Quotes about nobody
page 7

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Source: 100 Selected Poems

“Any damage that's been done, you have to fix yourself because it needs fixing and there is nobody else to do the work. Blame may well be justified, but it's not going to move you forward in your life.”

Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer

Source: This Is How: Surviving What You Think You Can't

Life

“I would have remembered the good stuff.
Nobody ever remembers the good stuff.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: How to Kill a Rock Star

“You do things and do things and nobody really has a clue.”

John Updike book Rabbit, Run

Source: Rabbit, Run

“No child is born a delinquent. They only became that way if nobody loved them when they were kids. Unloved children grow up to be serial murderers or alcoholics.”

Jeannette Walls book The Glass Castle

Source: The Glass Castle

Love, Children, Alcohol, Way

“Nobody knows anything…… Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what's going to work. Every time out it's a guess and, if you're lucky, an educated one.”

William Goldman book Adventures in the Screen Trade

Source: Adventures in the Screen Trade

Education, Time, Personality

“She was tired of everyone wanting to go to heaven, nobody wanting to die. The only thing worth grieving over, she said, was that sometimes there was more beauty in this life than the world could bear.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Life, World, Beauty

“Nobody admires anyone else without qualification. If they do they’re after an image, not a person.”

Scott Lynch book The Republic of Thieves

Interlude “Striking Sparks” section 6 (p. 247)
Source: The Republic of Thieves (2013)

Personality

“Nobody can discover the world for somebody else. Only when we discover it for ourselves does it become common ground and a common bond and we cease to be alone.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Source: A Place on Earth

World

“Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Suffering

“They yell at me because I can’t see what they see. Nobody can explain to me why my eyes work different than theirs. Nobody can make it stop.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

“Why? What is so wonderful about mass murder that nobody in the history of the world has ever fond any smarter solution to problems than killing everybody who doesn’t agree? Is that the limit of human intelligence?”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: One

World, History, Intelligence, Problem

“I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Love, Making love

“You realize that there's no point in doing anything if nobody's watching.
You wonder, if there had been a low turnout at the crucifixion, would they have rescheduled?”

Chuck Palahniuk book Survivor

Source: Survivor

“Nobody's death is impending."
…"Well technically everyone's death is impending.”

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

Source: The Last Guardian

Death

“Love is not a candle burning down. Life is. And love and life are not the same or else Love, having choice, nobody would ever die.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

Love, Life

“The truth is that nobody is owed an apology for anything. Apologies are lovely when they happen. But they change nothing. They do not reverse actions or correct damage. They are merely nice to hear.”

Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer

Source: This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.

Love, Truth, Change

“Safety from what? Who's after me?"
Oh, nobody much," Grover said, obviously still miffed about the donkey comment. "Just the Lord of the Dead and a few of his blood-thirstiest minions.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

Dead

“Sometimes I feel as if I'm racing with my own shadow, Korogi says. But that's one thing I'll never be able to outrun. Nobody can shake off their own shadow.”

Haruki Murakami book After Dark

Source: After Dark

Feeling

“People are good or half good or a quarter good, and it changes all the time - but even on the best day nobody's perfect.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book Three: All Hail and Hallelujah

People, Change, Time, Perfection

“Life is too hard, too much to handle. Nobody told me there’d be days like these. How could nobody tell me there’d be days like these? How could they let me grow up like that—happy and pink and stupid?”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

Life, Happiness, Stupidity

“Nobody knows you.
You don't know yourself.
And I, who am half in love with you,
What am I in love with?
My own imaginings?”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Source: The Complete Poems

Love, Imagination

“What's the point of wearing your favorite rocket ship underpants if nobody ever asks to see 'em?”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

“Nobody felt sad as long as we could postpone tomorrow with more nostalgia.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Sadness, Nostalgia

“You are nobody, and I might have been somebody, and the road to each of us is love.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Source: Ask the Dust

Love

“Despair came over her, as it will when nobody around has any sexual relevance to you.”

Thomas Pynchon book The Crying of Lot 49

Source: The Crying of Lot 49

Despair

“My hour for tea is half-past five, and my buttered toast waits for nobody.”

