Quotes about making
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“Nothing, no one, is too small to matter. What you do is going to make a difference.”

Madeleine L'Engle A Swiftly Tilting Planet

Source: A Swiftly Tilting Planet

“Sarcasm and compassion are two of the qualities that make life on Earth tolerable.”

Nick Hornby book Songbook

Source: Songbook

Life

“For you know that it's a fool who plays it cool, by making his world a little colder.”

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

Source: Paul McCartney, Composer/Artist

World, Fools

“Every decision you make, makes you. Never let other people choose who you’re going to be.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Lost Herondale

People, Decision

“Make you mess your message.”

Robin Roberts

Everybody's Got Something
Variant: Make your mess your message.

“There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth. Not going all the way, and not starting.” Siddhrtha Gautama”

Seth Godin (1960) American entrepreneur, author and public speaker

Source: Poke the Box

Truth, Way

“But Iget afraid. It's just that fear makes me sort of… angry and resentful, and I bite back at it. It's hard to describe."

It isn't hard to describe, you idiot," Aud said. "It's called courage.”

Jonathan Stroud book Heroes of the Valley

Source: Heroes of the Valley

Fear, Courage

“It didn't take a trauma to make you wear a mask. It didn't take your parents getting shot… or cosmic rays or a power ring… Just the perfect combination of loneliness and despair.”

Mark Millar Kick-Ass

Source: Kick-Ass

Parent, Loneliness, Perfection, Despair

“It isn’t about being at the same school or the same town or even the same room. It’s about being together. Love is a choice you make.”

Kristin Hannah (1960) American writer

Source: Night Road

Love, School

“Bullshit makes the flowers grow and that is beautiful”

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

Beauty, Flowers

“No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.”

George Eliot book Daniel Deronda

Source: Daniel Deronda

Love, Effort, Evil

“One of the greatest discoveries a person makes, one of their great surprises, is to find they can do what they were afraid they couldn't do.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Personality

“An excuse is what you make after the deed is done, while a justification is what you offer before.”

Brandon Sanderson book The Way of Kings

Source: The Way of Kings

“William untucked the covers and stood, making a mental list of everything he'd need for the coming trip. A few blades, serrated and non serrated. A vial of acid. A bone saw. A spiked paddle. A cat-o'-nine-tails. And a bag of Gummy Bears.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Darkest Secret

Cats

“The book that I shall make people read is the book of the heart, which holds the key to the mystery of life.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

Part of his public message upon arrival on his second visit to America (19 May 1932).
General sources

Life, People, Books, Reading

“These lights, this brightness, these clusters of human hope, of wild desire—I shall take these lights in my fingers. I shall make them bright, and whether they shine or not, it is in these fingers that they shall succeed or fail.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Love of the Last Tycoon

Source: The Love of the Last Tycoon

Hope, Light

“When you abandon making choices, you enter the vast world of excuses.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

World

“It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.”

Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British comic actor and filmmaker

Variant: Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself

Fools, Courage, Courageous

“Lightning makes no sound until it strikes.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. book Why We Can't Wait

Source: Why We Can't Wait

“Romance isn't in my repertoire, Eva. But a thousand ways to make you come are. Let me show you.”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

Way

“It’s the first time I’ve ever kissed a boy, which should make some sort of impression I guess, but all I can register is how unnaturally hot his lips are from the fever.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Boy, Kiss, Time

“Love is not to be found in someone else, but in ourselves; we simply awaken it. But in order to do that, we need the other person. The universe only makes sense when we have someone to share our feelings with.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes

Love, Feeling, Sense, Universe

“Never be ashamed of your love," he said gently. "The only thing to be ashamed of is denying your love. That is what makes the shadow grow within your heart; that is the darkening of the Light. And we all have many loves.”

Alison Croggon book The Riddle

Source: The Riddle

Love, Light, Heart

“Reading usually precedes writing. And the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Love, Dreams, Reading

“I didn't want to see her because it would make me feel better. I came because without her, it's hard to remember who I am…”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Feeling

“Michael smiled at me a little. “You’re a good man, Harry. But you’re making the same mistake Nicodemus always has—and the same one Karrin did.” “What mistake?” “You all think the critical word in the phrase ‘Sword of Faith’ is ‘sword.”

