Quotes about making
page 56

“God, how we get our fingers in each other's clay. That's friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of each other.”

Ray Bradbury book Something Wicked This Way Comes

Source: Something Wicked This Way Comes

God, Friendship

“When the going gets tough, the tough make cookies.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…

“Love is the only thing that we can carry with us when we go, and it makes the end so easy.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women (1868), Ch. 40 : The Valley Of The Shadow
Source: Little Women Book Two Book: Good Wives

Love

“In my years, I have seen that people must be their own gods and make their own good fortune. The bad will come or not come anyway.”

Octavia E. Butler Wild Seed

Source: Wild Seed

God, People

“That's good; don't deny it. Denying the undeniable just makes you sound like a fool as well as a liar. In this profession, you can be one- sometimes the other. But never both.”

Ally Carter book Only the Good Spy Young

Source: Only the Good Spy Young

Fools

“Oh, I am getting married," Raisa said sleepily. "You promised me that if I agreed to marry you, that you would make it happen." She extended her hand, the one with the ring Han had given her, and waved it under his nose. "So. It's time to pay up.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Crimson Crown

Time

“If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Variant: If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.
Source: Immaturity

Family, Dance, Family

“God doesn't bribe, child. He just makes a sign and lets people take it as they will.”

Stephen King book The Stand

Source: The Stand

God, People

“If you’re really hard up, I can introduce you to my grandmother. She’s a fan.” Adam blinked. “She doesn’t typically sleep with pretty young things, but she would make an exception in your case. You might even learn a trick or two.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Burn for Me

Sleep, Learning

“It wasn't good, he wasn't good, he did not have good intentions. I stood there, and he stood there. He breathed out the bitter air that makes women doubt everything, and I breathed it in, as I had always done.”

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

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

Women

“Have your adventures, make your mistakes, and choose your friends poorly -- all these make for great stories.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

“At its best, schooling can be about how to make a life, which is quite different from how to make a living.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Source: The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School

Life, School

“Thalia blushed. "Hi, Lord Apollo."

Zeus's girl, yes? Makes you my half sister. Used to be a tree, didn't you? Glad you're back. I hate it when pretty girls turn into trees. Man, I remember one time—”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

Hate, Girl, Sister, Tree

“Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.”

Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British filmmaker

Suffering

“Please believe him. Keep your heart open to him. He can make you happy. He has always loved you, and you once loved him with all your heart.”

Ann Brashares book My Name is Memory

Source: My Name Is Memory

Love, Happiness, Heart

“Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.”

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

Attitude

“Shapeshifter parenting motto—if your kid slits somebody's throat, always have a backup plan to make the body disappear.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Slays

Parent

“We're all born lost, aren't we? We're all born separated from God - over and over life makes sure to inform us of this - and yet we're all real: we have names, we have lives. We mean something. We must.”

Douglas Coupland Hey Nostradamus!

Source: Hey Nostradamus!

Life, God

“It is fate that I am here,' George persisted, 'but you can call it Italy if it makes you less unhappy.”

E.M. Forster book A Room with a View

Source: A Room with a View

Fate

“Life is not orderly. No matter how we try to make it so, right in the middle of it we die, lose a leg, fall in love, or drop a jar of applesauce.”

Natalie Goldberg (1948) American writer

Love, Life

“I know it's not fair to ask you to be with me when we can't even sleep in the same bed, but I'll love you better than anyone else could. I'll take care of you and make you happy. I know I can.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Entwined with You

Love, Happiness, Sleep

“Men are the weak ones, luv. Didn't you know? Oh, you make a lot of noise, but its the women who are strong. Where it counts. In 'ere”

Jennifer Donnelly book The Tea Rose

Source: The Tea Rose

Women, Men, Strong

“It was a kiss to level mountains and shake stars from the sky. It was a kiss to make angels faint and demons weep… a passionate, demanding, soul-searing kiss that nearly knocked the earth off its axis.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Tempt Me at Twilight

Angels, Soul, Mountain, Star

“That’s what you taught me - we don’t have to accept destiny or Des Tiny. We can create our own future, all of us. We have the power to rule our lives - we just have to make the choice to use it.”

Darren Shan book Sons of Destiny

Source: Sons of Destiny

Future

“There is a dead spot in the night, that coldest, blackest time when the world has forgotten evening and dawn is not yet a promise. A time when it is far too early to arise, but so late that going to bed makes small sense.”

