Quotes about fact
page 13

“The problem with every story is you tell it after the fact. Every play-by-play description on the radio, the home runs and strikeouts, even that's delayed a few minutes. Even live television is postponed a couple seconds. Even Sound and light can only go so fast.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 1

Home, Problem, Light

“I was having a mildly paranoid day, mostly due to the fact that the mad priest lady from over the river had taken to nailing weasels to my front door again.”

Warren Ellis (1968) English comics and fiction writer

Madness

“it sounded stupid, but of course everything does when you're just getting the bare bones facts, only the basics…”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Stupidity

“Each recognized the fact that real commitment could be proven only through the passage of time.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Time

“Change isn't always comfortable, but it is a fact of life.”

Joanne Harris book The Gospel of Loki

Source: The Gospel of Loki

Life, Change

“Facts may be colored by the personalities of the people who present them.”

Reginald Rose Twelve Angry Men

Source: Twelve Angry Men

People, Color, Personality

“This pain, this dying, this is just normal. This is how life is. In fact, I realize, there never was an earthquake. Life is just this way, broken, and I am crazy for dreaming of something else.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

Life, Pain, Dreams, Way

“Chasing after a guy who’s not interested in you will rip the hell out of your self-respect. Better to face facts now because the longer you put it off, the harder it’ll be.”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1948) American writer

Source: Call Me Irresistible

Guy, Hell

“You can't let facts get in the way of the truth.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Source: NOS4A2

Truth, Way

“You know that things aren't going well for you when you can't even tell people the simplest fact about your life, just because they'll presume you're asking them to feel sorry for you.”

Nick Hornby (1957) English novelist

Life, People, Feeling

“And you,
You can be mean
And I,
I'll drink all the time
'Cause we're lovers,
And that is a fact
Yes we're lovers,
And that is that”

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

Lovers, Drink, Time

“The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line. The objection to it is not that it is predominantly painful, but that it is lacking in sense.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Baltimore Evening Sun (9 August 1926)
1920s
Source: A Mencken Chrestomathy

Pain, War, Sense

“Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

“There are two facts that all children need to disprove sooner or later; mother and father. If you go on believing in the fiction of your own parents, it is difficult to construct any narrative of your own.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

Children, Parent

“There was pain, but there was also joy. It was in the tension between the two that life happened. Imperfect as it was, this world was real. Illusion was no substitute. I'd rather live a hard life of fact than a sweet life of lies.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

Life, Pain, World, Joy

“Surprise me, Atlantean. Attack. This isn’t a dance party. (Takeshi)
You know, this isn’t building my confidence. In fact, I think I’m just going to lie here for a bit and take in some sun. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

Lie, Confidence, Thinking, Sun

“I am coming to terms with the fact that loving someone requires a leap of faith, and that a soft landing is never guaranteed.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

Love, Faith

“Man is not a circle with a single center; he is an ellipse with two focii. Facts are one, ideas are the other.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Idea

“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader—not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”

E.L. Doctorow (1931–2015) novelist, editor, professor

Feeling

“They say that even the brightest star won't shine forever. But in fact, the brightest star would live the shortest amount of time. Feel free to extract whatever life lesson you want from that.”

Philip Plait (1964) astronomer, skeptic

Source: Death from the Skies! (2008), p. 75-76
Source: Death from the Skies!: These Are the Ways the World Will End...

Life, Feeling, Star, Time

“As a matter of fact, I think there are more things important in life than "relationships.”

David Nicholls book One Day

Source: One Day

Life, Thinking

“Facts are lonely things”

Don DeLillo book Libra

Source: Libra

“Relief is a wonderful emotion, highly underrated. In fact, I prefer it to elation or joy. Relief lets the air out of the Tire of Pain.”

Adriana Trigiani (1970) American film director

Source: Rococo

Pain, Joy

“Life among academics had taught me that a well-expressed opinion is usually better than a badly expressed fact, so far as professional advancement goes.”

Diana Gabaldon book Outlander

Source: Outlander

Life

“I was starting to come to grips with the fact that I had created a lot of pain and suffering around me, not just within me.”

Anthony Kiedis book Scar Tissue

Source: Scar Tissue

Pain, Suffering

“It is a well-documented fact that guys will not ask for directions. This is a biological thing. This is why it takes several million sperm cells… to locate a female egg, despite the fact that the egg is, relative to them, the size of Wisconsin.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Guy

“Like cubic zirconia, I only look real. I'm an imposter. The fact is, I am not like other people.”

