Quotes about everything
page 26

“You remind me of everything that followed.”

Jhumpa Lahiri book The Namesake

Source: The Namesake

“Leaving was easy. It was everything else that was so damned hard.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

“In a relationship the details are everything because they remind you - just when you need to be reminded the most - why you fell in love with someone in the first place.”

Mike Gayle (1970) British author

Source: His 'N' Hers

Love

“Know that you will eventually have to leave everything behind; the writing will demand it of you.”

Natalie Goldberg (1948) American writer

“Death isn't peaceful; it is just nothing. Everything is gone. No more sunrises, no more hopes, no more fears. Nothing.”

Linda Howard (1950) American writer

Source: Kill and Tell

Death, Fear, Peace, Hope

“As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurian. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.”

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

Letter to William Short (31 October 1819)
1810s
Source: Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“Sometimes now was enough.
Sometimes it was everything.”

Mary Balogh (1944) Welsh-Canadian novelist

Source: Simply Perfect

“Crying is right at hand in the smothering dark, closed inside someone else, when you see how everything you can ever accomplish will end up as trash.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

Cry

“The question then is, how much are you willing to give?"
And I answered, "Anything."
A breath later, Zane echoed my response with, "Everything.”

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes Hawksong

Source: Hawksong

Question

“Isn't it amazing how, when you strip away everything, people are so much alike?”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

People

“I guess it's true what they say: if you wait long enough everything changes.”

Junot Díaz book This Is How You Lose Her

Source: This Is How You Lose Her

Change, Waiting

“It all goes away. Eventually, everything goes away.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

“Not everything's perfect, especially in the beginning. And its all right to have a little bit of regret every once in a while. It's when you feel it all the time and can't do anything about it… that's when you get into trouble”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

Feeling, Time, Perfection

“Everything has changed. I cannot be used anymore. Those days are over. I know too much. What I do now, I do for me.”

China Miéville book The Scar

Source: The Scar

Change

“I don't want to let go, because tonight I'm not looking for anything more than being part of him. Because being part of him isn't just anything. It's kind of everything.”

Melina Marchetta book On the Jellicoe Road

Source: On the Jellicoe Road

Parting

“The more someone assures you that everything is okay, the more you can be assured that it's not.”

Richard Paul Evans (1962) American writer

Source: The Walk

“Ideas come from everything”

Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British filmmaker

Idea

“The more a man knows, the more willing he is to learn. The less a man knows, the more positive he is that he knows everything…”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Learning

“In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.”

Guy Debord (1931–1994) French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker and founding member of the Situationist International (SI)

Source: Society of the Spectacle (1967), Ch. 1, sct. 1.

Life

“Everything is perfect on the street again, the world is permeated with roses of happiness all the time, but none of us know it. The happiness consists in realizing that it is all a great strange dream.”

Jack Kerouac book Lonesome Traveler

Source: Lonesome Traveler

Happiness, World, Dreams, Time

“You see how it is with us? You can't fight it any more than I can. You've tried; you've done everything you can to kill it. But you can't kill my love for you.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: The Chase

Love, Fight

“In memory, everything seems to happen to music.”

Jenny Han book P.S. I Still Love You

Source: P.S. I Still Love You

Music, Memory

“Everything I think of now is too rude to actually say.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

Thinking

“Everything measurable passes, everything that can be counted has an end. Only three things are infinite: the sky in its stars, the sea in its drops of water, and the heart in its tears.”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

Source: The Letters of Gustave Flaubert, 1830-1857

Star, Tear, Water, Heart

“When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own.”

John Berger (1926–2017) British painter, writer and art critic

Source: Keeping a Rendezvous

Books, Reading

“Love and death are everything, Jenny. Danger is the best part of the game. I thought you knew that."
-Julian”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: The Chase

Love, Death, Game, Parting

“When everything seems to be going well and your dream is almost within your gasp, that is when you must be more alert than ever.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra

Dreams

“Everything in your life is there as a vehicle for your transformation.
Use it!”

