Why do I fall in love with every woman I see that shows me the least bit of attention?”

Charlie Kaufman (1958) American screenwriter

Source: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: The Shooting Script

“Sometimes no length of string is long enough to say the thing that needs to be said. In such cases all the string can do, in whatever its form, is conduct a person's silence.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Silence, Personality

“I cry to you, my Lord, my rock! Do not be deaf to me, for if you are silent, I shall go down to the pit like the rest. Hear my voice raised in petition as I cry to you for help, as I raise my hands, my Lord, toward your holy of holies.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Source: A Walk to Remember

Help, Cry

“My mother moves so fast I do not even see it coming. But she slaps my face hard enough to make my head snap backward. She leaves a print that stains me long after it’s faded. Just so you know: shame is five-fingered.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

“Sometimes it is better not to know. Sometimes when you do know you just fold up.”

Robin McKinley book Sunshine

Source: Sunshine

“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

“Freedom isn't just about voting and marrying and kissing on the street, although all of these things are important. Freedom is also about what you will allow yourself to do.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Two Boys Kissing

Kiss, Freedom

“The greatest cause in the world is joyfully rescuing people from hell, meeting their earthly needs, making them glad in God, and doing it with a kind, serious pleasure that makes Christ look like the Treasure he is.”

John Piper (1946) American writer

Source: Don't Waste Your Life

God, People, Pleasure, World

“Teacher: What do you want to be when you grow up?
Marji: I'll be a prophet.”

Marjane Satrapi (1969) Artist

Teachers

“But hardly anybody ever finds out that their actions really, actually, hurt other people! People don’t get better, they just get smarter. When you get smarter you don’t stop pulling the wings off flies, you just think of better reasons for doing it.”

Stephen King book Carrie

Source: Carrie

People, Thinking, Hurt

“Scenes of blood and cruelty are shocking to our ear and heart. What man has nerve to do, man has not nerve to hear.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe book Uncle Tom's Cabin

Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin

Heart

“Now what state do you live in?'
'Denial.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

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

“What makes people so impatient is what I can't figure; all the guy had to do was wait.”

Ken Kesey book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

People, Guy, Waiting

“the rest of the girls pretended not to notice. That's just what best friends do.”

Sara Shepard Pretty Little Liars

Source: Pretty Little Liars

Girl

“I lost you once, I think I can do it again.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

Thinking

“She surprised him by agreeing. "Yes, I was simply curious, and no, I would never criticize you in front of your followers. Do you have the patience to endure one more question, husband?"

"What is it?"

"When do you suppose you'll leave me behind?”

Julie Garwood (1946) American writer

Source: The Wedding

Question, Patience

“I imagine you come across a number of people who are disconcerted by the difference between what you do feel and what they fancy you ought to feel. It is fatal to pay the smallest attention to them.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book Gaudy Night

Source: Gaudy Night

People, Feeling, Imagination

“Mrs. Jennings was a widow, with an ample jointure. She had only two daughters, both of whom she had lived to see respectably married, and she had now therefore nothing to do but to marry all the rest of the world.”

Jane Austen book Sense and Sensibility

Source: Sense and Sensibility

World, Daughters

“Resolved, always to do that, which I shall wish I had done when I see others do it.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

No. 69.
Seventy Resolutions (1722-1723)

“Nico was wrong. The Book of Fate isn't already written. It's written every day.

Some scars never heal.
Then again, some do.”

Brad Meltzer (1970) writer

Fate, Books

“You think you want to know something, and then once you do, all you can think about is erasing it from your mind.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Thinking

“I don't know how much longer I can keep going without a friend. I used to be able to do it very easily, but that was before I knew what having a friend was like.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“In our relationships, how much can we allow them to become new, and how much do we cling to what they used to be yesterday?”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

“Men all do about the same thing when they wake up.”

John Steinbeck book Cannery Row

Source: Cannery Row

Men

“Men honor what lies within the sphere of their knowledge, but do not realize how dependent they are on what lies beyond it.”

