Quotes about making
page 48

“We never see other people anyway, only the monsters we make of them.”

Colson Whitehead book Zone One

Source: Zone One

People

“It's choice that makes us human.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Vanishing Acts

“[A] novel is not moral in the usual sense of the word. It can be called moral when it shakes us out of our stupor and makes us confront the absolutes we believe in.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Source: Reading Lolita in Tehran

Sense

“They're animals, all right. But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings?”

Stephen King book The Long Walk

Source: The Long Walk

Animals

“Hours later the blank sheet still stared at me, and I beat my fist against the desk in fury and fustration, striking it so hard my hand bled. That is how heavy a secret can become. It can make blood flow easier than ink.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

Secret

“Families will not be broken. Curse and expel them, send their children wandering, drown them in floods and fires, and old women will make songs of all these sorrows and sit on the porch and sing them on mild evenings.”

Marilynne Robinson book Housekeeping

Source: Housekeeping

Women, Children, Family, Singing

“I am about life. I’m gonna live as hard as i can and as full as i can until i die. And i’m not letting these parasites, these oppressors, these greedy racist swine make me kill my children in my mind, before they are even born.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

Source: Assata: An Autobiography

Life, Children, Swine

“I am going to become a writer for Cosmo - you don’t have to make any sense at all. Or maybe I’ll be a bloke, they don’t have to make sense either.”

Louise Rennison book Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging

Source: Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging

Sense

“I'm not going to make movies that tell children, "You should despair and run away".”

Hayao Miyazaki (1941) Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka

Children, Despair

“One of the most important resources that a garden makes available for use, is the gardener's own body. A garden gives the body the dignity of working in its own support. It is a way of rejoining the human race.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Way, Support

“A little Consideration, a little Thought for Others, makes all the difference.”

A.A. Milne (1882–1956) British author

Funny

“The mind is a universe and can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Hell, Universe

“The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant, and let the air out of the tires.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Children, Way, Home, Funny

“She sowed in my mind the idea that reality is not only what we see on the surface; it has a magical dimension as well and, if we so desire, it is legitimate to enhance it and color it to make our journey through life less trying.”

Isabel Allende book Eva Luna

Source: Eva Luna

Life, Color, Idea, Reality

“I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

Love, Peace, Imagination, Rage

“Why no. I’m too conceited. If you want to call it that. I don’t make
comparisons. I never think of myself in relation to anyone else. I just refuse
to measure myself as part of anything. I’m an utter egotist.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

Thinking, Parting

“This is what terrorism is occupied with as well: making real, palpable violence surface in opposition to the invisible violence of security.”

Jean Baudrillard book Simulacra and Simulation

Source: Simulacra and Simulation

“Gonna change my way of thinking, make my self a different set of rules. Gonna put my good foot forward and stop being influenced by fools.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Fools, Way, Thinking, Change

“She snuggled back under the blanket with me, turned toward me so that she could rest her head on my chest. “I hear your heart,” she said.
“Do you check every once in a while, just to make sure I’m not undead?”

Richelle Mead book The Fiery Heart

Source: The Fiery Heart

Heart

“It is important for this country to make its people so obsessed with their own liberal individualism that they do not have time to think about a world larger than self.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: Black Genius: African-American Solutions to African-American Problems

People, World, Thinking, Time

“Its never to late to get back on your feet though we wont live forever make sure you accomplish what you were put here for”

Abigail Adams (1744–1818) 2nd First Lady of the United States (1797–1801)

Source: My Dearest Friend: Letters of Abigail and John Adams

“Of course, they're not clowning aroundto make me laugh. They're doing their best to live verylives, and they just happen to fall down sometimes. I think that's cool.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Thinking

“Now I understand. When you love someone, you have to try things even if they don't make sense to anyone else.”

Gennifer Choldenko book Al Capone Does My Shirts

Source: Al Capone Does My Shirts

Love, Understanding, Sense

“If you had hope, maybe you could find a way to make things change,. Because if you thought about it, there were so many reasons to try.”

Suzanne Collins book Gregor and the Code of Claw

Source: Gregor and the Code of Claw

Hope, Way, Change

“But in some ways, the most significant choices one makes in life are done for reasons that are not all that dramatic, not earth-shaking at all; often enough, the choices we make are, for better or for worse, made by default.”