Robin Hobb book Assassin's Quest

Source: Assassin's Quest

World, Sense, Time, Night

“You can hold a secret, hold it so far in that it drives nearly every thought and every move you make- your very heartbeat, almost.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Six Rules of Maybe

Secret

“It's not a problem. There are people out there with much worse problems than mine."-Cynthia
"Doesn't make yours any more fun to bear."-Liza
"No. But it does help with the self-pity."- Cynthia”

Jennifer Crusie book Bet Me

Source: Bet Me

People, Problem, Help

“But he does insist on a conversation. Goddamn it! Why can't people just do what I want them to do and be gone? It's a worldwide conspiracy to make me be polite when I don't want to be.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel (1967–2020) American author and journalist

People

“Highs and lows make you feel that things matter, but they're nothing." "So what's something?" "Being reliable is something. Being good.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

William Black talking with Oskar
"A Simple Solution to an Impossible Problem" (p. 297)
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)
Context: "It's easy to be emotional. You can always make a scene... Highs and lows make you feel that things matter, but they're nothing." "So what's something?" "Being reliable is something. Being good."

Feeling

“We all know that it is women who make the decisions, but we have to let men think that the decisions are theirs. It is an act of kindness on the part of women.”

Alexander McCall Smith book The Full Cupboard of Life

Source: The Full Cupboard of Life

Women, Men, Thinking, Decision

“To know and feel all this and not have the words to express it makes a human a grave of his own thoughts.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

Feeling

“You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally.”

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

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

Nature, Painting, Perfection

“The wound you refuse to dress is one that will never heal. You gush lifeblood and never even know why. It will make you weak at a critical moment when you need to be strong.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Iced

Strong

“I don't know if it's better to be close with your daughter or make sure that she has a better life than you do.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Life, Daughters

“I make the other’s absence responsible for my worldliness.”

Roland Barthes book A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

Source: A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

“A great book is a homing device
For navigating paradise.

A good book somehow makes you care
About the comfort of a chair.

A bad book owes to many trees
A forest of apologies.”

J. Patrick Lewis (1942) American children's writer and poet

Books, Home, Tree

“I had always felt that mittens were a few steps back on the evolutionary scale-- why, I wondered, would we want to make ourselves into a less agile version of lobster.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“Strength does not make one capable of rule; it makes one capable of service.”

Brandon Sanderson book The Way of Kings

Source: The Way of Kings

“I am sending back the key
that let me into bluebeard's study; because he would make love to me
I am sending back the key;
in his eye's darkroom I can see
my X-rayed heart, dissected body:
I am sending back the key
that let me into bluebeard s study.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Love, Making love, Study, Heart

“Death makes angels of us all
and gives us wings
where we had shoulders
smooth as raven's
claws”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

An American Prayer (1978)
Variant: Death makes angels of us all
and gives us wings
where we had shoulders
smooth a raven´s claws…

Death, Angels

“This inhuman place makes human monsters.”

Stephen King book The Shining

Variant: Sometimes human places, create inhuman monsters.
Source: The Shining 1977

“I think it’s wrong that only one company makes the game Monopoly.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Game, Thinking

“I want to make a memorial for our turkey. Never has a bird been so tortured to provide such a lousy dinner.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

Bird, Memory

“It's the wanting to know that makes us matter.”

Tom Stoppard Arcadia

Hannah, Act II.
Source: Arcadia (1993)

“I believe entertainment can aspire to be art, and can become art, but if you set out to make art you're an idiot.”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

Art

“Yes'm, old friends is always best, 'less you can catch a new one that's fit to make an old one out of.”

Sarah Orne Jewett book The Country of the Pointed Firs

Source: The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896), Ch. 12

“it is only courage on the path itself that makes the path appear”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Courage, Appearance

“It may be that DMT makes us able to perceive what the physicist call "dark matter" - the 95 per cent of the universe's mass that is known to exist but that at present remains invisible to our senses and instruments.”

Graham Hancock (1950) British writer and journalist

Sense, Universe

“It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Variant: It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.
Source: The Alchemist

Life, Dreams, Motivational, Deep

“We wouldn't be alive without love we wouldn't have survived without running maybe we shouldn't be surprised that getting better at one could make you better at the other.”

Christopher McDougall (1962) American journalist and writer

Source: Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

Love

“And while seeing Trent in his tighty-whities would make my decade, I’d found out long ago that I couldn’t stay mad at a man wearing nothing but underwear. They looked so charmingly vulnerable.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: The Outlaw Demon Wails

Madness

“I remember manners, that's when people are scared to make other persons mad.”

Emma Donoghue Room

Source: Room

People, Personality, Madness

“It just goes to show you: every baby is born beautiful.
It's what we project on them that makes them ugly.”

Jodi Picoult book Small Great Things

Source: Small Great Things

Beauty, Baby

“I walk away from him. It's enormously pleasing to me, this walking away. It's like being able to make people appear and vanish, at will.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

People, Appearance

“He was making a brave attempt, but Jason could see the sadness lingering in his eyes. Something had happened to him… something to do with Calypso.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Sadness

“Quit dwelling on other people's stories and make up some of your own.”

Alethea Kontis (1976) American writer

Source: Enchanted

People

“Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author’s phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.”

Guy Debord (1931–1994) French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker and founding member of the Situationist International (SI)

Source: Society of the Spectacle (1967), Ch. 8, sct. 207 (confer Comte de Lautréamont, Poésies II, 1870).

Idea, Falseness

“You would make a great teacher. (Grace)
Commander to teacher. Why not call me Cato the Elder, and really insult me while you’re at it? (Julian)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon Fantasy Lover

Source: Fantasy Lover

Teachers

“We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Thinking

“O Shepherd. You said you would make my feet like hinds' feet and set me upon High Places".

"Well", he answered "the only way to develop hinds' feet is to go by the paths which the hinds use.”

Hannah Hurnard book Hinds' Feet on High Places

Source: Hinds' Feet on High Places

Way

“However in the world did her skin come green?" Nanny wondered, stupidly, for Melena blanched and Frex reddened, and the baby held her breath as if trying to turn blue to please them all. Nanny had to slap her to make her breath again.”

Gregory Maguire book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

World, Baby

“It is good people who make good places.”

Anna Sewell book Black Beauty

Source: This sentence is widely cited as being by Anna Sewell and from Black Beauty, but it is not to be found in the novel—her only published writing. The closest thing to it is "good places make good horses" in Ch. IX (pp. 45–46).

People, Attitude

“English is the product of a Norman warrior trying to make a date with an Anglo-saxon bar-maid, and as such is no more legitimate than any of the other products of that conversation.”

H. Beam Piper (1904–1964) American science fiction writer

Source: Fuzzy Sapiens (1964)

“You'll need to suffer to make any real art.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Diary

Source: Diary

Art, Suffering

“The role of art is to make a world which can be inhabited.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

As quoted at a Broadway memorial tribute to Saroyan, reported in The New York Times (31 October 1983)

World, Art

“Sometimes I think all I want to find is a mean guy and make him be nice to me. Or maybe a nice guy who's a little bit mean to me. But they're usually too nice too soon or too mean too long.”

Carrie Fisher book Wishful Drinking

Source: Wishful Drinking

Guy, Thinking

“Good sex isn’t just fun, it keeps us sane and happy. Having sex with someone makes us feel wanted, alive and potent”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Happiness, Sex, Feeling

“We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

Life, Happiness

“Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

1770s
Source: Letter to Abigail Adams (27 April 1777), published as Letter CXI in Letters of John Adams, Addressed to His Wife (1841) edited by Charles Francis Adams, p. 218

Pain, Hope, Freedom

“One should make the best choice possible given the circumstances, and then avoid second-guessing for the sake of one's own sanity.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Again the Magic

“We journalists make it a point to know very little about an extremely wide variety of topics; this is how we stay objective.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

“Good memories are like charms… Each is special. You collect them, one by one, until one day you look back and discover they make a long, colorful bracelet.”

James Patterson book Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas

Source: Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas

Color, Memory

“It would be so great if it were possible to go through life without making a single mistake but there is no such path. Falling, tripping, losing the way, making mistakes, little by little, walking one step at a time, this is the only way.”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

Life, Way, Time

“I sadly want a reform in the construction of children. Nature's only idea seems to be to make them machines for the production of incessant noise.”

Wilkie Collins book The Woman in White

Source: The Woman in White

Children, Idea, Nature

“Making money is art. And working is art. And good business is the best art.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Source: 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), p. 92
Context: Business art is the step that comes after Art. I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist. After I did the thing called 'art' or whatever it's called, I went into business art. I wanted to be an Art Businessman or a Business Artist. Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. During the hippies era people put down the idea of business – they'd say 'Money is bad', and 'Working is bad', but making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.

Money, Art, Business, Motivational

“The path I choose through the maze makes me what I am. I am not only a thing, but also a way of being--one of many ways--and knowing the paths I have followed and the ones left to take will help me understand what I am becoming.”

Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Algernon

Source: Flowers for Algernon

Way, Understanding, Help