Zhuangzi (-369–-286 BC) classic Chinese philosopher

Men, Knowledge, Dependency

“do it from the heart or not at all.”

Jeanette Winterson book The Passion

Source: The Passion

Heart

“Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Lectures on Philosophy

Feeling, Understanding, Personality

“So?" Bob said. "Hat up, go kill her. Problem solved."
"Bob," I said. "You can't just go around killing people."
"I know. That's why you should do it."
"No, no. I can't go around killing people, either.”

Jim Butcher book Grave Peril

Source: Grave Peril

People, Problem

“The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret… but you wont find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled.”

Christopher Priest book The Prestige

Source: The Prestige

Secret, Fools

“I was very grateful to have heard it again. Because I guess we all forget sometimes. And I think everyone is special in their own way. I really do.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Way, Thinking, Forgetting

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and with that one, is what we are doing.”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

Source: The Writing Life

“If a man knows precisely what he can do to you or what epithet he can hurl against you in order to make you lose your temper, your equilibrium, then he can always keep you under subjection.”

Howard Thurman book Jesus and the Disinherited

Source: Jesus and the Disinherited

“Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

For Team, People, Thinking, Time

“… how do you run and play when you feel like there are bricks of the heaviest sadness weighing down every part of your body? How do you laugh and talk when there are no laughs left inside of you?”

Katherine Hannigan (1962) American artist and novelist

Source: Ida B. . . and Her Plans to Maximize Fun, Avoid Disaster, and (Possibly) Save the World

Sadness, Feeling, Parting

“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

“As far as I can tell, dumping soda on people is the equivalent of ‘Hi, it’s nice to meet you’ in this part of the world. Frankly, I think standard greetings work better, but what do I know?”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

People, World, Thinking, Parting

“When you were the son of evil, there was little you couldn't do, own, or kill, and yet her mortal self was an elusive trophy he could touch, but not put on his shelf.

This made her rare. This made her precious.

This made him… love her.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Mine

Love, Evil

“I'm all about doing the impossible.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

“I never drink water because of the disgusting things that fish do in it.”

W.C. Fields (1880–1946) actor

Drink, Fish, Water

“… It's hard to make changes. Things get so comfortable and you don't want to move. Maybe it would do you good to be a little uncomfortable for a while, and do something different…”

Danielle Steel book Legacy

Source: Legacy

Change

“Oh God. Why, oh why, did I have to be the one to deliver this news? Why couldn’t I be locked away in my room or the library doing something enjoyable, like homework?”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

God

“The great courageous act that we must all do, is to have the courage to step out of our history and past so that we can live our dreams.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Moving On, Dreams, History, Courage

“Though liberals do a great deal of talking about hearing other points of view, it sometimes shocks them to learn that there are other points of view.”

William F. Buckley Jr. (1925–2008) American conservative author and commentator

Up from Liberalism (1959); also quoted in The American Dissent : A Decade of Modern Conservatism (1966) by Jeffrey Peter Hart, p. 171 Variants: Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views. As quoted in The Nastiest Things Ever Said about Democrats (2006) by Martin Higgins, p. 93 Liberals do a great deal of talking about hearing other points of view, but it sometimes shocks them to learn that there are other points of view. As quoted in his obituary in The TImes (28 February 2008) http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article3447250.ece.

Learning

“How rarely do our emotions meet the object they seem to deserve? How hopelessly we signal; how dark the sky; how big the waves. We are all lost at sea, washed between hope and despair, hailing something that may never come to rescue us.”

Julian Barnes (1946) English writer

Hope, Sea, Despair

“But you’re everything I want. Remember that. I love you, Lia. Not a title. And not because a piece of paper says I should. Because I do.”

Mary E. Pearson (1955) young-adult fiction writer

Source: The Heart of Betrayal

Love

“The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.”

Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) British journalist, businessman, and essayist

Life, People, Pleasure, Funny

“Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Suffering

“Don't lie about it. You made a mistake. Admit it and move on. Just don't do it again. Ever”

Anthony Bourdain book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Source: Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Lie

“Ah," said the jailer, "do not always brood over what is impossible, or you will be mad in a fortnight.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Madness

“If we do something over and over, it becomes normal. If we see the same thing over and over, it becomes normal.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie We Should All Be Feminists

Source: We Should All Be Feminists

“I just do the best I can under the circumstances.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

“Whoa!" she says as I plow into her. " What are you DOING? Get off me!" I hang on tight. "Can't a girl just hug her big sister?" She stops fighting me. "Are you dying? Am I dying? Did Grandma die? I laugh. "No one died." "Then get off!”

Wendy Mass (1967) American children's writer

Source: 11 Birthdays

Girl, Sister, Grandma, Fight

“I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.”

William James book The Varieties of Religious Experience

Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
Source: 1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
Context: I am well aware of how anarchic much of what I say may sound. Expressing myself thus abstractly and briefly, I may seem to despair of the very notion of truth. But I beseech you to reserve your judgment until we see it applied to the details which lie before us. I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those with which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a perverse delight in intellectual instability. I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.

Truth, Fear, Lovers

“The world is full of good people who do bad things!”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

People, World

“bad things, like good things don't happen any more often than they ought to by chance. the universe has no mind, no feelings, and no personality, so it doesn't do things in order to either hurt or please you. bad things happen because things happen.”

Richard Dawkins book The Magic of Reality

Source: The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True

Feeling, Universe, Chance, Hurt

“The strange thing was, he wanted to like everyone. He just couldn't find a way to do it.”

David Guterson book Snow Falling on Cedars

Source: Snow Falling on Cedars

Way

“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

“It is a curious truth that many cats enjoy warmer, more convivial, even affectionate relationships with humans than they could ever do with fellow felines.”

Bruce Fogle (1944) veterinarian and author

Truth, Cats

“Everything that I decide to do means something, otherwise I don't do them.”

Céline Dion (1968) Canadian singer

“There’s always a choice. That’s God’s way, always will be. Your will is still free. Do as you will. There’s no set of leg-irons on you. But… this is what God wants of you.”

Stephen King book The Stand

Source: The Stand

God, Way

“And I don't care what anybody says; I like doing it, and it's what I shall continue to do”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

“I scared myself, because once you've thought long and hard enough about doing something that is colossally stupid, you feel like you've actually done it, and then you're never quite sure what your limits are.”

Laurie Halse Anderson (1961) American children's writer

Source: Twisted

Stupidity, Feeling

“Oh Alexander," she said, "what do you want from me…"
"Everything!" he whispered fiercely.”

Paullina Simons book The Bronze Horseman

Source: The Bronze Horseman

“Do you love me?" he asked.
I fell silent.
"For the rest of it is glitter and noise," he said. "At the heart of it all is love. You make that choice, and you go forward from there.”

Sharon Shinn (1957) American science fiction writer

Source: Summers at Castle Auburn

Love, Heart

“What… what are you doing?"
"I won't know," he said with a grin. He took a step towards me. "But I'm pretty sure you were doing it too.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

“[T]he Christian is unable to sin and not care… They may sin, but they cannot do so comfortably and continually. They are very much aware of their wrong actions, and they are very miserable.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Source: Living Beyond Your Feelings: Controlling Emotions So They Don't Control You

“The mistakes don't matter. It's what you do when you mess up that does.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Early to Death, Early to Rise

“And what will you do now? You'll collect loves
Like stamps. You've got doubles and no one
Will trade you and you have the damaged ones.”

Yehuda Amichai (1924–2000) Israeli poet

Love

“My gran had always told me that a woman--any woman worth her salt--could do whatever she had to.”

Charlaine Harris book Dead to the World

Source: Dead to the World

“Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Dreams

“Let them go, I tell myself. Say good-bye and forget them. I do my best, thinking of them one by one, releasing them like birds from the protective cages inside me, locking the doors against their return.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Katniss, p. 189
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire (2009)

Bird, Thinking, Forgetting

“I do like men who come out frankly and own that they are not gods.”