Augusten Burroughs book Dry

Source: Dry

People

“Remember, despite the fact that this book is being sold as a 'fantasy' novel, you must take all of the things it says extremely seriously, as they are quite important, are in no way silly, and always make sense.

Rutabaga.”

Brandon Sanderson Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

Source: Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

Books, Way, Sense

“The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Hope, Way, Despair, Hope

“We have to endure the discordance between imagination and fact. It is better to say, “I am suffering,” than to say, “This landscape is ugly.”

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

Imagination, Suffering

“The fact that one of these ladies was my mom made me particularly sad because my mom is beautiful. And she’s always on a diet. Sometimes, my dad calls her beautiful, but she cannot hear him.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Sadness, Beauty, Moms

“Genuine feelings cannot be produced, nor can they be eradicated. We can only repress them, delude ourselves, and deceive our bodies. The body sticks to the facts.”

Alice Miller (1923–2010) Swiss psychologist

Feeling

“Sometimes the facts in my head get bored and decide to take a walk in my mouth. Frequently this is a bad thing.”

Scott Westerfeld book So Yesterday

Source: So Yesterday

“When it comes to life, we spin our own yarn, and where we end up is really, in fact, where we always intended to be.”

Julia Glass book Three Junes

Source: Three Junes

Life

“I began to feel that all the people I'd ever known who had died or left me had not in fact gone away, but continued to live on inside me just as this man's wife lived on inside him.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

People, Feeling

“My first meeting with you only confirmed what I first suspected. You are a fraud, a charlatan and a shyster. My favourite kind of person, in fact.”

Stephen Fry book The Liar

Source: The Liar

Fraud, Personality

“Basically, men are afraid of women and can't handle the fact that they came out of the same thing they spend the rest of their lives trying to get back into.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: Solipsist (1998)

Women, Men

“I like the fact of John McCain's head being severed. Like that it will fit so much more nicely up George Bush's butt!”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

“She had to face the fact that she couldn't protect everyone she loved. She couldn't solve every problem.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Love, Problem

“Tis a well-known fact that a man is either skilled in matters of loving or matters of war. ’Tis obvious that fighting is your skill.”

Maya Banks (1964) Author

Source: In Bed with a Highlander

Love, War, Fight

“Fiction and nonfiction are not so easily divided. Fiction may not be real, but it's true; it goes beyond the garland of facts to get to emotional and psychological truths.”

Yann Martel book Beatrice and Virgil

Source: Beatrice and Virgil

Truth

“The reality distortion field was a confounding mélange of a charismatic rhetorical style, indomitable will, and eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand”

Walter Isaacson book Steve Jobs

Source: Steve Jobs

Reality

“A small fact:
You are going to die…. does this worry you?”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Variant: ***HERE IS A SMALL FACT***
You are going to die.
Source: The Book Thief

“They weren't lying. They firmly believed it all. Which doesn't change the facts.”

Andrzej Sapkowski book The Last Wish

Source: The Last Wish

Lying, Change

“Meg, don't you think you'd make a better adjustment to life if you faced facts?"
I do face facts," Meg said.
They're lots easier to face than people, I can tell you.”

Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time

Source: A Wrinkle in Time

Life, People, Thinking

“The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

World, History, Strong

“Again, I repeat, don’t ask questions you don’t want answered. Just accept the fact that Acheron is a freak of nature and let it go. (Zarek)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Kiss of the Night

Question, Nature

“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”

Samuel P. Huntington (1927–2008) American political scientist

Source: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), Ch. 2 : Civilizations in History and Today, § 10 : Relations Among Civilizations, p. 51

World, Religion, Idea, Forgetting

“Patience is a form of wisdom. It demonstrates that we understand and accept the fact that sometimes things must unfold in their own time.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn (1944) American academic

Source: Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness

Wisdom, Understanding, Time, Patience

“A stray fact: insects are not drawn to candle flames, they are drawn to the light on the far side of the flame, they go into the flame and sizzle to nothingness because they're so eager to get to the light on the other side.”

Michael Cunningham book By Nightfall

Source: By Nightfall

Light

“The more a man knows about himself in relation to every kind of experience, the greater his chance of suddenly, one fine morning, realizing who in fact he is…”

Aldous Huxley book Island

Source: Island

Chance

“We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

God, Star, Learning

“Your birth was no mistake or mishap, and your life is no fluke of nature. Your parents may not have planned you, but God did. He was not at all surprised by your birth. In fact, he expected it.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

Life, God, Birth, Nature

“Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall learn nothing.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Life, Learning

“Love isn't how you feel. It's what you do. I've never had a feeling in my life. As a matter of fact, I matter only with earth people.”

