Quotes about making
page 55

“If you're crazy, there's two things you can do to make yourself feel better: One is to get yourself cured. The other is to make everyone you have to deal with crazy.”

Alan Dean Foster (1946) American fiction writer

Feeling

“If we could manage any sort of trust again… Well. That would make me happier than you can imagine”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Shadow Heir

Imagination

“Without pain, there would be no suffering. Without suffering, we would never learn from our mistakes. To make it right, pain and suffering is the key to all windows, without it, there is no way of life.”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

Life, Pain, Way, Suffering

“Do you really have the ability to control all types of undead?" Magnus asked.
"Can you really make a hundred shoes in a single night?" I asked.
Magnus smiled. "Wrong kind of fairie.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Bloody Bones

Source: Bloody Bones

Smile, Shoe, Night

“How can He be perfect? Everything He ever makes… dies.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Perfection

“There are four things that make a man fight as you just did," the duke explained to Rumbold. "Love, despair, anger, or insanity."

Erik counted them off on his fingers. "Everything to lose, nothing to lose, someone's taken it, or you've lost it.”

Alethea Kontis (1976) American writer

Source: Enchanted

Love, Fight, Despair, Anger

“And it's amazing how much noise people ignoring each other can make.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: Benny and Babe

People

“That millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.”

Erich Fromm The Sane Society

Source: The Sane Society

People

“I tiger can smile
A snake will say it loves you
Lies make us evil”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

Love, Smile, Evil

“Sometimes it’s worth lingering on the journey for a while before getting to the destination."

Metaphors. This was the cost of making out with an artist.”

Richelle Mead book The Indigo Spell

Source: The Indigo Spell

“You know how every now and then, you have a moment where your whole life stretches out ahead of you like a forked road, and even as you choose one gritty path you've got your eyes on the other the whole time, certain that you're making a mistake.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Life, Time

“Beirut is the Elizabeth Taylor of cities: insane, beautiful, falling apart, aging, and forever drama laden. She'll also marry any infatuated suitor who promises to make her life more comfortable, no matter how inappropriate he is.”

Rabih Alameddine book An Unnecessary Woman

Source: An Unnecessary Woman

Life, Age, Beauty

“Yes, I know," "And I love to hear you say it, Louis. I need to hear you say it. I don't think anyone will ever say it quite like you do. Come on, say it again. I'm a perfect devil. Tell me how bad I am. It makes me feel so good!”

Anne Rice book The Queen of the Damned

Source: The Queen of the Damned

Love, Feeling, Thinking, Perfection

“I choose not to make a graveyard of my body for the rotting corpses of dead animals.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Animals, Dead

“Oh, about beer I never lie. A man who lies about beer makes enemies.”

Stephen King book Pet Sematary

Jud, to Louis
Source: Pet Sematary (1983)

Lie, Beer

“The basic mistake people make is to think that happiness is the goal!”

François Lelord book Hector and the Search for Happiness

Source: Hector and the Search for Happiness

Happiness, People, Thinking

“Zsadist: I didn't make up the rules of this scenario
Wrath: You'll die if you go by yourself.
Zsadist: Well… I'm kind of ready to get off the ride.
Phury felt his skin get tight all over.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Awakened

“Anxiety, the next gumption trap, is sort of the opposite of ego. You're so sure you'll do everything wrong you're afraid to do anything at all. Often this, rather than "laziness," is the real reason you find it hard to get started. This gumption trap of anxiety, which results from over-motivation, can lead to all kinds of errors of excessive fussiness. You fix things that don't need fixing, and chase after imaginary ailments. You jump to wild conclusions and build all kinds of errors into the machine because of your own nervousness. These errors, when made, tend to confirm your original underestimation of yourself. This leads to more errors, which lead to more underestimation, in a self-stoking cycle. The best way to break this cycle, I think, is to work out your anxieties on paper. Read every book and magazine you can on the subject. Your anxiety makes this easy and the more you read the more you calm down.”

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

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 26
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Books, Way, Error, Motivation

“They come in injured and mangled, we put them back together, then they stand inhalls making demands. A thankless lot to be sure.”

Kristen Britain book First Rider's Call

Source: First Rider's Call

“It’s natural to overlook and even sacrifice the things that belong to us most easily most gracefully. So here’s me asking you to please not make that mistake.”