Marya Hornbacher book Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Source: Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Life, Way

“Do all you can to make your dreams come true.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Dreams

“Every decision you make can change the world. The best life is the one the gods don't notice. You want to live free, boy, live quietly."
"I want to be a soldier. A hero."
"You'll grow out of it.”

Steven Erikson book Gardens of the Moon

Prologue (p. 5)
Source: Gardens of the Moon (1999)
Context: “Heed the lesson there, son.”
“What lesson?”
“Every decision you make can change the world. The best life is the one the gods don’t notice. You want to live free, boy, live quietly.”
“I want to be a soldier. A hero.”
“You’ll grow out of it.”

Life, God, World, Boy

“What you see is what you make. What you see in a people is what you eventually create in them.”

Ben Okri (1959) Nigerian writer

Source: A Time for New Dreams

People

“A book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Source: Education of a Wandering Man

Books, Thinking

“The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

#107
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Happiness, Thinking

“… there was no such thing as curses. People make and break their own fortunes -they are the masters of their own fate.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Uncommon Criminals

Fate, People

“For you, a thousand times over." Then I turned and ran. It was only a smile, nothing more. It didn't make everything alright. It didn't make anything all right. Only a smile. A tiny thing. But I'll take it. With open arms.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Source: The Kite Runner

Smile, Time

“You’re one of those guys who can make a party just by leaving it. It’s a great gift.”

P.G. Wodehouse book The Girl in Blue

Source: The Girl in Blue (1970)

Guy

“Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part Five: Lightness and Weight

Children, Tear, Grass, Success

“Oh, I used to lie all the time as a kid." I didn't think of it as lying, though. I thought of it as playing make-believe. I told Kitty she was adopted and her real family was in a traveling circus. It's why she took up gymnastics.”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Lie, Family, Travel, Lying

“I've found that what most people call luck is often little more than raw talent combined with the ability to make the most of opportunities. (Talon Karrde)”

Timothy Zahn Heir to the Empire

Source: Heir to the Empire

People

“Although other animals may be different from us, this does not make them LESS than us”

Marc Bekoff (1945) American biologist

Source: Animals Matter: A Biologist Explains Why We Should Treat Animals with Compassion and Respect

Animals

“Turn off the light," she says as she walks away, creating a smallthat smells sweet and chemical. It makes me sad because it's the smell she makes when she's leaving.”

Augusten Burroughs book Running with Scissors

Source: Running with Scissors

Sadness, Light

“there are things you do because they feel right and they may make no sense and they may make no money and it may be the real reason we are here: to love each other and to eat each other's cooking and say it was good.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Variant: Real Reason:
There are things you do because they feel right & they may make no sense & they may make no money & it may be the real reason we are here: to love each other & to eat each other's cooking & say it was good.

Love, Money, Feeling, Sense

“The absence of the will to live is, alas, not sufficient to make one want to die.”

Michel Houellebecq (1956) writer

“I was like a well trained pianist who knows which note to hit, but can't make the music his own.”

David Benioff book City of Thieves

Source: City of Thieves

Music, Training

“If you want sense, you'll have to make it yourself.”

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

Sense

“A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

quote from Georges Jeanniot, in Souvenirs sur Degas (Memories of Degas, 1933)
quotes, undated

People, Painting

“It often happens that we blurt out things that may in some kind of way be harmful to us, but we are silent about things that may make us look ridiculous; because in this case effect follows very quickly on cause.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Way

“Some people make a bad bed, they just have to lie in it.”

Virginia Euwer Wolff book Make Lemonade

Source: Make Lemonade

People, Lie

“Just out of curiosity, how many weapons are in that thing? (Kiara)
Enough to make me happy. (Nykyrian)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of the Night

Happiness

“The paperback is very interesting but I find it will never replace the hardcover book -- it makes a very poor doorstop.”

Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British filmmaker

Books

“Don't stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed.”

George Burns (1896–1996) American comedian, actor, and writer

Money

“There is never one absolutely right thing to do. All you can do is honor what you believe, accept the consequences of your own actions, and make the best out of what happens.”

Garth Nix book Superior Saturday

Source: Superior Saturday

“We were quiet on the car ride home. I turned on the radio and found a station playing "Hey Jude." It was true, I didn't want to make it bad. I wanted to take the sad song and make it better. It's just that I didn't know how.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Sadness, Cars, Home

“The ludicrous element in our feeling does not make them any less authentic.”

