Quotes about naming
page 11

“All the best,
Sydney

P. S. "The Red Hurricane" is what I named the car.
P. P. S. Just because I like you, it doesn't mean I still don't think you're an evil creature of the night. You are.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Cars, Thinking, Evil, Night

“It's first owner… well, things didn't turn out too well for her. Her name was Helena.'
Piper let that sink in. "Wait, you mean the Helena? Helena of Troy?'
Annabeth nodded.
"And it's just sitting in your toolshed?”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Waiting

“My name is Magnus Chase. I’m sixteen years old. This is the story of how my life went downhill after I got myself killed.”

Rick Riordan book The Sword of Summer

Source: The Sword of Summer

Life

“And the Earth had no name. The gods know themselves and have no need of names. It is man who names all things, even gods.”

Megan Whalen Turner The Thief

Source: The Thief

God

“After all, a woman didn't leave much behind in the world to show she'd been there. Even the children she bore and raised got their father's name. But her quilts, now that was something she could pass on.”

Sandra Dallas American writer

Children, World

“Names are the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”

Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People

Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People

“It is my great hope someday, to see science and decision makers rediscover what the ancients have always known. Namely that our highest currency is respect.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Hope, Decision, Science

“Ask the dust on the road! Ask the Joshua trees standing alone where the Mojave begins. Ask them about Camilla Lopez, and they will whisper her name.”

John Fante (1909–1983) 1909–1983; American novelist, short story writer and screenwriter of Italian descent

Source: The Big Hunger

Tree

“No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong is what is against it.”

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

Law, Nature

“My wife."
"By what name is she called, Kincaid?"
"Mine.”

Julie Garwood (1946) American writer

Source: The Bride

“And the best and the worst of this is
That neither is most to blame,
If you have forgotten my kisses
And I have forgotten your name.”

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic

An Interlude.
Undated

Kiss

“Fortunate is the one who knows the name of their heart. They are the ones whose hearts are never truly lost. They can always call their heart back home.
Do you remember the name of your heart, Simon Lewis?”
“I think so,” Simon whispered.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Bitter of Tongue

Home, Thinking, Heart

“Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -how passionately I hate them!”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Hate, Passion

“She even learnt the language of a strange country which Senior Cosetti had been told some people believed still existed, although no-one in the world could say where it was. The name of this country was Wales.”

Susanna Clarke book Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Source: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

People, World, Country

“Give me a few minutes.”
“You have time.” He sat in the grass.
“Are you just going to sit there and watch me?”
“Yes. Watching pretty peasant girls is what we poor little rich boys do best.”
“Peasant?”
He shrugged. “You started the name calling.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: On the Edge

Girl, Boy, Grass, Time

“There will always be those who want to tell you who you are based on your name or the blood in your veins. Do not let other people decide who you are. Decide for yourself.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Tessa Gray, to Clary Fray, pg. 716
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Heavenly Fire (2014)
Context: I feel a kinship with you, too, you who have lost both brother and father. I know you have been judged and spoken of as the daughter of Valentine Morgenstern, and now the sister of Jonathan. There will always be those who want to tell you who you are based on your name or the blood in your veins. Do not let people decide who you are. Decide for yourself. That freedom is not a gift; it is a birthright. I hope that you and Jace will use it.

People

“The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and make it realized. This is poetry as illumination, for it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are, until the poem, nameless and formless-about to be birthed, but already felt. That distillation of experience from which true poetry springs births thought as dream births concept, as feeling births idea, as knowledge births (precedes) understanding.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

"Poetry is Not a Luxury"
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

Dreams, Hope, Feeling, Spring

“That ones yours, huh?"he asked, pointing to 3A."How come it just says 'Kyle'? Doesnt he have a last name?"
"Kyle wants to be a rock star,"Simon said, heading down the stairs."I think his working the one-name thing. Like Rihanna.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Star, Thinking

“I knew Dionysus must've filled it out, because he stubbornly insisted on getting my name wrong:

Dear _______Peter Johnson__________”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

“The most terrible things men do, they do in the name of love."— Madame Dorothea”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Love, Men

“People don't talk about anything… No, not anything. They name a lot of cars or clothes or swimming pools mostly and say how swell! But they all say the same things and nobody says anything different from anyone else.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

People, Cars, Clothes

“With false names, on the right nets, they could be anybody. Old men, middle-aged women, anybody, as long as they were careful about the way they wrote. All that anyone would see were the words, their ideas. Every citizen started equal, on the nets.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

Women, Men, Age, Way

“I still cry on waking. I'm not sure why. I feel nothing. Nothing I can name, anyway. It's like breathing - something that happens over which I have no control. (6)”

Mary E. Pearson book The Adoration of Jenna Fox

Source: The Adoration of Jenna Fox

Feeling, Cry

“Fate is just another word for people's choices coming to a head. Destiny, coincidence, whatever you name it. It inevitably lies in our hands.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: How to Kill a Rock Star

Fate, People

“There was my name up in lights. I said, 'God, somebody's made a mistake.' But there it was, in lights. And I sat there and said, 'Remember, you're not a star.' Yet there it was up in lights.”

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

Source: Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters

God, Star, Light

“I said, names aren't important," he repeated. There was a silence between them for some seconds, then the Ranger said: "Do you know what is important?"
Will shook his head.
"Supper is important!”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: The Ruins of Gorlan

Silence

“There's a name for people with an interest in the moon," Alex said. "They're called lunatics.”

Anthony Horowitz book Crocodile Tears

Source: Crocodile Tears

People

“Fuckhead:
The name’s MariKETA.
Go to hell,
The WITCH, doing a creepy spell somewhere right now.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night

Hell

“I keep six honest serving-men:
(They taught me all I knew)
Their names are What and Where and When
And How and Why and Who.”

Rudyard Kipling book Just So Stories

The Elephant's Child.
Just So Stories (1902)

Men

“Do you want to know why men name their penis? So the most important decisions in their life aren't made by a stranger.”

Linda Howard (1950) American writer

Source: After the Night

Life, Men, Decision

“What was your name again?"
"Still Eve."
"No, I'm sure it's something else. That doesn't seem right.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Bite Club

“My friends call me by my name."
"You don't have any friends."
"I don't want you to be my friend, Selia, or my servant, not now. I thought you were both. You have let me know I was wrong. So are you to treat me so. You are wrong.”

Shannon Hale The Goose Girl

Source: The Goose Girl

“99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

“Before she became the Girl from Nowhere-the One Who Walked In, the First and Last and Only, who lived a thousand years-she was just a little girl in Iowa, named Amy. Amy Harper Bellafonte.”

Justin Cronin The Passage

Source: The Passage Trilogy, The Passage (2010)

Girl

“Percy, lesser beings do many horrible things in the name of the gods. That does not mean we gods approve. The way our sons and daughters act in our names… well, it usually says more about THEM than it does about us.”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

God, Way, Daughters

“Despereaux," she whispered.
And then she shouted it, "Despereaux!"
Reader, nothing is sweeter in this sad world than the sound of someone you love calling your name.
Nothing.”

Kate DiCamillo book The Tale of Despereaux

Source: The Tale of Despereaux

Love, World, Sadness

“First the doctor told me the good news: I was going to have a disease named after me.”

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

Disease

“Wake up, Caitlin, Mr. Lensing had said. But what he didn't understand was that this dreamland was preferable, walking through this life half-sleeping, everything at arm's length or farther away. I understood those mermaids. I didn't care if they sang to me. All I wanted was to block out all the human voices as they called me name again and again, pulling me upward into light, to drown.”

Sarah Dessen book Dreamland

Source: Dreamland (2000)

Life, Sleep, Light

“I think I know what military fame is; to be killed on the field of battle and have your name misspelled in the newspapers.”

William T. Sherman (1820–1891) American General, businessman, educator, and author.

Thinking

“The Angel Gabriel disappeared once for sixty years and they found him on earth hiding in the body of a man named Miles Davis.”

Christopher Moore book Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Source: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Angels

“You said you want to became Hokage. I have become the Kazekage. If you are willing to bear the name Kage, you have to do what you must do.”

Masashi Kishimoto (1974) Japanese manga artist

“Sorrow is not a raven perched persistently above a chamber door. Sorrow is a thing with teeth, and while in time it retreats, it comes back at the whisper of it's name.”

Dean Koontz (1945) American author

Time

“What was the name of Pygmalion's sister?”

Sarah Dessen book Dreamland

Source: Dreamland (2000)

Sister

“Discretion,” said Fen with great complacency, “is my middle name.”
“I dare say. But very few people use their middle names.”

Edmund Crispin (1921–1978) British composer

Source: Beware of the Trains

People

“To his children, Will showed the same love he had always shown to her, fierce and unyielding. And the same protectiveness he had only ever showed to one other person: the person James had been named after. Will’s parabatai, Jem.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Whitechapel Fiend

Love, Children, Personality

“Don't you love Jesus?' Well, I thought an' I thought an' finally I says, 'No, I don't know nobody name' Jesus. I know a bunch of stories, but I only love people.”

John Steinbeck book The Grapes of Wrath

Source: The Grapes of Wrath

Love, People

“To be a Christian is to live dangerously, honestly, freely - to step in the name of love as if you may land on nothing, yet to keep on stepping because the something that sustains you no empire can give you and no empire can take away.”

Cornel West (1953) African-American philosopher and political/civil rights activist

Love

“I can always tell when you're thinking about food. You forget to be the Serious Wolf and you get this dreamy look in your eyes. You know, most people would think you were thinking about a girl. They have no idea that her name is bacon.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Stars

People, Food, Girl, Idea

“His name tasted of fire and wings, of curling smoke, of subtlety and strength and the rasping whisper of scales.”

Naomi Novik book Uprooted

Source: Uprooted

“No they called it the Codex Merlini because it was written by a guy named Ralph.”

Karen Chance American writer

Source: Embrace the Night

Guy

“Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him.”

Mel Brooks (1926) American director, writer, actor, and producer

People, Personality

“We don’t have much time. Mel will be out of the restroom soon.”
“You’ve got a magician named Mel?”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Time

“Please do not strain yourself, Miss Doyle. I won't have my girls going cross-eyed in the name of art.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

Art, Girl

“What’s her name? Claire, what’s her name?”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Black Dawn

“Your on your on with this one babe."
"Coward."
"Calling me names isn't going to get me in there."
-Ranger and Stephanie”

Janet Evanovich book To the Nines

Source: To the Nines

“Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience- or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope.”

Jane Austen book Sense and Sensibility

Source: Sense and Sensibility

Happiness, Hope, Patience

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Ozymandias

Source: Ozymandias

Despair

“When we only name the problem, when we state complaint without a constructive focus or resolution, we take hope away. In this way critique can become merely an expression of profound cynicism, which then works to sustain dominator culture.”

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

Source: Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope

Hope, Way, Problem

“We have to actually choose a name," Kane murmured above her head. "We can't keep calling him 'baby.' When he's fifteen he might resent it.”

Christine Feehan American writer

Source: Ruthless Game

Baby

“If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.”

Gaston Bachelard book The Poetics of Space

Source: La poétique de l'espace (The Poetics of Space) (1958), Ch. 1

Peace, Dreams, Housing

“Yeah, Atatsuki, don't call him by that name. It's rude! Kuran-sama is handsome, well-behaved, and a perfect honor student. Calling him "gang leader" would ruin his image!! At least call him "SUPREME GANG LEADER!!”

Matsuri Hino Japanese manga artist

Perfection

“When I first discovered the moon, he said, I gave it a different name. But everyone kept calling it the moon. The real name never caught on.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Source: Story People: Selected Stories & Drawings of Brian Andreas

“My name is Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered.”

Alice Sebold book The Lovely Bones

Source: The Lovely Bones

Fish

“If anybody thinks they should listen to me because I'm a professor at MIT, that's nonsense. You should decide whether something makes sense by its content, not by the letters after the name of the person who says it.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Thinking, Sense, Personality

“Here lies one whose name was writ in water.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Epitaph for himself (1821)

Water

“Will you remember that? Anywhere you are, if you can look up and find Perseus in the sky, find that smile, and hear the galactic wind whisper your name, you'll know that it's me, calling for you… calling you back to Lazarevo. (Alexander)”

Paullina Simons book Tatiana and Alexander

Source: Tatiana and Alexander

Smile

“The unexpected has happened so continually in my life that it has ceased to deserve the name.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Stark Munro Letters

Source: The Stark Munro Letters

Life

“Her name's Prim. She's just twelve. And I love her more than anything.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Love

“There was an old bastard named Lenin
Who did two or three million men in.
That's a lot to have done in
But where he did one in
That old bastard Stalin did ten in.”

Robert Conquest (1917–2015) poet and historian from England and the United States

Men

“Foolish names and foolish faces often appear in public places.”

Curtis Sittenfeld (1975) Novelist, short story writer

Source: American Wife

Appearance

“Reader, nothing is sweeter in this sad world than the sound of someone you love calling your name. Nothing.”

Kate DiCamillo book The Tale of Despereaux

Variant: Reader, nothing is sweeter in this sad world than the sound of someone you love calling your name. Nothing.
Source: The Tale of Despereaux (2004)

Love, World, Sadness

“That the last two letters in her name were the first two in his, a silly thing he never mentioned to her but caused him to believe that they were bound together.”

Jhumpa Lahiri book Unaccustomed Earth

Source: Unaccustomed Earth

“Has it ever occurred to you that you might be delusional?'

That's what the psychiatrist said, but I think he's wrong. There's an evil flying pizza out there, and it's got Brenda's name on it.”

Janet Evanovich book Fearless Fourteen

Source: Fearless Fourteen

Thinking, Evil, Flying

“When she orgasmed, she said his name. Twice. And didn’t it make him glad that even though he had no voice, his ears worked just fine. –JM”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Mine

“But who are you?"

Percy—" I started to say. Then the skeletons turned around. "Gotta go!"

What kind of name is Percy Gotta-go?”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

“Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo”

James Joyce book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Source: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Boy, Time, Baby

“I was going to fight vampires, and my name wasn't Buffy--I was so screwed.”

Patricia Briggs book Frost Burned

Source: Frost Burned

Fight

“There were thousands and thousands of forms of joy in the world, but that all were essentially one and the same, namely, the joy of being able to love.”

Michael Ende book The Neverending Story

Source: The Neverending Story

Love, World, Joy

“Be not intimidated… nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice.”

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

1760s, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)
Context: Be not intimidated, therefore, by any terrors, from publishing with the utmost freedom, whatever can be warranted by the laws of your country; nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretenses of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery, and cowardice.

Suffering

“She nodded, wondering why couldn't she have been named Mary. Or Sue.
But no, she had to be nine-letter Elizabeth.”

Jessica Bird book Dark Lover

Source: Dark Lover