Ann Brashares book Sisterhood Everlasting

Source: Sisterhood Everlasting

Nature

“No sacrifice which a lover would make for his beloved is too great for us to make for our enemy.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer book The Cost of Discipleship

Source: The Cost of Discipleship

Lovers

“Nature creates few men brave, industry and training makes many.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince

Men, Nature, Training

“You know you love someone when you cannot put into words how they make you feel.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Love, Feeling

“The raw hunk of meat that used to be my enemy makes a sound, and I know where the mouth is. And I think the word he's trying to say is 'please'. Pity, not vengeance sends my arrow flying into his skull.”

Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist

Thinking, Flying

“I am dirty, Milena, endlessly dirty, that is why I make such a fuss about cleanliness. None sing as purely as those in deepest hell; it is their singing we take for the singing of angels.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

Angels, Hell, Singing

“There are memories that time does not erase… Forever does not make loss forgettable, only bearable.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Memory, Loss, Time

“And so I wait. I wait for time to heal the pain and raise me to me feet once again - so that I can start a new path, my own path, the one that will make me whole again.”

Jack Canfield (1944) American writer

Source: Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul II

Pain, Time, Waiting

“What makes a man a man? A friend of mine once wondered. Is it his origins? The way he comes to life? I don't think so. It's the choices he makes. Not how he starts things, but how he decides to end them.”

Guillermo del Toro (1964) Mexican film director

Source: Hellboy: The Art of the Movie

Life, Way, Thinking

“What makes something special is not just what you have to gain, but what you feel there is to lose.”

Andre Agassi (1970) US tennis player

Feeling

“The unpredictable and the predetermined unfold together to make everything the way it is.”

Tom Stoppard Arcadia

Source: Arcadia

Way

“The thing about people who are truly and malignantly crazy: their real genius is for making the people around them think theyare crazy. In military science this is called Psy-Ops, for your info.”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

People, Thinking, Science

“I am always amazed by people who know something is wrong but still insist on ignoring it, as if that will somehow make it go away. They spare themselves the confrontation, but end up boiling in resentment anyway.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

People

“I make mistakes. That's what I do. I
speak without thinking, I act without
knowing. I drink so much that I can
barely walk… I'm a fantastic lover
though, and an amazing friend. God
knows I mean well.”

Candace Bushnell (1958) American author

God, Lovers, Drink, Thinking

“Make every effort to change things you do not like. If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking. You might find a new solution.”

Maya Angelou book Letter to My Daughter

Source: Letter to My Daughter

Way, Thinking, Effort, Change

“It's not fair."

"It's not. But then, that's the game. It makes life great. The fact that it ends when we don't want it to. The ending gives it meaning.”

Marisha Pessl (1977) American writer

Source: Night Film

Life, Game

“But fear of making mistakes can itself become a huge mistake, one that prevents you from living, for life is risky and anything less is already a loss.”

Rebecca Solnit (1961) Author and essayist from United States

Source: A Field Guide to Getting Lost

Life, Fear, Loss

“Giving to other people makes me feel alive. Not my car or my house. Not what I look like in the mirror. When I give my time, when I can make someone smile after they were feeling sad…”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

People, Sadness, Smile, Cars

“I am invariably late for appointments - sometimes as much as two hours. I've tried to change my ways but the things that make me late are too strong, and too pleasing.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Way, Strong, Change

“The boys at school are so degenerate that it makes one feel pessimistic about the future of the male gender in general.”

Regina Doman (1970) American writer

Source: The Shadow of the Bear

School, Feeling, Boy, Future

“I make a bad mom, but I can pull off a crazy aunt.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Burns

Moms

“The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Dogs
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIV - Higgledy-Piggledy

Pleasure, Dogs, Fools

“Great people have great egos; maybe that's what makes them great.”

Paul Arden (1940–2008) writer

People

“If I understand Change, I shall make no great mistake in Life”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Life, Understanding, Change

“And you'll always love me won't you?
Yes
And the rain won't make any difference?
No”

Ernest Hemingway book A Farewell to Arms

Source: A Farewell to Arms

Love

“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.”