Louisa May Alcott book Jo's Boys

Source: Jo's Boys

Men, God

“BE QUIET!!… What do you want…? I was in the middle of saying something nice…”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

Source: Bleach, Volume 01

“Nothing in the world is quite as adorably lovely as a robin when he shows off and they are nearly always doing it.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden

Source: The Secret Garden

Love, World

“Incredible cosmic powers do not equate with high IQ.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: Steelheart

“I don't know yet what I am capable of doing, but, by God, I have genius -- I know it too well to blush behind it.”

Thomas Wolfe (1900–1938) American writer

God

“You need Power,
only when you want
to do something harmful
otherwise
Love is enough to get everything done.”

Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British comic actor and filmmaker

Love

“Jules: Why are you on the floor?
Emma: I've heard roling out of bed in the morning helps you build up resistance to surprise attacks.
Jules: Oh yeah? What does screaming "holy crap!" do?
Emma: That part's optional.”

Cassandra Clare book Lord of Shadows

Source: Lord of Shadows

Help, Parting

“If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent. The delinquent is saying with his actions, "This sucks. I'm going to do my own thing.”

Yvon Chouinard (1938) American mountain climber

Source: Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman

Understanding, Study

“The idea of a good society is something you do not need a religion and eternal punishment to buttress; you need a religion if you are terrified of death.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Death, Religion, Idea

“ONE THING I AM NEVER GOING TO DO WHEN I GROW UP
Is fall in love, drop out of college, learn to subsist on water and air, have a species named after me, and ruin my life.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Love, Life, Learning, Water

“Because things can get better, and if you give them a chance, they usually do.”

Stephen King book The Suicide Prince

Source: End of Watch

Chance

“But let us not put our sights too high. We do not have to be saviours of the world! We are simply human beings, enfolded in weakness and in hope, called together to change our world one heart at a time. (163)”

Jean Vanier (1928–2019) Canadian humanitarian

Source: Becoming Human

World, Hope, Change, Time

“Do I know what people say? Sure. I shrug it off. what else can you do? Stop people from talking? You might as well try to stop the wind from blowing.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

People

“It is so easy to think that the world revolves around you, but all you have to do is stare up at the sky to realize it isn't that way at all.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

World, Way, Thinking

“Those who really love you don't mean to hurt you and if they do, you can't see it in their eyes but it hurts them too.”

Holly Black (1971) American children's fiction writer

Love, Hurt

“I could buy that she would murder me in a fit of rage, poison me out of flaming jealousy, or bomb my car out of sheer, stubborn pique. But she would never do it and feel nothing.”

Jim Butcher book Summer Knight

Source: Summer Knight

Jealousy, Cars, Feeling, Rage

“I wonder what ants do on rainy days?”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

“Remember, when you don’t know what to do, it never hurts to play Scrabble. It’s like reading the I Ching or tea leaves.”

Kelly Link (1969) American writer

Reading, Tea, Hurt

“I believe in movement. I believe in that lighthearted balloon, the world. I believe in midnight and the hour of noon. But what else do I believe in? Sometimes everything. Sometimes nothing. It fluctuates like light flitting over a pond.”

Patti Smith M Train

Source: M Train

World, Light

“Healthy striving is about striving for internal goals, and wanting to be our best selves. Perfectionism is not motivated internally. Perfectionism is about what people will think. And you do not see effective leaders in corporations sitting on an email for three hours to make sure it’s worded just perfectly. You don’t. They have work to get done.. You don’t see elite athletes letting themselves be discouraged by a bad workout or a single bad performance. It happens all the time. They’re accustomed to winning, they’re accustomed to losing. Once perfectionism becomes the goal, they’re out of the sport.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Washington Post, October 2012 http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/exhaustion-is-not-a-status-symbol/2012/10/02/19d27aa8-0cba-11e2-bb5e-492c0d30bff6_story_2.html Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

People, Motivation, Thinking, Sport

“I dream. Sometimes I think that’s the only right thing to do. To dream, to live in the world of dreams. But it doesn’t last forever. Wakefulness always comes to take me back.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

World, Dreams, Thinking