Wilkie Collins book The Woman in White

Volume II [Tauchnitz, 1860] ( p. 226 https://books.google.com/books?id=xAm2X8YfpJIC&pg=PA226) Also in The Secret Ingredient by Laura Schaefer [Simon & Schuster, 2012, ISBN 1-442-41960-1] ( p. 169 https://books.google.com/books?id=o1ctj37QuikC&pg=PA169) Source: The Woman in White (1859)

Waiting, Past, Tea

“I went to the entrance to the restroom, where the hallway did a sharp bend so nobody could peek into the girls' pee-palace.”

Lilith Saintcrow book Strange Angels

Source: Strange Angels

Girl

“If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, doesn't it just lie there and rot?”

Chuck Palahniuk book Survivor

Source: Survivor

Lie, Tree

“Life is amazing, isn't it? You can't ever tell what will happen. Nobody knows until they go ahead and play the game.”

Gennifer Choldenko book Al Capone Does My Shirts

Source: Al Capone Does My Shirts

Life, Game

“So the problem is not so much to see what nobody has yet seen, as to think what nobody has yet thought concerning that which everybody sees.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Problem, Thinking

“James gave the huffle of a snail in danger. And nobody heard him at all.”

A.A. Milne (1882–1956) British author

“…I realized that once people are broken in certain ways they can't ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in your life break one by one.”

Douglas Coupland book Life After God

Source: Life After God (1994)

Life, People, Way

“Everybody strains after happiness, and the result is that nobody's happy.”

Aldous Huxley book Point Counter Point

Source: Point Counter Point

Happiness

“All I know is this: nobody's very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down.”

Ken Kesey book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Life, Tear

“Advice! Nobody tells us how to be men. We just are." "That is probably why you make such a bad job of it.- Perrin and Egwene”

Robert Jordan book The Eye of the World

Source: The Eye of the World

Men

“Real courage is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. Doing the unpopular thing because it's what you believe, and the heck with everybody.”

Justin Cronin (1962) American writer

Source: The Summer Guest

Courage, Courageous

“Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded.”

Yogi Berra (1925–2015) American baseball player, manager, coach

The Yogi Book. New York: Workman Publishing. 1997. ISBN 0-7611-1090-9, p. 16
What Time Is It? You Mean Now?: Advice for Life from the Zennest Master of Them All, Simon and Schuster, 2003, ISBN 0743244532, p. 81.
Found in newspapers from the early twentieth century. Not attributed to Berra until 1962. See http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/08/29/too-crowded/
Disputed, Misattributed
Variant: It's so crowded, nobody goes there.

Funny

“It's easier not to say anything. Shut your trap, button your lip, can it. All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie. Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

Lie, Feeling, Communication

“Nobody home but She for Whom I Am the World. Can't go on like this, can't keep doing it.- Jericho Barrons”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

World, Home

“Nobody ever gets enough appreciation when they're behaving themselves, but there's no end to hearing about it when they're not.”

Jean Ferris (1939–2015) American children's writer

Source: Once Upon a Marigold

“So does nobody care about Ireland?"
"Nobody. Neither King Louis, nor King Billie, nor King James." He nodded thoughtfully. "The fate of Ireland will be decided by men not a single one of whom gives a damn about her. That is her tragedy.”

Edward Rutherfurd (1948) British writer

Source: The Rebels of Ireland

Men, Fate

“… nobody was ever really ready to turn off their mother's machine, no matter what they thought; to turn off the light of their childhood and walk away, just as if they were turning out a light and leaving a room.”

Fannie Flagg book Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Source: Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Light, Childhood

“And so, pointing fingers become pointing guns, because nobody listens to fingers.”

Jeff Shaara Gods and Generals

Source: Gods and Generals

“Nobody understands how hard it is, being a captain.”

Dave Barry book Peter and the Starcatchers

Source: Peter and the Starcatchers

Understanding

“Nobody gets everything in this life. You decide your priorities and you make your choices. I'd decided long ago that any cake I had would be eaten.”

Donald E. Westlake (1933–2008) American novelist

Source: Two Much (1975), Ch. 21

Life

“Nobody wanted your dance,
Nobody wanted your strange glitter, your floundering
Drowning life and your effort to save yourself,
Treading water, dancing the dark turmoil,
Looking for something to give.”

Ted Hughes Birthday Letters

Source: Birthday Letters

Life, Effort, Water, Dance

“For a split second I felt as though she was nobody special in the larger scheme of my life. She was just some girl who had tied me to her leg to help her sink when she jumped off the bridge. Then I blinked and was in love with her again.”