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

Source: Collected Works: Wise Blood / A Good Man is Hard to Find / The Violent Bear it Away / Everything that Rises Must Converge / Essays and Letters

Truth

“Babies and Other Hazards of Sex: How to Make a Tiny Person in Only 9 Months, with Tools You Probably Have around the Home.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Source: Babies and Other Hazards of Sex: How to Make a Tiny Person in Only 9 Months, with Tools You Probably Have around the Home

Sex, Home, Baby, Personality

“Good fences make good neighbors.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

“The ability to speak does not make you intelligent.”

George Lucas (1944) American film producer

Intelligence

“Art isn't meaningless… It is in itself. It isn't in that it tries to make life less so.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

Life, Art

“Why'd you want to sing about sad things?" Candy had asked him.
"Because any fool can be happy," he'd said to her.
"It takes a man with real heart"
—he'd made a fist and laid it against his chest—
"to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.”

Clive Barker Days of Magic, Nights of War

Source: Days of Magic, Nights of War

Happiness, Sadness, Beauty, Fools

“The destructive character knows only one watchword: make room. And only one activity: clearing away. His need for fresh air and open space is stronger than any hatred.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

"The Destructive Character" Frankfurter Zeitung (20 November 1931)
Source: Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings

“It's just the biggest mistake I could think to make”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Thinking

“It was her religion to make the best of everything.”

Lyndall Gordon (1941) South African writer and academic

Source: Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft

Religion

“When I was twelve, a fortune teller told me that my one true love would die young and leave me all alone.. Everyone said she was a fraud, that she was just making it up.. I’d really like to know why the hell a person would make up a thing like that.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: God-Shaped Hole

Love, Hell, Fraud, Personality

“Laughter is more than just a pleasurable activity… When people laugh together, they tend to talk and touch more and to make eye contact more frequently.”

Gretchen Rubin (1966) American writer

Source: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

People, Pleasure, Laughter

“Power makes you lazy.”

David Graeber book The Utopia of Rules

The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy

“Find someone who makes you smile, because it only takes a smile to make a day better”

Paulo Coelho book The Devil and Miss Prym

Source: The Devil and Miss Prym

Smile

“Geniuses and supergeniuses always make their own rules on sex as on everything else; they do not accept the monkey customs of their lessers.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Friday

Source: Friday (1983), Ch. XXI, p. 214

Sex

“Of course it doesn't make sense." Lady Wendall said. "The rules of society rarely do.”

Patricia C. Wrede (1953) author

Source: Magician's Ward

Sense

“Things didn't turn out the way they were supposed to, but what can you do? You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Variant: Things didn't turn out the way they're supposed to, but what can you do? You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.
Source: Life of Pi

Life, Way

“Pretty girls make graves.”

Jack Kerouac book The Dharma Bums

Source: The Dharma Bums (1958)

Girl

“Only human beings can look directly at something, have all the information they need to make an accurate prediction, perhaps even momentarily make the accurate prediction, and then say that it isn't so.”

Gavin de Becker (1954) American engineer

Source: The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence

“A woman at a certain age who is unmarried, our society teaches her to see it as a deep personal failure. And a man, after a certain age isn’t married, we just think he hasn’t come around to making his pick.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie We Should All Be Feminists

Source: We Should All Be Feminists

Age, Failure, Thinking, Personality

“Political activism is seductive because it seems to offer the possibility that one can improve society, make things better, without going through the personal ordeal of rearranging one's perceptions and transforming one's self.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Source: Still Life with Woodpecker

Personality

“Kyoya: A single day can make all the difference.”

Bisco Hatori (1975) Japanese manga artist

Source: Ouran High School Host Club, Vol. 2

“We have to be able to criticize what we love,
Say what we have to say,
'Cause if you're not trying to make something better,
Then as far as I can tell, you are just in the way.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

What If No One's Watching
Song lyrics

Love, Way

“First you say I am a murderer - an agent in league against you - and now I am a deluded heartsick girl! Pray make up your mind so I can scoff at you with precision!”

Gordon Dahlquist (1961) American writer

Source: The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters, Volume Two

Girl

“A New Orleans credo: When life gives you lemons - make daiquiris.”

Chris Rose

1 Dead in Attic: Post-Katrina Stories

Life

“It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance, for our consideration and application of these things, and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

Letter to H.G. Wells (10 July 1915).

