“People who hadn't suffered a loss yet struck me as not quite grown up.”
Anne Tyler The Beginner's Goodbye
Source: The Beginner's Goodbye
Quotes about quit page 6
Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American writer
Positive Thinking Every Day : An Inspiration for Each Day of the Year (1993), "April 13"
Earlier variant: People become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things. And those who have learned to have a realistic, nonegotistical belief in themselves, who possess a deep and sound self-confidence, are assets to mankind, too, for they transmit their dynamic quality to those lacking it.
You Can If You Think You Can (1987), p. 84
Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea
Variant: It's quite an undertaking to start loving somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment right at the start where you have to jump across an abyss: if you think about it you don't do it.
Source: Nausea (1938)
Context: I know. I know that I shall never again meet anything or anybody who will inspire me with passion. You know, it's quite a job starting to love somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment, in the very beginning, when you have to jump across a precipice: if you think about it you don't do it. I know I'll never jump again.
Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film
Source: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Long Way Home, Part 3
Edward de Bono (1933) Maltese physician
Source: I Am Right You Are Wrong: From This to the New Renaissance: From Rock Logic to Water Logic
“The reason to moderate is to avoid having to quit.”
Jim Harrison (1937–2016) American novelist, poet, essayist
Source: Off to the Side: A Memoir
“She doesn't quite chop his head off.
She makes a Pez dispenser out of him.”
Frank Miller book The Big Fat Kill
Source: The Big Fat Kill
“We are not quite novels.
We are not quite short stories.
In the end, we are collected works.”
Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer
Source: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
Source: Captain's Fury
“Not quite what one expected, but once it happened one realized it couldn't be any other way.”
Donna Tartt book The Secret History
Source: The Secret History
“One never quite allows for the moron in our midst.”
Agatha Christie book The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side
Source: The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side
“There is nothing quite like the moral absolutism of the young." -Hodge”
Cassandra Clare book City of Bones
Source: City of Bones
“Such excess of passion
is quite out of fashion”
Edward Gorey (1925–2000) American writer, artist, and illustrator
Source: Amphigorey
Laurie Faria Stolarz (1972) American writer
Source: Deadly Little Voices
Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer
Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading (1934): "Warning"
Misattributed
Michelle Magorian (1947) English children's writer
Source: Goodnight Mister Tom
Jen Lancaster (1967) American writer
Source: Bitter Is the New Black: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smartass, Or, Why You Should Never Carry A Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office
Jane Green (1968) British writer
Source: Summer Secrets
“I will have to admit, though, that I will never look at an apple in quite the same way.”
Terry Goodkind book Wizard's First Rule
Source: Wizard's First Rule
“I do not need to get used to your silence. I already know it. I quite possibly love all of it.”
Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist
Source: The Complete Short Stories
“Nobody quite knew what to make of the moon any more.”
Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker
Source: Still Life with Woodpecker
Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo
Source: Magic Slays
David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger
Changes
Song lyrics, Hunky Dory (1971)
Context: I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence.
So the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same.
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations.
They're quite aware of what they're going through.
“No one is ever quite as strong or as weak as you'd think.”
Deb Caletti (1963) American writer
Source: The Six Rules of Maybe
“… occasionally I can be quite evil, when there's no-one around to realise.”
Sarra Manning (1950) British writer
Source: Kiss and Make Up
“But to be quite oneself one must first waste a little time.”
Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973) Irish writer
Cary Grant (1904–1986) British-American film and stage actor
As quoted in "Quotable Cary" at American Masters (25 May 2005)
Source: https://www.newspapers.com/clip/33680672/the-los-angeles-times/ "Cary Grant: Doing What Comes naturally,"
William Styron book Darkness Visible
Source: Darkness Visible (1990), III
Context: This general unawareness of what depression is really like was apparent most recently in the matter of Primo Levi, the remarkable Italian writer and survivor of Auschwitz who, at the age of sixty-seven, hurled himself down a stairwell in Turin in 1987. Since my own involvement with the illness, I had been more than ordinarily interested in Levi’s death, and so, late in 1988, when I read an account in The New York Times about a symposium on the writer and his work held at New York University, I was fascinated but, finally, appalled. For, according to the article, many of the participants, worldly writers and scholars, seemed mystified by Levi’s suicide, mystified and disappointed. It was as if this man whom they had all so greatly admired, and who had endured so much at the hands of the Nazis — a man of exemplary resilience and courage — had by his suicide demonstrated a frailty, a crumbling of character they were loath to accept. In the face of a terrible absolute — self-destruction — their reaction was helplessness and (the reader could not avoid it) a touch of shame.
My annoyance over all this was so intense that I was prompted to write a short piece for the op-ed page of the Times. The argument I put forth was fairly straightforward: the pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances because its anguish can no longer be borne. The prevention of many suicides will continue to be hindered until there is a general awareness of the nature of this pain. Through the healing process of time — and through medical intervention or hospitalization in many cases — most people survive depression, which may be its only blessing; but to the tragic legion who are compelled to destroy themselves there should be no more reproof attached than to the victims of terminal cancer.
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
"Einstein's Reply to Criticisms" (1949), The World As I See It (1949)
Context: A man's value to the community depends primarily on how far his feelings, thoughts, and actions are directed towards promoting the good of his fellows. We call him good or bad according to how he stands in this matter. It looks at first sight as if our estimate of a man depended entirely on his social qualities.
And yet such an attitude would be wrong. It is clear that all the valuable things, material, spiritual, and moral, which we receive from society can be traced back through countless generations to certain creative individuals. The use of fire, the cultivation of edible plants, the steam engine — each was discovered by one man.
Only the individual can think, and thereby create new values for society — nay, even set up new moral standards to which the life of the community conforms. Without creative, independently thinking and judging personalities the upward development of society is as unthinkable as the development of the individual personality without the nourishing soil of the community.
The health of society thus depends quite as much on the independence of the individuals composing it as on their close political cohesion.
Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books
Source: Sneetches are Sneetches: Learn About Same and Different
Susan Wiggs (1958) American writer
Source: The Goodbye Quilt
“Never quit, Rikki. No one can beat you if you don't quit.”
Robert Ferrigno (1947) American writer
Heart of the Assassin
“My name is Stephen Leeds, and I am perfectly sane. My hallucinations, however, are all quite mad.”
Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer
Source: Legion
Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist
Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
“There’s no freedom quite like the freedom of being constantly underestimated.”
Scott Lynch The Lies of Locke Lamora
Source: The Lies of Locke Lamora (2006), Chapter 4 “At the Court of Capa Barsavi” section 5 (p. 219)
“something almost, but not quite entirely unlike tea”
Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy
Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
“Everything gets better in the end. If it's not better, it's not quite the end.”
Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist