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

Life

“Everything that goes on in your whole life is a result of molecules rushing around somewhere in your brain.”

Don DeLillo (1936) American novelist, playwright and essayist

Source: Don DeLillo's White Noise

Life

“Everything that's born has to die, which means our lives are like skyscrapers. The smoke rises at different speeds, but they're all on fire, and we're all trapped.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Speed

“if only my whole life could be words and music, if only everything else could slip away.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

Life, Music

“Everything, even herself, was now unbearable to her. She wished that, taking wing like a bird, she could fly somewhere, far away to regions of purity, and there grow young again.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

Bird, Flying

“I am obsessed with you, angel. Addicted to you. You're everything i've ever wanted or needed, everything i've dreamed of. You're everything. I live and breathe you. For you.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Variant: I'm obsessed with you, angel. Addicted to you. You're everything I've ever wanted or needed, everything I've ever dreamed of. You're everything. I live and breathe you. For you.
Source: Reflected in You

Dreams, Angels

“Time punishes us by taking everything, but it also saves us — by taking everything.”

Sarah Manguso (1974) writer, poet

Source: Ongoingness: The End of a Diary

Time

“Words are your business, boy. Not just the word. Words are everything. The key to the rock, the answer to the question.”

Ralph Ellison (1914–1994) American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer

Boy, Question, Business

“Sometimes,' Jem said, 'our lives can change so fast that the change outpaces our minds and hearts. It's those times, I think, when our lives have altered but we still long for the time before everything was altered.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Thinking, Change, Time, Heart

“At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves.”

Charles Bukowski book Ham on Rye

Ham On Rye (1982)
Source: Ham on Rye
Context: The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole goddamned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves. I had no interests. I had no interest in anything. I had no idea how I was going to escape. At least the others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn't understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go.

God, People, Age, Way

“We have very primative emotions. It's impossible not to be competitive. Spoils everything, though.”

Ernest Hemingway book Green Hills of Africa

Source: Green Hills of Africa

“If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience.”

Robert Fulghum (1937) American writer

Problem, Housing

“…I said everything that matters… Don't take my advice. Or anyone's advice. Trust yourself. For good or for bad, happy or unhappy, it's your life, and what you do with it has always been entirely up to you.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Best of Me

Evelyn Collier, Chapter 15, p. 223
Source: 2009, The Best of Me (2011)

Life, Happiness

“live your life as if you may lose everything.”

Mary Higgins Clark book All Through the Night

Source: All Through the Night

Life

“A couple of times in your life, it happens like that. You meet a stranger, and all you know is that you need to know everything about him.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Sugar Daddy

Life, Time

“I meant what I said to you. I wasn't playing some kind of summer game. Everything I said was true, from the first day. EVERY GODDAMN WORD.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

Game, Summer

“Here I came to the very edge where nothing at all needs saying… and every day on the balcony of the sea wings open fire is born and everything is blue again like morning.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Sea

“Everything is idiocy if you choose to look at it in the proper perspective.”

David Eddings (1931–2009) American novelist

“I've come to believe that in everyone's life, there's one undeniable moment of change, a set of circumstances that suddenly alters everything.”

Nicholas Sparks book Safe Haven

Source: Safe Haven

Life, Change

“[I]f you believe in God omnipresent, then you must believe everything that comes into your life, person or event, must have something of God in it to be experienced and loved; not hated.”

Elizabeth Goudge book Green Dolphin Street

Source: Green Dolphin Street

Love, Life, God, Hate

“A woman had to choose her own particular unhappiness carefully. That was the only happiness in life: to choose the best unhappiness. An unwise move, good God, you could squander everything.”

Lorrie Moore (1957) American writer

Source: Bark: Stories

Life, God, Happiness

“If the dream is held close to the heart, and imagination is applied to what there is close at hand. Everything is still possible.”

Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Dreams, Imagination, Heart

“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Love, Hope, Relationship, Valentine's Day

“Dawson, she knew, had saved Alan's life- but in the end, he'd saved Jared's as well. And for her that meant… everything. 'I gave you the best of me,' he'd told her once, and with every beat of her son's heart, she knew he'd done exactly that.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Best of Me

Source: The Best of Me

Life, Heart

“When you have only two minutes to say good-bye to the person you love most in the world, and you don’t know when you’ll see each other again, you can become logjammed with the effort to say and do and settle everything at once.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Source: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Love, World, Effort, Personality

“Sure, everything is ending," Jules said, "but not yet.”

Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad

Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad

“If you touch one thing with deep awareness, you touch everything.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

“Don’t try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you’re good, bad things can still happen. And if you’re bad, you can still be lucky.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

Life, Mathematics, Problem

“Emptying the ashtrays was very expressive of myself. I just lump everything in a great heap which I have labeled ‘the past,’ and having thus emptied this deep reservoir that was once myself, I am ready to continue.”

Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948) Novelist, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Past

“Of course they needed to care. It was the meaning of everything.”

Lois Lowry book The Giver

Source: The Giver

“You can't have everything… where would you put it?”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Funny

“A kind of light spread out from her. And everything changed color. And the world opened out. And a day was good to awaken to. And there were no limits to anything. And the people of the world were good and handsome. And I was not afraid any more.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

People, World, Color, Light

“I’ve learned that everything happens for a reason,” the yogi Krishnan told him. “Every event has a why and all adversity teaches us a lesson… Never regret your past. Accept it as the teacher that it is.”

Robin S. Sharma book The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

Source: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

Learning, Teachers, Past

“I owe her everything and I love her and I tell her these days, although every time I say it, it gets a little diluted. I think you run out of I love yous.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

Love, Thinking, Time

“The question is, what color will everything be at that moment when I come for you? What will the sky be saying?”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Color, Question

“If the universe is everything, and scientists say that the universe is expanding, what is it expanding into?”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Universe

“I’m afraid of everything. Fear of being alone, fear of being hurt, fear of being made a fool of, fear of failure… Still, I think all my fears bleed from one big one…”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: God-Shaped Hole

Fear, Fools, Failure, Thinking

“Wake up, Caitlin, Mr. Lensing had said. But what he didn't understand was that this dreamland was preferable, walking through this life half-sleeping, everything at arm's length or farther away. I understood those mermaids. I didn't care if they sang to me. All I wanted was to block out all the human voices as they called me name again and again, pulling me upward into light, to drown.”

Sarah Dessen book Dreamland

Source: Dreamland (2000)

Life, Sleep, Light

“When everything seem to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it….”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Motivational, Deep, Success, Inspirational

“as she
drove me through the hills everything screamed inside of
me, and I kept saying as we drove along
(to myself, of course)
fucker, it will pass,
everything passes,
it's all a joke
a joke on you”

Charles Bukowski book The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Source: The People Look Like Flowers at Last

“Knowledge, like all things, is best in moderation," intoned the Will. "Knowing everything means you don't need to think, and that is very dangerous.”

Garth Nix book Lady Friday

Source: Lady Friday

Knowledge, Thinking

“Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

“It's the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.”

Tom Stoppard Arcadia

Source: Arcadia

Time

“Everything was good.
But it was awful, too.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

“If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

“People tend the take everything too seriously. Especially themselves. Yep. And that's probably what makes 'em scared and hurt so much of the time. Life is too serious to take that seriously.”

Tom Robbins (1932) American writer

Life, People, Time, Hurt

“Everything you say is boring and incomprehensible," she said, "but that alone doesn't make it true.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

"Description of a Struggle".
The Complete Stories (1971)

“And even though people try to pretend that pain doesn't do anything to them, none of us can really handle it. Everything bad we do in our life is because of pain of some kind.”