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

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

Love, Life, Girl, Help

“I would unite with anybody to do right; and with nobody to do wrong.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Lecture, The Anti-Slavery Movement http://books.google.pt/books?id=wN9Dj-_wM0IC&pg=PA33&dq=%22I+would+unite+with+anybody+to+do+right+and+with+nobody+to+do+wrong.%22&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22I%20would%20unite%20with%20anybody%20to%20do%20right%20and%20with%20nobody%20to%20do%20wrong.%22&f=false (1855) 1850s Variant: I would unite with anybody to do right; and with nobody to do wrong.

“For hours, for days, for years, she had wandered endlessly within herself but never met anybody, nobody.”

Angela Carter The Passion of New Eve

Source: The Passion of New Eve

“Nobody ever really sees me the way I am, underneath everything. But she did. She does.”

Holly Black book Black Heart

Source: Black Heart

Way

“Closure is a greasy little word which, moreover, describes a nonexistent condition. The truth, Venus, is that nobody gets over anything.”

Martin Amis book House of Meetings

Source: House of Meetings

Truth

“Stare at me in this faceless way, go mad with desire, and rip my clothes off. It's terrific. In my sex fantasy, nobody ever loves me for my mind. The fantasy of rape — of which mine is in a kind of prepubescent sub-category — is common enough among women and (in mirror image) among men.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

Nora Ephron: Crazy Salad: Some Things About Women, Knopf Publishing, New York, 1975

Love, Women, Men, Sex

“Nobody's easier to fool, than the person who is convinced that he is right.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

Fools, Personality

“The inside jokes weren't jokes anymore. They had become stories. Nobody brought up the bad names or the bad times. And nobody felt sad as long as we could postpone tomorrow with more nostalgia.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Sadness, Nostalgia, Time

“They could see she was a real Princess and no question about it, now that she had felt one pea all the way through twenty mattresses and twenty more feather beds. Nobody but a Princess could be so delicate.”

Hans Christian Andersen book The Princess and the Pea

The Princess and the Pea
Fairy Tales (1835)
Source: The Princess and the Pea: The Graphic Novel

Way, Question, Princess

“Nobody wants to live with a person who'll never be happy.”

François Lelord book Hector and the Search for Happiness

Source: Hector and the Search for Happiness

Happiness, Personality

“Nobody is smarter than you are. And what if they are? What good is their understanding doing you?”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Understanding

“I can't believe you're going to sacrifice your archery mojo for MacReive." Lucia would forfeit her fantastical skill with a bow if she was unchaste. "Who am I going to hang out with when your a talentless nobody?”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Dreams of a Dark Warrior

“my karma was to be born in America where nobody has any fun or believes in anything, especially freedom.”

Jack Kerouac book The Dharma Bums

Source: The Dharma Bums

Freedom

“Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do.”

Italo Calvino (1923–1985) Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels

Source: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

“Baby," I said, "I’m a genius but nobody knows it but me."

She looked down at me. "Get up off the floor you damn fool and get me a drink.”

Charles Bukowski book Factotum

Source: Factotum

Fools, Drink, Baby

“She was starting to feel a little like a hamburger at a dieters’ convention. Nobody was likely to snack on her, but absolutely everybody noticed she was edible.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Black Dawn

Feeling

“Pheoby, yuh got tuh go there tuh know there. Yo' papa and yo' mama and nobody else can't tell yuh and show yuh. Two things everybody's got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God and they got tuh find out about livin fuh theyselves.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Their Eyes Were Watching God

Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
Context: "Well, Ah see Mouth-Almighty is still sittin' in de same place. And Ah reckon they got me up in they mouth now.""Yes indeed. You know if you pass some people and don't speak tuh suit 'em dey got tuh go way back in yo' life and see whut you ever done. They know mo' 'bout yuh than you do yo' self. They done 'heard' 'bout you just what they hope done happened.""If God don't think no mo' 'bout 'em than Ah do, they's a lost ball in de high grass."

Janie and Phoeby, Ch. 1, p. 16.