Madeleine L'Engle A Wind in the Door

Source: A Wind in the Door

Love, Life, People, Feeling

“He recognized with absolute certainty the empty fragility of even the noblest theorizings as compared with the definitive plenitude of the smallest fact grasped in its total, concrete reality.”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest

Source: Hymn of the Universe

Reality

“Random chance was not a sufficient explanation of the Universe---in fact, random chance was not sufficient to explain random chance; the pot could not hold itself.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Stranger in a Strange Land

Source: Stranger in a Strange Land

Universe, Chance

“By then she was dead. In fact, she may have been dead a while ago. Physically, several seconds ago, mentally, ages ago.”

Koushun Takami book Battle Royale

Source: Battle Royale

Age, Dead

“and a fact is the most stubborn thing in the world.”

Mikhail Bulgakov book The Master and Margarita

Source: The Master and Margarita

World

“From that point of view, I realized that my hole was not miles deep after all. My father, in fact, could stand on the bottom and it only reached up to his chest.
Darkness, you know, is relative.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

“The fact that we are living does not mean we are not sick.”

Joseph Brodsky (1940–1996) Russian and American poet and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate

“It's a fact that people are afraid of what they don't understand. And most are too lazy or ignorant to find out more.”

Richelle Mead book Silver Shadows

Source: Silver Shadows

People, Understanding

“You don't have to be a person of influence to be influential. In fact, the most influential people in my life are probably not even aware of the things they've taught me.”

Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer

Life, People, Personality

“It would seem from this fact, that man is naturally a wild animal, and that when taken from the woods, he is never happy in his natural state, 'till he returns to them again.”

Benjamin Rush (1745–1813) American physician, educator, author

Source: A Memorial Containing Travels Through Life or Sundry Incidents in the Life of Dr Benjamin Rush

Happiness, Nature, Animals

“As a purely mathematical fact, people who sleep less live more.”

Amy Chua book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

Source: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

People, Mathematics, Sleep

“It was easier to know it than to explain why I know it. If you were asked to prove that two and two made four, you might find some difficulty, and yet you are quite sure of the fact.

~ Sherlock Holmes”

Arthur Conan Doyle book A Study in Scarlet

Source: A Study in Scarlet

“The fact is that five years ago I was, as near as possible, a different person to what I am tonight. I, as I am now, didn't exist at all. Will the same thing happen in the next five years? I hope so.”

Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967) English poet, diarist and memoirist

Hope, Personality

“Game shows are designed to make us feel better about the random, useless facts that are all we have left of our education.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Education, Feeling, Game

“Then shut up or grab a sword and come help. (Takeshi)
Is that a challenge? (Savitar)
It would be if I didn’t know for a fact that you’re too lazy to rise to one. (Takeshi)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

Help

“If a storyteller worried about the facts - my dear Lucian, how could he ever get at the truth?”

Lloyd Alexander (1924–2007) American children's writer

Source: The Arkadians

Truth

“Feelings are facts. Look straight at 'em and deal with 'em. Work it through, as honestly as you can. If God is anything like a middle-class white chick from the suburbs, which I admit is a long shot, it's what you do about what you feel that matters.”

Mary Doria Russell The Sparrow

Source: The Sparrow

God, Feeling

“This is what those who haven’t crossed the tropic of grief often fail to understand: the fact that someone is dead may mean that they are not alive, but doesn’t mean that they do not exist.”

Julian Barnes (1946) English writer

Source: Levels of Life

Understanding, Dead

“It made him feel indispensable and needed - even if the fact that Jocelyn didn't appear to care wheather he slept in her daughter's bed or not did underscore that Clary's mother apparently regarded him as about sexually threatening as a goldfish.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Feeling, Appearance, Daughters

“You are the only young man that I know of who ignores the fact that the future becomes the present, the present the past and the past turns into everlasting regret if you don't plan for it!”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Amanda, Scene Five
Source: The Glass Menagerie (1944)

Past, Future

“If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worst than ignorant, they are the deluded to the point of perversity.”

Richard Dawkins book The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

Source: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

World, History, Thinking

“For the record? I have never been her baby. In fact, I reject the notion of coming out of her body. I prefer to believe I was hatched, or perhaps purchased.”

Jen Lancaster (1967) American writer

Source: Pretty in Plaid

Baby

“In fact I was fairly certain there was no one in the entire world quite like Adrian Ivashkov.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

World

“I love the truth. It's the facts I'm not a fan of.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

Love, Truth

“Every discussion which is made from an egoistic standpoint is corrupted from the start and cannot yield an absolutely sure conclusion. The ego puts its own interest first and twists every argument, word, even fact to suit that interest.”

Paul Brunton (1898–1981) British philosopher

Source: The Notebooks of Paul Brunton

“Just reflecting on the fact that when the Universe punches you in the teeth, it never just lets you fall down. It kicks you in the ribs a couple of times and dumps mud on your head.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Strikes

Universe, Time

“Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man's values, it has to be earned.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

“Just as there are Laws of Conservation of Matter and Energy, so there are in fact Laws of Conservation of Pain and Joy. Neither can ever be created or destroyed.
But one can be converted into the other.”

Spider Robinson book Callahan's Crosstime Saloon

Source: Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (1977) "Laws of Conservation of Pain and Joy"

Pain, Law, Joy

“It is not the literal past, the 'facts' of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language.”

Brian Friel (1929–2015) Irish dramatist, author and theatre director

History, Past

“Some morning while your eating breakfast and you need something new to think about, though, you might want to ponder the fact that you see your kids across the table not as they are but as they once were, about three nanoseconds ago.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

Source: Death by Black Hole - And Other Cosmic Quandaries

Thinking

“Small disconnected facts, if you take note of them, have a way of becoming connected.”

Walker Percy book The Thanatos Syndrome

Source: The Thanatos Syndrome

Way

“A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."”

Stephen Crane (1871–1900) American novelist, short story writer, poet, and journalist

A Man Said to the Universe, No. 20
War Is Kind and Other Lines (1899)
Source: War Is Kind and Other Poems

Sense, Universe

“I now know, by an almost fatalistic conformity with the facts, that my destiny is to travel…”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Source: The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

Travel

“… I couldn't let go of the thought that it had, in fact, been he, restless and moody Heathcliff. Day after day, he floated through all the Wal-Marts in America, searching for me in a million lonely aisles.”

Marisha Pessl Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Source: Special Topics in Calamity Physics

“Whatever he might have denied me was unimportant; it was the
fact that he could deny me anything at all, even what I didn't want”

Hunter S. Thompson The Rum Diary

Source: The Rum Diary

“In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence..”

David Hume book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Source: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Imagination

“Isn’t the most sensitive point of this mourning the fact that I must lose a language — the amorous language? No more ‘I love you’s.”

Roland Barthes book A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

Source: A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

Love

“Some would say the Creator is a lamb. Some would say he's a lion. Some would say both. The fact is, he is neither a lamb nor a lion. These are fiction. Metaphors. Yet the Creator is both a lamb and a lion. These are both truths.”

Ted Dekker (1962) American writer

Source: Black: The Birth of Evil

Truth

“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

“I chuckled to myself and kept walking. The Universe had proven Curran wrong: a person who aggravated him more than me did, in fact, exist.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Burns

Universe, Personality

“They didn’t agree on much. In fact, they didn’t agree on anything. They fought all the time and challenged each other ever day. But despite their differences, they had one important thing in common. They were crazy about each other.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

Time, Romantic

“Let us not mince words.. the marvelous is always beautiful, anything marvelous is beautiful, in fact only the marvelous is beautiful.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

Beauty

“The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can't make something out of a little experience, you probably won't be able to make it out of a lot.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Life, Childhood

“It is almost impossible to state what one in fact believes, because it is almost impossible to hold a belief and to define it at the same time.”

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American poet

Time

“Nick glowered at Ash. "Are we through now, Dad? Can I go play with my friends if I promise to be a good boy? I'll even try and make it home by curfew."

Ash laughed evilly. "Oh, absolutely, son. In fact, here come your new playmates now.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dream Warrior

Home, Boy

“After telling the hard facts to anyone from lover to friend, I have changed in their eyes. Often it is awe or admiration, sometimes it is repulsion, once or twice it has been fury hurled directly at me for reasons I remain unsure of.”

Alice Sebold book Lucky

Source: Lucky

Lovers, Change

Quotes about fact page 13

Quotes about fact
page 13