Quotes about making
page 41

“When you think about it, most of the good ideas came along to make sin a whole lot easier.”

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

Source: Horns

Idea, Thinking

“An envious heart makes a treacherous ear.”

Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) American folklorist, novelist, short story writer

Heart

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep”

Elizabeth Hoyt (1970) American writer

Source: Thief of Shadows

“I promise I shall never give up, and that I'll die yelling and laughing, and that until then I'll rush around this world I insist is holy and pull at everyone's lapel and make them confess to me and to all.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

World

“A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Source: Walden, or Life in the Woods

Grass

“Your failures and your faults, they stick with you. They glob into ugly, cancerous growths inside you and make you want to die.”

Julie Anne Peters (1952) American writer

Source: By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

Failure

“But it's important to acknowledge that while we may make mistakes, in the long run, we may also learn from them.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Variant: Obviously it won't all run smoothly. But it's important to awknowledge that while we may make mistakes, in the long run, we may also learn fromt them.
Source: Lock and Key

Learning

“Good writing is clear. Talented writing is energetic. Good writing avoids errors. Talented writing makes things happen in the reader's mind---vividly, forcefully…”

Samuel R. Delany (1942) American author, professor and literary critic

Source: About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, and Five Interviews

Error

“That word again. Happy. It’s a curse. The pursuit of happiness makes us deeply unhappy. It’s a trap. Before anything else happened, there was me in bed, thinking of who you used to be.
I don’t want you to think I forgot.”

David Levithan book Every You, Every Me

Source: Every You, Every Me

Happiness, Thinking

“Watching you walk out of my life does not make me bitter or cynical about love. But rather makes me realize that if I wanted so much to be with the wrong person, how beautiful it will be when the right person comes along.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Love, Life, Beauty, Personality

“Oh, Peeta, Don't make me sorry I restarted your heart.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Heart

“You could be the Mega Mage of wizards. You could rule Minionfire.
Do you really think so?'
Yeah, but you'd have to make a deal with the wood elves.'
I don't like the wood elves.'
They're okay. They're misunderstood.”

Janet Evanovich (1943) Novelist

Thinking

“We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.”

Edward O. Wilson (1929) American biologist

Source: Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998), p. 294.

Wisdom, People, World, Thinking

“It always makes me proud to love the world somehow- hate's so easy compared.”

Jack Kerouac book Big Sur

Source: Big Sur

Love, Hate, World

“Early in the journey you wonder how long the journey will take and whether you will make it in this lifetime. Later you will see that where you are going is HERE and you will arrive NOW… so you stop asking.”

Ram Dass book Be Here Now

Source: Be Here Now

“Wear them, they will make you brave.”

Ann Brashares The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Source: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

“It was the first time I had ever made love. I wondered if he knew that. It felt like crying. I wondered, Why does anyone ever make love?”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Love, Making love, Time, Cry

“the pain we suffer is a way to make us appreciate what comes next.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The First Phone Call from Heaven

Pain, Way, Suffering

“Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

Books, Art, Way, Personality

“Faith never stays put. It's always challenging always questioning. That's what makes it real.”

Patrick Carman (1966) American writer

Source: Thirteen Days to Midnight

Faith, Question

“If you go to your death rather than do everything you might to prevent what is happening, you are merely committing suicide and trying to make yourself feel better about it. That is the act of a coward. It is beneath contempt.”

Jim Butcher Dead Beat

Source: Dead Beat

Death, Feeling, Suicide

“A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself. He makes his failures certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.”

Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) French writer and dramatist, father of the homonym writer and dramatist

Failure, Personality

“We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with the emphasis on "good" rather than on "time"….”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Time

“My Aunt Dahlia has a carrying voice… If all other sources of income failed, she could make a good living calling the cattle home across the Sands of Dee.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Very Good, Jeeves

Very Good, Jeeves (1930)

Home

“If God did not intend for us to eat animals, then why did he make them out of meat?”

John Cleese (1939) actor from England

As quoted in W.T.F.? : (What Is Wrong With Tom Faerie?)‎ (2006) by H. M. Leathem

God, Animals, Funny

“But why think about that when all the golden lands ahead of you and all kinds of unforseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you're alive to see?”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Variant: Why think about that when all the golden land's ahead of you and all kinds of unforeseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you're alive to see?
Source: On the Road

Thinking, Waiting

“I make it a point never to argue with people for whose opinion I have no respect.”

Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) English historian and Member of Parliament

People

“Oh, mercy. If it catches you in the wrong frame of mind, the King James Bible can make you want to drink poison in no uncertain terms.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

Drink

“And sometimes drunk women aren't raped; they just make stupid choices--and to say we deserve special treatment when we're drunk because we're women, to say we need to be, I find offensive.”

Gillian Flynn book Sharp Objects

Source: Sharp Objects

Women, Stupidity

“But I've never despised myself so much as I did that day - she was so small and - so fierce, so, it was like breaking a hawk's wings, stopping up a clear spring with bricks - digging up roses to make space to park your tank. Pointless and ugly.”

Elizabeth Wein book Code Name Verity

Source: Code Name Verity

Spring

“Sometimes I feel like I have walked into the middle of a movie. Maybe I can make my own movie. The film will be the story of my life. No, not my life, but of this experience. I'll call it what the lady who is the prosecutor called me. MONSTER.”

Walter Dean Myers book Monster

Source: Monster

Life, Feeling

“Grief and disappointment are like hate: they make men ugly with self-pity and bitterness. And how selfish they make us too.”

Graham Greene (1904–1991) English writer, playwright and literary critic

Men, Hate, Disappointment, Selfishness

“No--when the rain falls you just let it fall and you grin like a madman and you dance with it, because if you can make yourself happy in the rain then you're doing pretty alright in life. (Nick, page 156)”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Life, Happiness, Dance

“The point of life was to press on, to do the best you can, to make the world a better place.”

Tom Clancy book Clear and Present Danger

Source: Clear and Present Danger

Life, World

“Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark. Begin at the beginning. Tell Gregory a story. Make some light.”

Kate DiCamillo book The Tale of Despereaux

Source: The Tale of Despereaux (2004)

World, Light

“Chickens can do many things, but they cannot make sophisticated deals with humans.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Eating Animals

Source: Eating Animals

“A dream does not die on its own. A dream is vanquished by the choices ordinary people make about real things in their own lives…”

Jonathan Kozol (1936) American activist and educator

Source: Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation

People, Dreams

“If you want to make a million you don't have to understand money, what you have to understand is people's fears about money”

William Gaddis book J R

Source: JR

Money, People, Fear, Understanding

“I'll succeed,' Hazel promised. 'And Hecate? I'm not choosing one of your paths. I'm making my own.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor

Boy

“I would have given him everything. I would have pulled down planets to make our life work.”

Jonathan Carroll (1949) novelist, short story writer

Life

“He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

No. 401
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)
Source: Selected Essays, 1778-1830

Friendship

“I think hope is the worst thing in the world. I really do. It makes a fool of you while it lasts. And then when it's gone, it's like there's nothing left of you at all… except what you can't be rid of.”

Marilynne Robinson Home

Source: Home

World, Hope, Fools, Thinking

“I will do those things which make me happy today and which I can also live with ten years from now.”

Greg Iles book The Quiet Game

Source: The Quiet Game

Happiness

“She's pretty." (It's amazing how girls can say this and make it the most withering insult.)”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

Girl

“At last, she makes her choice. She turns around, drops her head, and walks toward a horizon she cannot see. After that, she does not look back anymore. She knows that if she does, she will weaken.”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“She confused wit with intelligence, and made people laugh rather than lightening their hearts or making them think.”

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Source: We Were Liars

People, Intelligence, Thinking, Heart

“… when people we love make choices, we don't always understand them. But we can go on loving them, just the same. It isn't a matter of comprehension. It's forgiveness.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Vanishing Acts

Love, People, Forgiveness, Understanding

“He makes a pained sound. "Bloody hell, woman, I think a part of me wants to keep you this way.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Dreamfever

Pain, Way, Hell, Thinking

“Just tell me how to be different in a way that makes sense.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Way, Sense

“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.”

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

World, Travel

“We even make ourselves up, fusing what we are with what we wish into what we must become. I'm not sure why it must be so, but it is.”

Robert Fulghum (1937) American writer

Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things

“There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

“The fear of barbarians is what risks making us barbarians.”

Tzvetan Todorov (1939–2017) Bulgarian historian, philosopher, structuralist literary critic, sociologist and essayist

Fear

“The moral dilemma is to make peace with the unacceptable”

May Sarton (1912–1995) American poet, novelist, and memoirist

Peace

“What nobody understood then is this: The only way that you achieve what you want and fulfill your dreams and become great is by demanding that sort of attention. You have to make it happen.”

Augusten Burroughs book Running with Scissors

Source: Running with Scissors

Dreams, Way

“Three films a day, three books a week and records of great music would be enough to make me happy to the day I die.”

Francois Truffaut (1932–1984) film director

Happiness, Books, Music

“Twenty-two astronauts were born in Ohio. What is it about your state
that makes people want to flee the Earth?"

- Stephen Colbert to Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones,
"The Colbert Report," November 3, 2005”

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

People

“Prayer will make a man cease from sin, or sin will entice a man to cease from prayer.”

John Bunyan (1628–1688) English Christian writer and preacher

“As if I could stop loving you. As if I would want to give up the thing that makes me stronger than anything else ever has. Since the first time I saw you, I have belonged to you completely.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Variant: And now I'm looking at you, he said, and you're asking me if I still want you, as if I could stop loving you. As if I would want to give up the thing that makes me stronger than anything ever has.
Source: City of Glass

Love, Time

“Oh, he's rude to everyone," said Isabelle airily. "It's what makes him so damn sexy.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

“To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either scholar or artist can descend in work or life.

(, 8 September 1935)”

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) English crime writer, playwright, essayist and Christian writer

Source: The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers. Vol. 1, 1899-1936: The Making of a Detective Novelist

Life, Personality

“Most musicians remain poor. But the music that they make, even if it does not bring them millions, gives millions of people happiness.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

Happiness, People, Music

“The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people meaner.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

People, Thinking

“The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake.”

Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) German theologian

“Why do magazines do this to women? It's
all about creating insecurity. Trying to make women feel like they're not good enough. And when women don't feel like they're good enough, guess what? Men win. That's how they keep us down.”

Candace Bushnell book Summer and the City

Source: Summer and the City

Women, Men, Feeling

“Do you ever make silly mistakes? It is one of my very few creative activities.”

Len Deighton (1929) English writer

“Love is taking chances when every rational part of you screams, ‘Don’t risk it.’ Because it’s only when your heart has been ripped open that you get a chance to find the one person capable of making it whole.”

Sabrina Jeffries (1960) American writer

Source: A Lady Never Surrenders

Love, Chance, Heart, Parting

“Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Life, Women

“That is what love is I thought. A possibility that becomes a choice. A choice you keep making over and over. Day after day. Year after year. Time after time.”

Cameron Dokey (1956) American writer

Variant: That is what love is. A possibility that becomes a choice. A choice you keep making, over and over. Day after day. Year after year. Time after time.
Source: Golden: A Retelling of Rapunzel

Love, Time

“There is the sudden. There is the eventual.
And in between, there is the living.

We do not start as dust. We do not end as dust. WE make more than dust.

That's all we ask of you. Make more than dust.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Two Boys Kissing

“The worst wounds, the deadliest of them, aren't the ones people see on the outside. They're the ones that make us bleed internally.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infamous

People

“Men are always ready to die for us, but not to make our lives worth having. Cheap sentiment and bad logic.”

Louisa May Alcott book Jo's Boys

Source: Jo's Boys

Men

“It no longer makes me cry and die and tear myself to see her go because everything goes away from me like that now”

Jack Kerouac book Visions of Cody

girls, visions, anything, just in the same way and forever and I accept lostness forever.
Visions of Cody (1960)

Tear, Cry

“Some books leave us free and some books make us free.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Books

“Are we prepared to make an enemy out of the Kingdom? The question is, are you bastards prepared to make an enemy out of Fairy Tail?”

Hiro Mashima (1977) Japanese manga artist

Question

“You can't throw away years of your life because it makes a funny anecdote.”

David Nicholls book One Day

Source: One Day

Life

“Sometimes you make up your mind about something without knowing why, and your decision persists by the power of inertia. Every year it gets harder to change.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Decision, Change

“Maybe they didn't make vampires out of ugly people. Or maybe ugly people just didn't want to live forever.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

People

“It makes me uncomfortable to talk about meanings and things.”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

As quoted in My Love Affair with David Lynch and Peachy Like Nietzsche: Dark Clown Porn Snuff for Terrorists and Gorefiends (2005) by Jason Rogers, p. 7
Context: It makes me uncomfortable to talk about meanings and things. It is better not to know so much about what things mean. Because the meaning, it's a very personal thing and the meaning for me is different than the meaning for someone else.

“First you find out what you have, Dad would say. Then you figure out how to make it work for what you need, 'cause you don't get what you want. You get just what you have and no more.”

Lilith Saintcrow (1976) American writer

Source: Betrayals