God

“Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age
The child is grown, and puts away childish things.
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.
Nobody that matters, that is.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

"Childhood Is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies," lines 1-4, from Wine from These Grapes (1934)

Childhood

“He thought of his remembrance of Jordan, thought of how it hurt to even look at Isabelle and Clary. Without memory, they were lost. And nobody wanted someone they loved to be lost.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Welcome to Shadowhunter Academy

Love, Memory, Hurt

“Nobody said it was a beautiful world with no scars.”

Catherine Ryan Hyde (1955) American writer

Source: Becoming Chloe

World, Beauty

“The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

“It don't do you no nevermind to tell nobody nothing.”

Thomas McGuane (1939) American novelist

“I liked the idea of representing nobody but myself. No affiliation, no ties, no loyalties.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1941) American writer and activist

Final Analysis (1990)

Idea, Loyalty

“First, we didn't know ourselves. We thought we were going into another Korean war, but this was a different country. Secondly, we didn't know our South Vietnamese allies. We never understood them, and that was another surprise. And we knew even less about North Vietnam. Who was Ho Chi Minh? Nobody really knew. So, until we know the enemy and know our allies and know ourselves, we'd better keep out of this dirty kind of business. It's very dangerous.”

Maxwell D. Taylor (1901–1987) United States general

As quoted in The Certain Trumpet: Maxwell Taylor and the American Experience in Vietnam (1991) by Douglas Kinnard, p. 198

War, Business, Country

“The bull does not know you, nor the fig tree,
nor the horses, nor the ants in your own house.
The child and the afternoon do not know you
because you have died forever.

The shoulder of the stone does not know you
nor the black silk on which you are crumbling.
Your silent memory does not know you
because you have died forever.

The autumn will come with conches,
misty grapes and clustered hills,
but no one will look into your eyes
because you have died forever.

Because you have died for ever,
like all the dead of the earth,
like all the dead who are forgotten
in a heap of lifeless dogs.

Nobody knows you. No. But I sing of you.
For posterity I sing of your profile and grace.
Of the signal maturity of your understanding.
Of your appetite for death and the taste of its mouth.
Of the sadness of your once valiant gaiety.”

Federico García Lorca Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías

No te conoce el toro ni la higuera,
ni caballos ni hormigas de tu casa.
No te conoce el niño ni la tarde
porque te has muerto para siempre.No te conoce el lomo de la piedra,
ni el raso negro donde te destrozas.
No te conoce tu recuerdo mudo
porque te has muerto para siempre.El otoño vendrá con caracolas,
uva de niebla y montes agrupados,
pero nadie querrá mirar tus ojos
porque te has muerto para siempre.Porque te has muerto para siempre,
como todos los muertos de la Tierra,
como todos los muertos que se olvidan
en un montón de perros apagados.No te conoce nadie. No. Pero yo te canto.
Yo canto para luego tu perfil y tu gracia.
La madurez insigne de tu conocimiento.
Tu apetencia de muerte y el gusto de su boca.
La tristeza que tuvo tu valiente alegría.
Llanto por Ignacio Sanchez Mejias (1935)

Death, Sadness, Dogs, Understanding

“No, no. Bill should play two or three more years. Talk to him. Tell him he can get in shape. I know he can play better second base than anybody. He is two years younger than I am. He is the greatest second baseman of all time, a real super star. But people forget too fast what he has done for the Pirates. Nobody I ever saw could field with him. He won the World Series with his home run against the Yankees. I don't like to see him retire.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Sidelights on Sports: Monday Morning's Sports Wash" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=XOANAAAAIBAJ&sjid=u2wDAAAAIBAJ&pg=7387%2C128274 by Al Abrams, in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Monday, October 2, 1972), p. 24 Baseball-related, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1972</big>

People, World, Home, Star

“And I don't pretend to know what you know
no no
now please don't pretend to know what's on my mind
if we already knew everything that everybody knows
we would have nothing to learn tonight
and we would have nothing to show tonight
oh but everybody thinks
that everybody knows
about everybody else
nobody knows
anything about themselves
cause they're all worried about everybody else.”

Jack Johnson (musician) (1975) American musician

Wasting Time.
Song lyrics, On and On (2003)

Thinking, Learning

“And just so — if I could, because he insulted a lot of people. I've had more calls on that statement that Ted made — New York is a great place. It's got great people, it's got loving people, wonderful people. When the World Trade Center came down, I saw something that no place on Earth could have handled more beautifully, more humanely than New York. You had two one hundred, you had two 110-story buildings come crashing down. I saw them come down. Thousands of people killed, and the cleanup started the next day, and it was the most horrific cleanup, probably in the history of doing this, and in construction. I was down there, and I've never seen anything like it. And the people in New York fought and fought and fought, and we saw more death, and even the smell of death — nobody understood it. And it was with us for months, the smell, the air. And we rebuilt downtown Manhattan, and everybody in the world watched and everybody in the world loved New York and loved New Yorkers. And I have to tell you, that was a very insulting statement that Ted made.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Full Transcript of the Sixth Republican Debate in Charleston http://time.com/4182096/republican-debate-charleston-transcript-full-text/, Time (14 January 2016). 2010s, 2016, January

Love, Death, People, World

“Nobody who has lived through the rise of the violent anti-Semitism which led to Hitler can refuse Mrs. Thatcher admiration for her courageous and outspoken warning. When I grew up in Vienna the established Jewish families were a generally respected group and all decent people would frown upon the occasional anti-Jewish outbursts of a few popular politicians. It was the sudden influx of large numbers of Galician and Polish Jews [during World War I] … which in a short period changed the attitude. They were too visibly different to be readily absorbed.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

Letter to The Times after Thatcher claimed that British people were afraid of being "swamped" by people of a different culture. (11 February 1978), p. 15
1960s–1970s

War, People, World, Family

“There are elections and elections, there are many Arab presidents who are elected with 99.9, 94.7, 87.4 percent of the vote in elections but nobody believes these elections. They're not real elections and the election that's going to be held in Iraq in January, if it is held at all - and there is a big question mark over that – will not be a real election. How can you have a real election with hundreds of thousands of Crusader soldiers occupying the country, drawing up the electoral law, deciding who is allowed to take part in the elections, and utterly dominating the political life of the country?”

George Galloway (1954) British politician, broadcaster, and writer

Interview on Abu Dhabi TV http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP91805, November 20, 2004.

Life, Law, Question, Parting

“Cherry: You know, I’ve been home now for 24 hours. I must’ve been asked 9,000 times about that incident, we don’t have it [the footage], but I want to talk about it. Figure it out: Here’s a guy who gets eight stitches, eight stitches in his chin. What happened? Who did it? Nobody knows, ok? Nobody knows, ok, so here’s what happens. The referee calls the guy over and he says ‘Did you see what happened?’, ‘Whoaa, not my side’ ‘Did you see what happened?’ ‘Well wait a minute if I tell you, that means five-minute major.’ If the linesman says five-minute major…”

Don Cherry (1934) ice hockey coach, television commentator

Guy, Home, Time, Waiting

“Whoever governs Singapore must have that iron in him. Or give it up. This is not a game of cards! This is your life and mine! I've spent a whole lifetime building this and as long as I'm in charge, nobody is going to knock it down.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

Rally in 1980, related to the then-ongoing Singapore Airlines pilot strikes due to salary issue http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-32012346 1980s

Life, Game

“People get real comfortable with their features. Nobody gets comfortable with their hair. Hair trauma. It's the universal thing.”

Jamie Lee Curtis (1958) actress, author

Quoted in Funny Ladies: The Best Humor from America's Funniest Women by Bill Adler p. 36

People, Universe

“Sometimes you run away by yourself purely so someone who cares will come to find you. Half the time nobody does. That's the tragedy of life.”

Lindsey Davis book The Ides of April

The Ides of April

Life, Time

““All life is theatre,” he said. “We are all actors, you and I, in a play which nobody wrote and which nobody will see. We have no audience but ourselves….” He laughed gently. “Some players would say that is the best kind of theatre there can be.””

Susan Cooper (1935) English fantasy writer

Source: The Dark Is Rising (1965-1977), Silver on the Tree (1977), Chapter 9 “The City” (p. 139)

Life

“It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.”

Jerome David Salinger book The Catcher in the Rye

The Catcher in the Rye (1951)

Understanding

“I've been around for 32 years and nobody knows who we are.”

