Quotes about everything
page 27

“But she had to know words. She had to know everything.”

Eva Ibbotson (1925–2010) British children's writer

“I mean, say that you figure that everything is senseless, then it can't be quite senseless because you are aware that it's senseless and your awareness of senselessness almost gives it sense. You
know what I mean?”

Charles Bukowski book Pulp

Source: Pulp

Sense

“I know the place.
It is true.
Everything we do
Corrects the space
Between death and me
And you.”

Harold Pinter (1930–2008) playwright from England

Death

“I thought how tenuous the links were between mother and children between friends family things you think are eternal. Everything could be lost more easily than anyone could imagine.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Children, Family, Imagination, Thinking

“These are the days after. Everything now is measured by after.”

Don DeLillo Falling Man

Source: Falling Man

“Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words and everything in the world understands it.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett A Little Princess

Source: A Little Princess

World, Understanding

“I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Hate

“She was sensible and clever, but eager in everything; her sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Source: Sense and Sensibility: The Screenplay

Joy

“God, of your goodness, give me yourself; you are enough for me, and anything less that I could ask for would not do you full honor. And if I ask anything that is less, I shall always lack something, but in you alone I have everything'.”

Julian of Norwich book Revelations of Divine Love

Source: Revelations of Divine Love

God

“They forgot everything the minute they were together again.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Source: Wuthering Heights

“Sixty years ago I knew everything. Now I know nothing. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

Quoted in "Books: The Great Gadfly", Time magazine, 8 October 1965 (review of The Age of Voltaire by Will and Ariel Durant)

Education

“I read because I have to. It drives everything else from my mind. It lets me escape to find other world.”

Adeline Yen Mah (1937) Author and physician

Source: Chinese Cinderella: The True Story of an Unwanted Daughter

World, Reading

“I don’t want to throw everything away for something uncertain.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Variant: I don’t want to know anything, and I want to know it all
Source: Every Day

“This wife you have, Bird said at last, deeply contemplative, did you pay a great deal for her?

She cost me almost everything I had, he said, with a wry tone that made the others laugh. But worth it.”

Diana Gabaldon book A Breath of Snow and Ashes

Source: A Breath of Snow and Ashes

Bird

“The real reality is there, but everything you KNOW about “it” is in your mind and your
to do with as you like. Conceptualization is art, and YOU ARE THE ARTIST”

Gregory Hill (1941–2000) American writer and founder of Discordianism

Source: Principia Discordia ● Or ● How I Found Goddess and What I Did to Her When I Found Her: The Magnum Opiate of Malaclypse the Younger

Art, Reality

“Whatever story you're telling, it will be more interesting if, at the end you add, "and then everything burst into flames.”

Brian P. Cleary (1959) American writer

Source: You Oughta Know By Now

“… talent means nothing, while experience, acquired in humility and with hard work, means everything.”

Patrick Süskind (1949) German writer and screenwriter

Source: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Wise, Back To Work

“When a man likes you, he will be interested in finding out what you like. If he makes you happy, he feels more secure. Everything men do is intended to impress women.”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Marry Bitches: A Woman's Guide to Winning Her Man's Heart

Women, Men, Happiness, Feeling

“Tired, tired with nothing, tired with everything, tired with the world’s weight he had never chosen to bear.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

World

“Everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare.”

Baruch Spinoza book Ethics

Source: Ethics

“How clear everything becomes when you look from the darkness of a dungeon.”

Umberto Eco book Foucault's Pendulum

Source: Foucault's Pendulum

“It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Sense

“Of course. You get everything from books.”

Gregory Maguire Out of Oz

Source: Out of Oz

Books

“… it is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary.' 'A melancholy conclusion,' said K. 'It turns lying into a universal principle. In the Cathedral”

Franz Kafka book The Trial

Variant: No," said the priest, "you don't need to accept everything as true, you only have to accept it as necessary." "Depressing view," said K. "The lie made into the rule of the world.
Source: The Trial (1920), Chapter 9

Lying, Universe

“One great thing about growing old is that nothing is going to lead to anything. Everything is of the moment.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Source: A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

“You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

“HOBBES:
All this modern technology just makes people try to do everything at once.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

People

“everything is relative. you, for instance, are my relative.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

“Everything's a gamble, love most of all.”

Tess Gerritsen book The Sinner

Source: The Sinner

Love

“For a moment, I felt as if the universe had turned upside down and we were falling softly into an enormous black bowl of stars, and I knew, beyond any doubt, that everything was going to be alright.”