James Frey book The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Source: The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Life, Pain, People

“Jeez, was that a lion? Please tell me it’s behind bars.”
“It’s a zoo, Iggy,” Nudge said, taking his arms and leading him. “Everything’s behind bars.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

“Being with him after so long, after everything we'd endured… it was like coming home.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

Home

“I don’t know. There isn’t always an explanation for everything.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

Variant: There isnt always an explanation for everything.
Source: The Sun Also Rises

“For a man to think he can fulfil his destiny without a woman is a misunderstanding, a miscalculation; it is reckless and folly. Certainly a woman is not everthing, but everything depends on her.”

Yasmina Khadra book What the Day Owes the Night

Source: Ce que le jour doit à la nuit

Thinking, Dependency

“Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth, a forgetting of the breath. Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. Nothing is that important. Just lie down.”

Natalie Goldberg (1948) American writer

Lie, Forgetting

“When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Way

“The truth hung heavy in the air between us, a near tangible thing. I; d kill for you, give up everything I own for you… but I won't give you up.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Reflected in You

Truth

“Everything feels right with the world…
… and the sad thing is that I know it's a dream. I know it must soon end, and when it does I will be thrust awake into a place where either I'm broken, or the world is broken.”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

Source: Challenger Deep

World, Sadness, Dreams, Feeling

“You behave as if everything is funny to you, but you never laugh. Sometimes you smile when you think no one is paying attention.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Smile, Thinking

“I was glad I wasn’t in love, that I wasn’t happy with the world. I like being at odds with everything. People in love often become edgy, dangerous. They lose their sense of perspective.”

Charles Bukowski book Women

Source: Women (1978)
Context: I was glad I wasn't in love, that I wasn't happy with the world. I like being at odds with everything. People in love often become edgy, dangerous. They lose their sense of perspective. They lose their sense of humor. They become nervous, psychotic bores. They even become killers.

Love, Happiness, People, World

“Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Life

“Remember: The best deceivers do everything they can to cloak their roguish qualities. They cultivate an air of honesty in one area to disguise their dishonesty in others. Honesty is merely another decoy in their arsenal of weapons.”

Robert Greene book The 48 Laws of Power

Source: The 48 Laws of Power

“Power can do everything but the most important thing: it cannot control love.”

Philip Yancey (1949) American writer

Source: Disappointment with God: Three Questions No One Asks Aloud

Love

“There's no such thing as nothing. In every nothing, there's a something. In fact, there could be everything!”

Libba Bray Going Bovine

Source: Going Bovine

“If our life is poured out in useless words, we will never hear anything, never become anything, and in the end, because we have said everything before we had anything to say, we shall be left speechless at the moment of our greatest decision.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Source: Thoughts in Solitude

Life, Decision

“I stared at him. Did he really say that? Did he remember? The way he looked back at me, one eyebrow raised, I knew he did. And this time, I was the one to look away.
Because I remembered. I remembered everything.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: It's Not Summer Without You

Way, Time

“In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Letter #158 to Theo (24 September 1880) http://www.vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let158/letter.html <br> Variant translation http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/8/136.htm: "I felt my energy revive and I said to myself, I shall get over it somehow, I shall set to work again with my pencil, which I had cast aside in my deep dejection, and I shall draw again, and from that moment I have had the feeling that everything has changed for me" <br class="br">1880s, 1880 <br class="br">Context: I felt my energy revive, and said to myself, In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing. From that moment everything has seemed transformed for me.

Drawing

“But love is different for every person. For some it's hate, for some it's joy, for some it's fear, for some it's jealousy, for some it's torture, for some it's peace. For some it's everything.”

James Frey book The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Source: The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Love, Hate, Fear, Jealousy

“One needs no particular talent to be polite. On the contrary, being nice is what's left when you've failed at everything else.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale