Quotes about nothing
page 25

“Who is Hunter Becker?"
"Becker the Gory? Lighthouse Keepers? Boston?"
"I would've preferred Becker the Easiley Surrendering or Becker the Quite Reasonable, but beyond that his name tells me nothing.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Slays

“The surgeons' market is imaginary, since there is nothing wrong with women's faces or bodies that social change won't cure; so the surgeons depend for their income on warping female self-perception and multiplying female self-hatred.”

Naomi Wolf book The Beauty Myth

Source: The Beauty Myth

Women, Change, Dependency

“Anyone who imagines they can work alone winds up surrounded by nothing but rivals, without companions. The fact is, no one ascends alone.”

Lance Armstrong book It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

Source: It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

Imagination, For Team

“Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness except greed.”

Thomas Harris The Silence of the Lambs

Source: The Silence of the Lambs

Loneliness

“At the end of a miserable day, instead of grieving my virtual nothing, I can always look at my loaded wastepaper basket and tell myself that if I failed, at least I took a few trees down with me.”

David Sedaris book Me Talk Pretty One Day

Source: Me Talk Pretty One Day

Tree

“Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.”

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

Back To Work

“Desire makes life happen. Makes it matter. Makes everything worth it. Desire is life. Hunger to see the next sunrise or sunset, to touch the one you love, to try again.

'Hell would be waking up and wanting nothing,' he agrees.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

Love, Life, Hunger, Hell

“So I said I wanted you to stay, even though nothing could stay the same.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

“Cruelty and wrong are not the greatest forces in the world. There is nothing eternal in them. Only love is eternal.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Source: A Chance to Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael

Love, World

“I walked away exhilarated by my success, because there's nothing like making a difference in someone's life, even if that difference is a lifetime of nightmares and a fortune in therapy bills.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

Variant: There's nothing like the feeling of knowing that you've made a difference in someone's life, even if that difference is a lifetime of nightmares and a fortune in therapy bills.
Source: The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

Life, Success

“Writing is nothing more than a guided dream.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

Preface to Dr. Brodie's Report [El informe de Brodie] (1970)

Dreams

“Nothing weighs on us so heavily as a secret.”

Jean De La Fontaine (1621–1695) French poet, fabulist and writer.

Rien ne pèse tant qu'un secret.
Book VIII (1678-1679), fable 6.
Fables (1668–1679)
Variant: Nothing weighs more than a secret.

Secret

“There are moments when troubles enter our lives and we can do nothing to avoid them.
But they are there for a reason. Only when we have overcome them will we understand why they were there.”

Paulo Coelho book The Fifth Mountain

Source: The Fifth Mountain

Understanding

“Because sometimes, a man could do nothing about where he came from, he could only control where he went”

Lora Leigh (1965) American writer

Source: Killer Secrets

“Nothing like watching your relatives fight, I always say.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

Fight, Family

“Unless we have something worth dying for, Atretes, we've nothing worth living for.”

Francine Rivers book A Voice in the Wind

Source: A Voice in the Wind

“I regret nothing. There have been things I missed, but I ask no questions, because I have loved it, such as it has been, even the moments of emptiness, even the unanswered-and that I loved it, that is the unanswered in my life.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

Love, Life, Question

“If everything is amplified, we hear nothing.”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

Variant: If we amplify everything, we hear nothing.

“I have the benefit of experience which tells me that sulking solves nothing”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

“I really worry about these political people that have no personal life. If there's nothing that's lovely, and if there's nothing that's just ephemeral, that you can just lie on the floor and bust a gut laughing at, then what's the point?”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

Love, Life, People, Lie

“Wha-what?" Her eyes fluttered open.
"Nothing," I shouted. "We're being followed by a slaying machine. Go back to sleep.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Sleep

“I am here, alone, at the end of the world. I reach out and touch nothing.”.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

World

“Guys like us got nothing to look ahead to.”

John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men

Source: Of Mice and Men

Guy

“there is nothing to be done.

only accept it…

and hurt.”

Peter McWilliams (1949–2000) American author and civil liberties advocate

Source: How to Survive the Loss of a Love

Hurt

“In the end? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.”

Alan Moore book Watchmen

Source: Dr. Manhattan, Watchmen #12

“I have a dream!
To be free at last!
Free at last!
Free at last.
And if a man has nothing to die for,
Then his life is worth nothing.”

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

Life, Dreams

“Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs forever finally comes to realise that nothing really belongs to them.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

“I know there's a proverb which that says 'To err is human,' but a human error is nothing to what a computer can do if it tries.”

Agatha Christie book Hallowe'en Party

Source: Hallowe'en Party

Error

“Take her home. And-"
"Say nothing- yes, yes, I heard you the first seven hundred times," Myrnin said, much too sharply. "I'm ancient. I'm not deaf.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Bite Club

Home, Time

“In solitude, at last, we’re able to let God define us the way we are always supposed to be defined—by relationship: the I-thou relationship, in relation to a Presence that demands nothing of us but presence itself. Not performance but presence”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

God, Way, Solitude

“Magnus knelt first. Clary would never have guessed that. Magnus was so proud, but then it was a pride that transcended the emptiness of gestures. She doubted it would shame him to kneel when it meant nothing to him.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

“I thought about telling him the truth: 'Oh, nothing. Just having my soul exorcised so I can roam around
purgatory, looking for the ghost of the dead cowboy who used to live in my bedroom.”

Meg Cabot book Darkest Hour

Source: Darkest Hour

Truth, Soul, Dead

“nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

“There is nothing I dislike more in the world than people who care more about ideology than they do about people.”

Jon Ronson book So You've Been Publicly Shamed

Source: So You've Been Publicly Shamed

People, World

“Sex is the biggest nothing of all time.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Sex, Time

“Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something (love) from our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company.”

Milan Kundera (1929–2023) Czech author of Czech and French literature

Love

“I'm an atheist, and that's it. I believe there's nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for people.”

Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) film, stage, and television actress

People

“But there's nothing you like better than when it hurts a little, is there?" Lucien asked.

Gavriel's bloody mouth lifted in a voluptuous smile. "Sure there is. I like it when it hurts a lot.”

Holly Black book The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Source: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Smile, Hurt

“Nothing nice you ever do for anyone is for no reason.”

Wendy Mass (1967) American children's writer

Source: 11 Birthdays

“You know, a cell phone's like a guy; if you don't plug him in every night, charge him good, you got nothing at all.”

Catherine Coulter (1942) American romance novelist

Source: Tail Spin

Guy, Night

“I planned my whole future around Adam," she said now, quietly. "And now I have nothing." "No," I told her, "now you just don't have Adam. There's a big difference, Lissa. You just can't see it yet.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

Future

“… and there was nothing to do except to wait and to hurt.”

Mark Haddon book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Source: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Waiting, Hurt

“Sorry but nothing of much importance ever happened to me… I'm just a girl who forgot to look both ways before crossing the street.”

Gabrielle Zevin book Elsewhere

Source: Elsewhere

Way, Girl

“One should go to the woods for safety, if for nothing else.”

John Muir book Our National Parks

Source: Our National Parks

“The state of your life is nothing more than a reflection of the state of your mind.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

Life

“The moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that eye, and nothing we do is truthful. Having a public, keeping a public in mind, means living in lies…”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Truth

“There is nothing stronger in this world than gentleness.”

Han Suyin (1917–2012) physician and author

World

“Nothing is built on stone; All is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

“I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing.”

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand author

As quoted in Katherine Mansfield : A Biography (1953) by Antony Alpers, p. 266

Friendship, Friendship, For Friend, For Bestfriend

“Man moves in a world that is nothing more or less than his consciousness objectified.–Neville Goddard”

Neville Goddard (1905–1972) American author and lecturer

World

“He was twenty. I remembered twenty. I'd known everything at twenty. It took me another year to realize I knew nothing. I was still hoping to learn something before I hit thirty, but I wasn't holding my breath.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Circus of the Damned

Source: Circus of the Damned

Hope, Learning

“I myself do nothing. The Holy Spirit accomplishes all through me.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Attributed to William Blake by Michael J. Gelb in Creativity on Demand: How to Ignite and Sustain the Fire of Genius https://books.google.nl/books?id=lCsNBQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22Creativity+on+Demand:+How+to+Ignite+and+Sustain+the+Fire+of+Genius%22&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjolMyvm6TLAhVDLQ8KHechDoIQ6AEIHzAA#v=onepage&q=%22I%20myself%20do%20nothing.%20The%20Holy%20Spirit%20accomplishes%20all%20through%20me%22&f=false (2014), but cannot be retrieved in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, xxii. <br class="br">Attributed

“All we can know is that we know nothing. And that's the height of human wisdom.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Variant: The only thing that we know is that we know nothing — and that is the highest flight of human wisdom.
Source: War and Peace (1865–1867; 1869), Ch. I

Wisdom

“You see… it's really quite strenuous doing nothing all day, so once a week we take a holiday and go nowhere, which was just where we were going when you came along. Would you care to join us?”

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

Holiday

“Fear tends to come from ignorance. Once I knew what the problem was, it was just a problem, nothing to fear.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 32, “Coppers, Cobblers and Crowds” (p. 227)

Fear, Problem

“There is nothing in the world that is not mysterious, but the mystery is more evident in certain things than in others: in the sea, in the eyes of the elders, in the color yellow, and in music.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

World, Music, Color, Sea

“This is the charged, the dangerous moment, when everything must be re-examined, must be made new, when nothing at all can be taken for granted.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

“I said nothing. I’m good at saying nothing. I don’t like talking. I could go the rest of my life without saying another word, if I had to.”

Lee Child book The Affair

Source: The Affair

Life

“There is nothing so powerful as truth — and often nothing so strange.”

Daniel Webster (1782–1852) Leading American senator and statesman. January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852. Served as the Secretary of Sta…

Argument on the murder of Captain White (1830)

Truth

“What if reality is nothing but some disease?”

Chuck Palahniuk book Rant

Source: Rant

Disease, Reality

“Nico and Hazel exchanged looks. They both knew better, but they said nothing.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

“Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Memory, Forgetting

“No. Haven’t you been listening?”

Marcus would always remember that moment. It was to be the first time he would ever be faced with that most vexing of female quirks: the question that had nothing but wrong answers.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: Just Like Heaven

Question, Time

“And as to me, I know nothing else but miracles”

Walt Whitman book Fulles d'herba

Source: Leaves of Grass

“because if you can’t kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

“But on that sunlit Sunday, Alexander knew nothing, thought nothing, imagined nothing. He forgot Dimitri and war and the Soviet Union and escape plans, and even America, and crossed the street for Tatiana Metanova.”

Paullina Simons book Tatiana and Alexander

Source: Tatiana and Alexander

War, Imagination

“I cannot be awake, for nothing looks to me as it did before, or else I am awake for the first time, and all before has been a mean sleep.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

Sleep, Time

“You think Ivy's a planner? She has nothing on a motivated elf with too much money.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Pale Demon

Money, Motivation, Thinking

“Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear.”

Umberto Eco book The Name of the Rose

Variant: Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear.”" -
Source: The Name of the Rose

Fear, Courage, Courageous

“Beauty is nothing, beauty won’t stay. You don’t know how lucky you are to be ugly, because if people like you, you know it’s for something else.”

Charles Bukowski book Tales of Ordinary Madness

Source: Tales of Ordinary Madness

People, Beauty

“What I'm asking you to entertain is that there is nothing we need to believe on insufficient evidence in order to have deeply ethical and spiritual lives.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

“You can never escape me. Bullets don't harm me. Nothing harms me. But I know pain. I KNOW pain. Sometimes I share it. With someone like you.”

Frank Miller book Batman: Year One

Source: Batman: Year One

Pain

“It costs nothing to ask wise advice from a good friend.”

George S. Clason book The Richest Man in Babylon

Source: The Richest Man in Babylon

“Nothing was to be lost by beginning at the beginning…”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

“The most content people are those who expect nothing, who have ceased to dream.”

Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden

Source: The Red Dice

People, Dreams

“I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of imagination — what the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth — whether it existed before or not.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Letter to Benjamin Bailey (November 22, 1817)
Letters (1817–1820)

Truth, Beauty, Imagination, Heart

“There's nothing I can't live with. Only things I won't live without.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

“He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.”

George Bernard Shaw Major Barbara

Source: 1900s, Major Barbara (1905)

Thinking, Funny

“In the real world
as in dreams
nothing is quite
what it seems.
-The Book of Counted Sorrows”

Dean Koontz (1945) American author

Books, World, Dreams

“Look how we take your children and sacrifice them and there’s nothing you can do. If you lift a finger, we will destroy every last one of you. Just as we did in District Thirteen.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Children

“Learn, he says, that there will be hours, days
and months ahead of feeling absolutely terrible
and nothing can change that; neither new
girlfriends, health professionals, changes of diet, dope, humility, or
God.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

God, Health, Feeling, Learning

“… I believe in a God of scandalous grace. I have pledged allegiance to a King who loved evildoers so much he died for them, teaching us that there is something worth dying for but nothing worth killing for.”

Shane Claiborne (1975) American activist

Love, God

“Nothing is worse than being alone on the evening of the day when one's cow has exploded.”

Dean Koontz Odd Thomas

Source: Odd Thomas

“The fact that I’m silent doesn’t mean I have nothing to say.”

Jonathan Carroll (1949) novelist, short story writer

“If you think I’m handsome, there’s obviously nothing wrong with your vision.”

Lisa Scottoline (1955) American writer

Source: Every Fifteen Minutes

Thinking

“Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden (1952)

Time

“Money can only give happiness where there is nothing else to give it.”

Jane Austen book Sense and Sensibility

Source: Sense and Sensibility

Money, Happiness

“Nothing has to be true, but everything has to sound true.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

“Just as when we come into the world, when we die we are afraid of the unknown. But the fear is something from within us that has nothing to do with reality. Dying is like being born: just a change”

Isabel Allende book The House of the Spirits

Variant: Just as when we come into the world, when we die we are afraid of the unknown. But the fear is something from within us that has nothing to do with reality. Dying is like being born: just a change.
Source: The House of the Spirits

World, Fear, Reality, Change

“You go to work the next day pretending nothing happened.
Your co-workers ask
if everything's okay and you tell them
you're just tired.
And you're trying to smile. And they're trying to smile.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Smile

“When you showed someone how you felt, it was fresh and honest. When you told someone how you felt, there might be nothing behind the words but habit or expectation.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Variant: When you showed someone how you felt, it was fesh and honest. Whe you told someone how you felt, there might be nothing behind the words but habit or expectation.
Source: Handle with Care

“You've got nothing to worry about. The righteous do not always right, but their souls remain pure. -Lassiter the Angel”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Enshrined

Angels, Soul

“Silence before being born, silence after death: life is nothing but noise between two unfathomable silences.”

Isabel Allende book Paula

Source: Paula

Life, Death, Silence