Jim Butcher book Skin Game

Source: Skin Game

Faith, Smile, Thinking

“Whatever you may be missing right now - a person, a place, a feeling, maybe you are injured and missing running - whatever it is, have peace and take heart - remember that any goodbye makes room for a hello.”

Kristin Armstrong (1973) American road bicycle racer

Peace, Feeling, Heart, Personality

“But by far the worst thing we do to males—by making them feel they have to be hard—is that we leave them with very fragile egos. The harder a man feels compelled to be, the weaker his ego is.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie We Should All Be Feminists

Source: We Should All Be Feminists

Feeling

“The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice.”

John Stuart Mill book On Liberty

Source: On Liberty

Feeling, Exercises

“Gabe scratched his double chin. "Maybe if you hurry with the seven-layer dip… And maybe if the kid apologizes for interrupting my poker game."
Maybe if I kick you in your soft spot, I thought. And make you sing Soprano for a week.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

Game, Singing

“There is an empty space next to you in the backseat of the station wagon. Make it the shape of everything you need. Now say hello.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Source: Crush

“Hey, Effie, watch this!" says Peeta. He tosses his fork over his shoulder and literally licks his plate clean whit his tongue making loud, satisfied sounds. Then he blows a kiss out to her in general and calls, "We miss you, Effie!”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Kiss

“It's just the most amazing thing to love a dog, isn't it? It makes our relationships with people seem as boring as a bowl of oatmeal.”

John Grogan (1958) American journalist

Source: Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog

Love, People, Dogs

“All the mistakes I make arise from forsaking my own station and trying to see the object from another person's point of view.”

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

Personality

“He asked about Dad and about Gran- as if talking about something could make it better. As if wounds needed attention.”

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Source: We Were Liars

“The best thing you can do for your fellow, next to rousing his conscience, is — not to give him things to think about, but to wake things up that are in him; or say, to make him think things for himself.”

George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist

The Fantastic Imagination (1893)
Source: A Dish of Orts
Context: A fairytale, a sonata, a gathering storm, a limitless night, seizes you and sweeps you away: do you begin at once to wrestle with it and ask whence its power over you, whither it is carrying you? The law of each is in the mind of its composer; that law makes one man feel this way, another man feel that way. To one the sonata is a world of odour and beauty, to another of soothing only and sweetness. To one, the cloudy rendezvous is a wild dance, with a terror at its heart; to another, a majestic march of heavenly hosts, with Truth in their centre pointing their course, but as yet restraining her voice. The greatest forces lie in the region of the uncomprehended.
I will go farther. The best thing you can do for your fellow, next to rousing his conscience, is — not to give him things to think about, but to wake things up that are in him; or say, to make him think things for himself. The best Nature does for us is to work in us such moods in which thoughts of high import arise. Does any aspect of Nature wake but one thought? Does she ever suggest only one definite thing? Does she make any two men in the same place at the same moment think the same thing? Is she therefore a failure, because she is not definite? Is it nothing that she rouses the something deeper than the understanding — the power that underlies thoughts? Does she not set feeling, and so thinking at work? Would it be better that she did this after one fashion and not after many fashions? Nature is mood-engendering, thought-provoking: such ought the sonata, such ought the fairytale to be.

Thinking

“So I have tried to make it clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Source: Letter from the Birmingham Jail

“The choices we make within the boundaries of the twists of fate determines who we are”

John Perkins book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Source: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Fate

“Killing one person makes you a murderer. Killing a million people makes you a king. Killing them all makes you God.”

Frank E. Peretti book House

Source: House

God, People, Personality

“It was a sound like someone trying not to make a sound.”

John Irving book A Widow for One Year

Source: A Widow for One Year

“The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense.”

Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American author

Attributed to an interview on Larry King Live; also quoted in Quotable Quotes (1997) edited by Deborah Deford
Attributed variant: The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense.
Clancy here expresses an idea evoked in similar statements made by others, all derived from the orignial made by Lord Byron:
Lord Byron: Truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.
Mark Twain: Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities, truth isn't.
G. K. Chesterton: Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it.
Leo Rosten: Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense. (attributed)
1990s

Reality, Sense