Quotes about nothing
page 35

“But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Source: A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition

Money

“Sixty years ago I knew everything. Now I know nothing. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

Quoted in "Books: The Great Gadfly", Time magazine, 8 October 1965 (review of The Age of Voltaire by Will and Ariel Durant)

Education

“Dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with you in the car, in case the need should arise for them to bark violently at nothing right in your ear.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Dogs, Cars, Feeling

“There was nothing in this world that was not a con, suddenly I understood this. Nothing really mattered, and nothing could be lost.”

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

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

World

“A dog can never tell you what she knows from the
smells of the world, but you know, watching her,
that you know
almost nothing.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: Dog Songs

World, Dogs

“He was a lovely man in many ways. But he kept on insisting on forgiving me when there was nothing to forgive.”

Angela Carter book Wise Children

Source: Wise Children

Love, Way, Forgiveness

“I loved you because there was no other place for me to go. We were married because we did not know what else to do with each other. You never knew me, nothing about me, what died inside me, what lived invisibly.”

Aleksandar Hemon The Lazarus Project

Source: The Lazarus Project

Love

“The last time I'd seen the Minotaur, he'd been wearing nothing but his tighty whities. I don't know why. Maybe he'd been shaken out of bed to chase me.”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

Time

“Nothing is forever, but there's a continuing stream of people who go through our lives and continue with us… Nothing just stops and stays… But it flows on… Like a river…”

Danielle Steel (1947) American author of romance novels

People

“I learned a little of beauty-- enough to know that it had nothing to do with truth…”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

Truth, Beauty, Learning

“… talent means nothing, while experience, acquired in humility and with hard work, means everything.”

Patrick Süskind (1949) German writer and screenwriter

Source: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Wise, Back To Work

“Tired, tired with nothing, tired with everything, tired with the world’s weight he had never chosen to bear.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

World

“Look to nothing, not even for a moment except to reason.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

“The first symptom of true love in a man is timidity, in a young woman, boldness. This is surprising, and yet nothing is more simple. It is the two sexes tending to approach each other and assuming each the other's qualities.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Love, Sex

“Believe nothing of me
except that I felt your beauty
more closely than my own.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

Source: The Spice Box of Earth

Beauty

“Nothing stands still, except in our memory.”

Philippa Pearce book Tom's Midnight Garden

Source: Tom's Midnight Garden

Memory

“The wolf is carnivore incarnate and he's as cunning as he is ferocious; once he's had a taste of flesh then nothing else will do.”

Angela Carter (1940–1992) English novelist

Wolf

“But nothing warps time quite like childhood”

Brian K. Vaughan (1976) American screenwriter, comic book creator

Source: Saga, Vol. 3

Time, Childhood

“One great thing about growing old is that nothing is going to lead to anything. Everything is of the moment.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Source: A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

“Things were happening around us, but nothing was happening between us.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“Kerosene," he said, because the silence had lengthened, "is nothing but perfume to me.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Silence

“Nothing less than 7 inches.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

“Kids grow up connected to nothing these days, plugged in and living lives boosted to them from other people.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Rant

Source: Rant

People

“I am so fed up and joyless that not only have I nothing to fill my soul, I cannot even conceive of anything that could possibly satisfy it - alas, not even the bliss of heaven.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Soul

“The only alternative seems to be doing nothing…and doing nothing, I find, rarely accomplishes anything”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

“When we meet someone and fall in love, we have a sense that the whole universe is on our side. And yet if something goes wrong, there is nothing left!”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes (2003), p. 9.
Context: When we meet someone and fall in love, we have a sense that the whole universe is on our side. And yet if something goes wrong, there is nothing left! How is it possible for the beauty that was there only minutes before to vanish so quickly? Life moves very fast. It rushes from heaven to hell in a matter of seconds.

Love, Sense, Universe

“It didn't take long to realize I didn't hardly know nothing. And that if you ast yourself why you black or a man or a woman or a bush it don't mean nothing if you don't ast why you here, period”

Alice Walker book The Color Purple

Source: The Color Purple

“Nothing like work for getting over a disappointment.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Disappointment

“"There might simply be nothing going on that might activate it. Perhaps there isn't anything here that Alec is afraid of."
Magnus glanced at Alec and raised his eyebrows. "Boo."”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Luke and Magnus, pg. 285
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Ashes (2008)

“He was my father. I own half his genes, and all of his history. Believe this: the mistakes are part of the story. I am born of a man who believed he could tell nothing but the truth, while he set down for all time the Poisonwood Bible.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

Truth, History, Time, Parting

“If you look into your own heart, and you find nothing wrong there, what is there to worry about? What is there to fear?”

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

Fear, Heart

“God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but He does what is still more wonderful: He makes saints out of sinners.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

7 July 1838
1830s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1830s
Source: The Journals of Kierkegaard

God

“Mundanes who involve themselves in things they know nothing about are likely to meet unpleasant endings.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“If I could, I would stop the passage of time. But hour follows on hour, minute on minute, each second robbing me of a morsel of myself for the nothing of tomorrow. I shall never experience this moment again.”

Guy De Maupassant (1850–1893) French writer

Time

“But now it seems possible that the truth about getting older is that there are fewer and fewer things to make fun of until finally there is nothing you are sure you will never be.”

Jenny Offill book Dept. of Speculation

Source: Dept. of Speculation

Truth

“One thing in my defense, not that it matters: I know something Carter never knew, or Helene, or maybe you. I know what "nothing" means, and keep on playing.”

Joan Didion book Play It as It Lays

Source: Play It as It Lays

“Nothing like ADHD and a good fight to the death to make time fly”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Death, Time, Fight, Flying

“After a long, long time she reached an important conclusion. She was never going to stand by and say nothing again.”

Eleanor Estes book The Hundred Dresses

Source: The Hundred Dresses

Time

“…I've had a bad week."
What's happened?"
Nothing's happened. I've had a bad week in my head, is all.”

Nick Hornby book High Fidelity

Source: High Fidelity

“A dimwit thinks nothing is funny unless it's mean.”

Stephen King book The Green Mile

Source: The Green Mile

Thinking

“Nothing can hurt you except sin; nothing can grieve me except sin; nothing can defeat you except sin. Therefore, be on your guard, my Mansoul.”

John Bunyan book The Holy War

Source: The Holy War

Hurt

“I Think it is lost….. but nothing is ever lost nor can be lost.
The body sluggish, aged, cold, the ember left from earlier fires
shall duly flame again.”

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

Age, Thinking

“Nothing haunts us like the things we don't say.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: Have a Little Faith: a True Story

“She was a nice little girl, simple and true, and tremendously frightened of sex. I told her it was beautiful. I wanted to prove this to her. She let me prove it, but I was too impatient and proved nothing.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

Beauty, Sex, Girl

“Nothing that God ever made is the same thing to more than one person.”

Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) American folklorist, novelist, short story writer

God, Personality

“I was suddenly left with nothing in my hands but a handful of crazy stars.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

Star

“You loved so hard and hoped so much and then you ended up with nothing. Children who no longer needed you. A husband who no longer wanted you. Nothing left but you, alone, and empty space.”

Celeste Ng book Everything I Never Told You: A Novel

Source: Everything I Never Told You

Love, Children, Hope

“I love you so much that nothing can matter to me - not even you… Only my love- not your answer. Not even your indifference”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

Love, Indifference

“I always think everything is going to last forever, but nothing ever does. In fact nothing exists longer than an instant except the thing that we hold in memory”

Sam Savage book Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife

Source: Firmin

Thinking, Memory

“Old lovers go the way of old photographs, bleaching out gradually as in a slow bath of acid: first the moles and pimples, then the shadings. Then the faces themselves, until nothing remains but the general outlines.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Way, Lovers

“There's nothing more annoying than cold logic and reason when you've got a good fit going.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

“Nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Source: Gilead

God

“Nothing is pleasanter to me than exploring in a library.”

Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) British writer

Source: Pericles and Aspasia

“… the more he did nothing, the less time he had to do anything.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

Time

“I can only say that I am nothing but a poor sinner, trusting in Christ alone for salvation.”

Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) Confederate general in the Civil War

Christ

“Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recaptured at will.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Le peintre de la vie moderne (1863), III: “L’artiste, homme du monde, homme des foules et enfant”
Variant: Genius is nothing but youth recaptured.
Source: The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays

Childhood

“There is nothing in this world that never takes a step outside a person's heart.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

World, Heart, Personality

“To me, there's nothing on earth other than women. It's why I get out of bed every morning.”

James Ellroy (1948) Novelist, short story writer, essayist, memoirist

Women

“We can't always do what we think we have to do. So when there's nothing else you can do, you wait… No matter what… pressure… you might feel.”

Jeff Lindsay book Dearly Devoted Dexter

Source: Dearly Devoted Dexter

Feeling, Thinking, Waiting

“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Section I, Chap. I.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part I

Happiness, Pleasure, Nature, Selfishness

“I'm not sure what I am anymore… Sometimes I think I'm nothing but what other people have done to me―a big collection of brainwashing, surgeries, and cures… That, and all the mistakes I've made. All the people I've disappointed.”

Scott Westerfeld book Specials

Source: Specials

People, Disappointment, Thinking

“i do it for the joy it brings
because i'm a joyful girl
because the world owes me nothing
and we owe each other the world”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

World, Girl, Joy

“There is nothing worse than an enemy with imagination.”

Sharon Kay Penman (1945) American historical novelist

Imagination

“In losing a friend, she is reminded of all she has lost and all she stands to lose again. There is nothing to be done to make it any easier.
We all grieve alone.”

Alice Hoffman (1952) Novelist, young-adult writer, children's writer

Source: Incantation

“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