Tana French In the Woods

Source: In the Woods

Star, Universe

“By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast

“Coffee. I could smell coffee. Coffee would make everything better.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Every Which Way But Dead

Coffee

“When you don’t know what you believe, everything becomes an argument. Everything is debatable. But when you stand for something, decisions are obvious.”

Jason Fried software entrepreneur

Source: Rework

Decision

“Don't you see? I'm not the spirit of any age. I'm at odds with everything and always have been! I have never belonged anywhere with anyone at any time!”

Anne Rice book Interview with the Vampire

Source: Interview with the Vampire

Age, Time

“Maturity, one discovers, has everything to do with the acceptance of ‘not knowing.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“Someday, I'm going to meet some supernatural creature who tells me everything I should know up front and in a forthright manner - but I'm not going to hold my breath.”

Patricia Briggs book River Marked

Source: River Marked

“Separation

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.”

W.S. Merwin (1927–2019) American poet

Color, Sad

“What kind of shapeshifter has orange fur anyway?" "Weredingo." Now I'd seen everything. Well, at least he didn't steal my baby.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Strikes

Baby

“Mine was a patchwork God, sewn together from bits of rag and ribbon, Eastern and Western, pagan and Hebrew, everything but the kitchen sink and Jesus.”

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

Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

God

“Everything matters. Everything you do touches someone in some way, even though you might not understand that.”

Jennifer Ashley (1974) American author

Source: The Duke's Perfect Wife

Way, Understanding

“Everything I need now is here”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

“Life and love are life and love, a bunch of violets is a bunch of violets, and to drag in the idea of a point is to ruin everything. Live and let live, love and let love, flower and fade, and follow the natural curve, which flows on, pointless.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Love, Life, Flowers, Idea

“I always think everything is going to last forever, but nothing ever does. In fact nothing exists longer than an instant except the thing that we hold in memory”

Sam Savage book Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife

Source: Firmin

Thinking, Memory

“Everything in the universe has a purpose. Indeed, the invisible intelligence that flows through everything in a purposeful fashion is also flowing through you”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

Intelligence, Fashion, Universe

“Dear Lord, please show me everything I need to understand about forgiveness and surrender”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Forgiveness, Understanding

“Everything in the gospel teaches us that we can change if we need to, that we can be helped if we truly want it, that we can be made whole, whatever the problems of the past.”

Jeffrey R. Holland (1940) Mormon leader

Source: Created for Greater Things

Problem, Change, Past, Help

“One of these days they'll be making a film where the whole human race gets wiped out in a nuclear war, but everything works out in the end.”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982)
Context: I watched an old American submarine movie on television. The creaking plot had the captain and first officer constantly at each other’s throat. The submarine was a fossil, and one guy had claustrophobia. But all that didn’t stop everything from working out well in the end. It was an everything-works-out-in-the-end-so-maybe-war’s-not-so-bad-after-all sort of film. One of these days they’ll be making a film where the whole human race gets wiped out in a nuclear war, but everything works out in the end.

War

“Something did happen to me somewhere that robbed me of confidence and courage and left me with a fear of discovery and change and a positive dread of everything unknown that may occur.”

Joseph Heller book Something Happened

Source: Something Happened

Fear, Confidence, Courage, Change

“No structure, even an artificial one, enjoys the process of entropy. It is the ultimate fate of everything, and everything resists it.”

Philip K. Dick book Galactic Pot-Healer

Source: Galactic Pot-Healer

Fate

“I am sure there is Magic in everything, only we have not sense enough to get hold of it and make it do things for us”

Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden

Source: The Secret Garden

Sense

“and even the trees we walked
under
seemed
less than
trees
and more like everything
else.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

Tree

“It’s never something huge that changes the everything, but instead the tiniest of details, irrevocably tweaking the balance of the universe while you’re busy focusing on the big picture.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

Business, Universe, Change

“What went wrong? Nothing and everything.”

Nick Hornby book High Fidelity

Source: High Fidelity

“I am wholly yours - you are everything to me; we will sustain each other in all the ills of life it may please fate to inflict upon us; you will soothe my troubles; I will comfort you in yours.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

Life, Fate

“A man's bookcase will tell you everything you'll ever need to know about him.”

Walter Mosley (1952) American writer

Source: The Long Fall

“I want everything back, the way it was. But there is no point to it, this wanting.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Way

“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love (2006)
Context: People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.
A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.
A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master…

Life, People, Soul, Thinking