Jimmy John Liautaud (1964) Jimmy John's Owner, Founder, & Chairman

Interview with Chicago Tribune http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-jimmy-johns-1104-biz-20151103-story.html

“A great deal of her obscurity and cant, Tenar had begun to realize, was mere ineptness with words and ideas. Nobody had ever taught her to think consecutively. Nobody had ever listened to what she said. All that was expected, all that was wanted of her was muddle, mystery, mumbling. She was a witchwoman. She had nothing to do with clear meaning.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Source: Earthsea Books, Tehanu (1990), Chapter 5, "Bettering"

Idea, Thinking

“Nobody wants to cook "Five Spice Stew With a Mother Deer Shot With a High-Powered Rifle While Her Baby Slept Nearby." But what about "Five Spice Venison Stew"? Much more palatable. … But when we tell ourselves that we're humanely harvesting venison out of reverence for the deer -- rather than killing a sentient being to satisfy our palate -- we're not so much connecting with our food as we are manipulating language to avoid knowing what we don't want to know.”

James E. McWilliams (1968) American historian

"Hunting for Euphemisms: How We Trick Ourselves to Excuse Killing", in The Atlantic (21 December 2011) https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/12/hunting-for-euphemisms-how-we-trick-ourselves-to-excuse-killing/250213/.

Food, Baby, Cooking

“The embarrassing truth — the brontosaurus in the broom closet that nobody wants to talk about — is that the Republican Party was never the party of freedom. That Goldwater business in the 1960s was a fluke, immediately snuffed out by "older, wiser heads" in the GOP like those of Nelson Rockefeller, Weeping Willy Scranton, Henry Cabot Lodge, and George Romney. The Republican Party was created in the 1850s by northeastern mercantilists just like them, to crush the hopes of poor southerners for individual liberty and independence, and keep them bound in serfdom, paying 80 percent of all taxes collected in America.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"The Brontosaurus in the Broom Closet" http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2009/tle541-20091018-05.html 18 October 2009.

Truth, Hope, Business, Freedom

“A well known American writer said once that, while everybody talked about the weather, nobody seemed to do anything about it.”

Charles Dudley Warner (1829–1900) American writer

Editorial, Hartford Courant (27 August 1897); this remark was reportedly quoted by Mark Twain and it has become often attributed to him, but the context of the statement might indicate the contrary situation
Paraphrased variant: Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.
Variant: Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.

Weather

“Other countries may boast of this and that, but nobody can touch the United States for poisonous snakes. We have about twenty species, most of them deadly, and Europe has only five or six, none of them much good. We have fifteen kinds of Rattlesnakes alone and nobody else has even one. [Footnote: There is a species in Central and South America, but it probably came from here. ]”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Rattlesnake
How to Become Extinct (1941)

Country

“Finally Jones came in with a blinding fastball, the way Sad Sam used to throw ’em, and Clemente unloaded. The wind was blowing in from left field that day, and blowing hard. This was 1960, remember, before the fences had been moved in, and nobody was hitting home runs at Candlestick. Not Mays, not Cepeda, not anybody. Clemente’s bat hit the ball, and the result absolutely clubbed the crowd into awed silence for a long moment. Right into that wet whipping wind the ball carried. Right on through, hit 120 feet high in a long soaring majestic parabola that came down finally over 450 feet away. There is just no way of telling how far Clemente’s home run blast would have traveled had it not been for that wind. Suffice it to say partisan Giant fans suddenly broke their shell-shocked silence and let loose a gagantic roar. For two innings the stadium buzzed. For days the Giants talked about it. Even today if you slip up behind a Giant pitcher and suddenly whisper in his ear: ‘Remember the home run Clemente hit?’ he’s likely to jump as high as if he’d been caught putting spit on baseballs.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

From "Roberto Clemente: Arriba!" in Baseball Stars of 1962 (March 1962), edited by Ray Robinson, p. 115
Sports-related

Sadness, Way, Travel, Home

“The only people who criticize me are writers. You say, maybe I no team player. Did a player ever come to you and say I no team player? Who say that? The writers, right. I win four batting championships. Why I no team player? I kill myself in the outfield. You say, I no team player. You never see me loaf on the field. I break my back. Even Harry Walker tell me: "Roberto, why you want to break your back? Look at the other fellows. Take it easy." Super stars, my foot. They say Mickey Mantle is a super star. He's limping. They say poor Mickey. I play with four stitches in my foot and nobody knows about it. […] The fans are good to me. Only the writers are bad."”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Clemente Back, Lashes Out at Writers; Buc Explodes Over 'Team Player' Image" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=LJxRAAAAIBAJ&sjid=02wDAAAAIBAJ&pg=7083%2C4907609 by Charley Feeney, in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Monday, March 31, 1969), p. 29 Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1969</big>

People, Star

“They were murderers and they still are, but policemen are like dogs on a leash.… The police function under political direction. They go after whoever they are sent after, and that's where the problem comes in.… Black people were moving out of their traditional position in America. Nobody knew what to do about it. The white politicians were confused, the blacks were confused.… the police were told to go out, stop those civil-rights marches … and they went out and did that. When you talk to police now who participated in that, you find out that they were in the same position we were in — just trying to find the right formula.”

Eldridge Cleaver (1935–1998) American activist

Interview by Reason magazine (1986)
1980s

People, Dogs, Problem

“Even the biggest book is fragmentary: to finish anything, you have to cut your losses. Nobody every writes his dream book.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

33.54
"Quotes", Notebooks

Books, Dreams, Loss

“Once the experience of war makes visible the possibility of death that lies locked up in each moment, our thoughts cannot travel from one day to the next without meeting death's face. The mind is then strung up to a pitch it can stand for only a short time; but each new dawn introduces the same necessity; and days piled on days make years. On each one of these days the soul suffers violence. Regularly, each morning, the soul castrates itself of aspiration, for thought cannot journey through time without meeting death on the way. Thus war effaces all conceptions of purpose or goal, including even its own "war aims." It effaces the very notion of war's being brought to an end. Consequently, nobody does anything to bring this end about. In the presence of an armed enemy, what hand can relinquish its weapon? The mind ought to find a way out, but the mind has lost all capacity to so much as look outward. The mind is completely absorbed in doing itself violence. Always in human life, whether war or slavery is in question, intolerable sufferings continue, as it were, by the force of their own specific gravity, and so look to the outsider as though they deprived the sufferer of the resources which might serve to extricate him.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Iliad or The Poem of Force (1940-1941), p. 181

Life, Death, War, Way

“Nobody believes the identities we've made for ourselves. I feel like everybody in the world is fake now - as though people had true cores once, but hucked them away and replaced them with something more attractive but also hollow.”

Douglas Coupland book Girlfriend in a Coma

Girlfriend in a Coma (1998)

People, World, Feeling

“Advice is cheap you can take it from me.
It's yours to keep 'cause opinions are free.
Nobody knows about the trouble I've seen.
Nobody's perfect, mister, nobody's clean.
It cost too much and takes too long to find out too late.
Some words are not heard 'til after they're spoken.
Your role was protective, your soul was too defective.
Some people just don't have a heart to be broken.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

The Great Wall of China.
Song lyrics, River of Dreams (1993)

People, Soul, Heart, Perfection

“The lieutenant took his time scanning their visa chips, letting them wait in the drizzle, occasionally making a comment with the idle arrogance common to such nobodies who have just come into a small bit of power.”

Dan Simmons book Hyperion

Source: Hyperion (1989), Chapter 2 (p. 105)

Time, Waiting

“Just a nobody girlWith a radar to the scene.When the emptiness finds youYou find all the numbers you need.You say you follow your heartWell, honey, you're just being lost.You could you follow your gutBut how much would it cost?”

Ryan Adams (1974) American alt-country/rock singer-songwriter

Nobody Girl
29 (2005)

“On the contrary, it's because somebody knows something about it that we can't talk about physics. It's the things that nobody knows anything about that we can discuss. We can talk about the weather; we can talk about social problems; we can talk about psychology; we can talk about international finance — gold transfers we can't talk about, because those are understood — so it's the subject that nobody knows anything about that we can all talk about!”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

Rejoinder when told that he couldn't talk about physics, because "nobody [at this table] knows anything about it."
Part 5: "The World of One Physicist", "Alfred Nobel's Other Mistake", p. 310.
Quoted in Handbook of Economic Growth (2005) by Philippe Aghion and Steven N. Durlauf.
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985)

Problem, Weather

“The single best thing about coming out of the closet is that nobody can insult you by telling you what you've just told them.”

Rachel Maddow (1973) American journalist

Late Night with Conan O'Brien, NBC (November 21, 2008)

Quotes about nobody page 7

Quotes about nobody
page 7