Life, Beauty, Art

“The only thing that makes one an artist is making art. And that requires the precise opposite of hanging out; a deeply lonely and unglamorous task of tolerating oneself long enough to push something out.”

David Rakoff (1964–2012) writer

Source: Half Empty

Art

“Mistress, I have never asked anything of you in my servitude. But now, I beg you this: do not make me keep passing these adolescent sentiments back and forth all night.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Shadow Heir

Night

“I don't want to make the same mistake twice. I don't want to tell myself it's over when it's not.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

“Your being born makes your parents God. You owe them your life, and they can control you. Then puberty makes you Satan, just because you want something better.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Life, God, Parent

“I've always thought anyone can make money. Making a life worth living, that's the real test.”

Robert Fulghum (1937) American writer

Life, Money

“The only one," he murmured. His chin dipped a little bit. "You know that, Dru? You're the only person who's ever believed in me. You know what that'll do to a guy?"

What?"I-"

"It makes him want to live up to it.”

Lilith Saintcrow (1976) American writer

Source: Reckoning

Guy, Personality

“And If only I could, I'd make a deal with God…”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

God

“What she lacks in poetry she makes up for in venom”

Sarra Manning (1950) British writer

“How you're still always trapped.

How your head is the cave, your eyes the cave mouth. How you live inside your head and only see what you want. How you only watch the shadows and make up your own meaning.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Diary

Source: Diary

“Intrigued by that enigma, he dug so deeply into her sentiments that in search of interest he found love, because by trying to make her love him he ended up falling in love with her.”

Gabriel García Márquez book One Hundred Years of Solitude

Source: One Hundred Years of Solitude

Love, Search

“Oh, wonderful. I killed his father. He hates me. He knows how to make bombs. Come on, Wedge, how does this story end?”

Aaron Allston (1960–2014) American writer

Hate

“She remember her granny telling her, 'Men are like coal boilers, Ellie. If you find a man you reckon to keep, you got to feed his belly every day, make him burn for you, then release some steam purty regular, or you ain't ever gonna get him to work.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Lothaire

Men

“I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly tell our children that honesty is the best policy.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

"Rungs of the Ladder" http://books.google.com/books?id=HLpRc3rm5b8C, BBC Radio broadcast, 11 July 1932 <br class="br">1930s

Children, World

“This must be part of Mother Nature's master plan—making these boys so irresistibly cute, in such a naughty way, that the purity of their intentions becomes irrelevant.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Way, Boy, Nature, Parting

“Charity even for one person does not make sense except in terms of an effort to love all Creation in response to the Creator's love for it.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Source: The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

Love, Sense, Effort, Personality

“Enthusiasm is the electricity of life. How do you get it? You act enthusiastic until you make it a habit.”

Gordon Parks (1912–2006) American photographer, musician, writer and film director

Life

“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

Václav Havel book Disturbing the Peace

Source: Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 5 : The Politics of Hope
Variant translation or similar statement: Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.
Context: Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

Hope, Sense, Hope

“I hear a guttural sound followed by a weak sigh and look back at the bodies.
"I'm going to kill the kid," Barrons says faintly.
Ryodan makes a burbling sound like a bloody laugh. I don't think he even has the parts left to laugh with. "Get in line.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Iced

Thinking, Parting

“How long can we maintain? I wonder. How long before one of us starts raving and jabbering at this boy? What will he think then? This same lonely desert was the last known home of the Manson family. Will he make that grim connection..”

Hunter S. Thompson book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Source: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Family, Home, Boy, Thinking

“It is a queer and fantastic world. Why can't people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has got the wrong thing. Perhaps you can make head or tail of it; it is beyond me.”

Ford Madox Ford book The Good Soldier

Part Four, Ch. V (pp. 237-238)
Source: The Good Soldier (1915)
Context: It is a queer and fantastic world. Why can't people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has got the wrong thing. Perhaps you can make head or tail of it; it is beyond me.
Is there any terrestrial paradise where, amidst the whispering of the olive-leaves, people can be with whom they like and have what they like and take their ease in shadows and in coolness? Or are all men's lives like the lives of us good people — like the lives of the Ashburnhams, of the Dowells, of the Ruffords — broken, tumultuous, agonized, and unromantic lives, periods punctuated by screams, by imbecilities, by deaths, by agonies? Who the devil knows?

People, World