Milan Kundera book Encounter

Source: Encounter

Feeling

“Doubt is to certainty as neurosis is to psychosis. The neurotic is in doubt and has fears about persons and things; the psychotic has convictions and makes claims about them. In short, the neurotic has problems, the psychotic has solutions.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Fear, Problem, Personality

“And maybe that’s was her biggest crime of all. Making him fall in love with her.”

Maya Banks (1964) Author

Source: Rush

Love

“If you love me as you say you do,' she whispered, 'make it so that I am at peace.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

Love, Peace

“I don’t know what I’m doing in the next five minutes and she has the next ten years figured out. I’ll worry about making it out of ninth grade alive. Then I’ll think about a career path.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

Thinking

“It wasn't an excuse. It was a fact. He'd had to make his way alone, and no one—not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses — ever makes it alone.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: Outliers: The Story of Success

Way, Star

“He does something to me, that boy. Every time. It’s his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Boy, Time, Heart, Cry

“A legend, Kludd, is a story that you begin to feel in your gizzard and then over time it becomes true in your heart. And perhaps makes you become a better owl.”

Kathryn Lasky (1944) American children's writer

Source: The Capture

Feeling, Time, Heart

“Every day, God gives us the sun — and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy.”

Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Variant: Everyday God gives us a moment in which it is possible to change everything that makes us unhappy.
Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

God, Change, Sun

“I want you to have big dreams, big goals. I want you to strive to achieve them. But I don't want to see you beating yourself up every time you make a mistake.”

Kelley Armstrong The Gathering

Source: The Gathering

Dreams, Time

“Buy land. They ain't making any more of the stuff.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

As quoted in Land in America : Its Value, Use, and Control (1981) by Peter M. Wolf, p. 6
Unsourced variant: Buy land, they aren't making any more of it.
As quoted in ...

“It does not make sense. It cannot exist. It’s impossible, and if it isn’t impossible, it’s irrelevant, and if it isn’t either of those things, it’s embarrassing.”

Philip Pullman book The Subtle Knife

Source: His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997), Ch. 4 : Trepanning

Sense

“He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach - that it makes no sense.”

Philip Roth book American Pastoral

Source: American Pastoral

Life, Sense, Learning

“Make no mistake: peaceful madmen are ahead of the future.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Source: Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Peace, Future

“Whenever you want to achieve something, keep your eyes open, concentrate and make sure you know exactly what it is you want. No one can hit their target with their eyes closed.”

Paulo Coelho book The Devil and Miss Prym

Source: The Devil and Miss Prym

“The human mind had a remarkable ability both to discount what it sees and make reality conform to expectation.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Warrior Heir

Reality

“It's human to make mistakes and some of us are more human than others.”

Ashleigh Brilliant (1933) American author and cartoonist

“If it makes you feel better, I’m not happy with the way all this went down any more than you are. But sometimes things have to go wrong in order to go right. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Kiss of the Night

Happiness, Way, Feeling

“The world runs,” Lowell said, “on the fuel of this endless, fathomless misery. People know it, but they don’t mind what they don’t see. Make them look and they mind, but you’re the one they hate, because you’re the one that made them look.”

Karen Joy Fowler book We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Source: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Hate, People, World

“Always fall in with what you're asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever's going. Not against: with.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

As quoted in Vogue (14 March 1963)
1960s
Variant: Always fall in with what you're asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever's going. Not against: with.

Life, Way

“Better not to invent her in her absence. Better to wait until she's actually here. Then he can make her up as she goes along.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

Waiting

“Were-Hunters are different from humans. (Ravyn)
You mean other than the fact that you live for several hundred years, can turn into animals, time travel, and wave your hand to make freaky stuff happen? (Susan)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dark Side of the Moon

Travel, Time, Animals

“You can tell by the way the girls whisper about him when he walks by in school that they want him. It makes me jealous but not for the reason people would think. Good hunting partners are hard to find.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

People, School, Way, Girl

“maturity meant thinking about risk long before you pondered the reward, and that success and happiness in life were as much about avoiding mistakes as making your mark into the world.”

Nicholas Sparks book True Believer

Lexie Darnell, Chapter 13, p. 205
Source: 2000s, True Believer (2005)
Context: In her new, more mature incarnation, she embraced the idea that maturity meant thinking about risk long before you pondered the reward, and that success and happiness in life were as much about avoiding mistakes as making your mark in the world.

Life, Happiness, World, Thinking