Quotes about right
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“Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

“If this were a novel, I'd stop reading right now. I'd throw it across the room.”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Source: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

Reading

“I have often spoken to you about good and evil. This has made some uncomfortable. But good and evil are present in this world, and between the two there can be no compromise. Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere. Freeing people from oppression and despair is eternally right. This nation must continue to speak out for justice and truth. We must always be willing to act in their defense and to advance the cause of peace”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2009, Farewell speech to the nation (January 2009)
Context: As we address these challenges – and others we cannot foresee tonight – America must maintain our moral clarity. I have often spoken to you about good and evil. This has made some uncomfortable. But good and evil are present in this world, and between the two there can be no compromise. Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere. Freeing people from oppression and despair is eternally right. This nation must continue to speak out for justice and truth. We must always be willing to act in their defense and to advance the cause of peace.

People, Truth, World, Peace

“It'll be all right, my fine fellow," said the Otter. "I'm coming along with you, and I know every path blindfold; and if there's a head that needs to be punched, you can confidently rely upon me to punch it.”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Source: The Wind in the Willows

Confidence

“There are some dreams that get stuck between your teeth when you sleep, so that when you open your mouth to yawn awake they fly right out of you.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Vanishing Acts

Dreams, Sleep, Flying

“If you're honest, you sooner or later have to confront your values. Then you're forced to separate what is right from what is merely legal.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Source: Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
Context: If you're honest, you sooner or later have to confront your values. Then you're forced to separate what is right from what is merely legal. This puts you metaphysically on the run. America is full of metaphysical outlaws.

“Be careful of love. It'll twist your brain around and leave you thinking up is down and right is wrong.”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

Love, Thinking

“Coach Hedge shouted, 'Let the movie star go, you big ugly cupcake! Or I'm gonna plant my hoof right up your…”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Star

“You're trying to be tricky. What's morality?"
"It's the difference between what's right and what you can rationalize."
"Must be a human thing."
"Exactly.”

Christopher Moore (1957) American writer of comic fantasy

“Because you don't notice the light without a bit of shadow. Everything has both dark and light. You have to play with it till you get it exactly right.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

Light

“It is far better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

Freedom

“We're talking about the novel, right? But maybe we're not. We're talking about ourselves. And I guess that's what can start to happen when you talk about a book.”

Meg Wolitzer (1959) American writer

Source: Belzhar

Books

“A loud booming noise interrupted us, and we saw a flash of light off to my right. People near the other garages screamed.

"There, you see?" asked Abe, quite pleased with himself. "A new gate. Perfect timing.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

People, Light, Time, Perfection

“In order to acquire a growing and lasting respect in society, it is a good thing, if you possess great talent, to give, early in your youth, a very hard kick to the right shin of the society that you love. After that, be a snob.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Love, Youth

“Your lifeline…oh, the burning stick. Right.” Leo resisted the urge to set his hand ablaze and yell: Bwah ha ha! The idea was sort of funny, but he wasn’t that cruel.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Idea

“I understood the word 'swoon'. It felt that way, like 'sweep' and 'moon' and 'woo', all those words smashed together in one word that stood for that feeling, right then.”

Jude Watson book What I Saw and How I Lied

Source: What I Saw and How I Lied

Way, Feeling

“Hey, Ms. P," Tad called, "what's going on?"
She let out a slow breath before she answered. "You won't believe this… Brian Murrey tried to eat Scott Morgan."
Nick's eyes widened at the unexpected explanation. Had he heard that right?”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infinity

“If I am right, Thy grace import
Still in the right to stay;
If I am wrong, oh teach my heart
To find that better way!”

Alexander Pope Moral Essays

The Universal Prayer (1738)
Source: Moral Essays

Way, Heart

“I finally learned that it was all right to say something wasn’t working for me when it wasn’t working. The world doesn’t come crashing down when you speak the truth.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Secret Life of Prince Charming

Truth, World, Learning

“The spirit of complaint is born out of an unwillingness to trust God with today.
Like the Israelites, it means you are spending your time looking back toward Egypt or wishing for the future all the while missing what God is doing right now.”

Priscilla Shirer (1974) American writer

God, Time, Future

“I mean, at first, it was kind of disappointing. But people recover from disappointment. Otherwise we'd all be hanging from nooses. Right?”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

People, Disappointment

“And then he gives me a smile that just seems so genuinely sweet with just the right touch of shyness that unexpected warmth rushes through me.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Smile

“You picked the right road, even though it is the most difficult. That is the essence of heroism. (p. 326)”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

Source: A World Without Heroes

“Life is not orderly. No matter how we try to make it so, right in the middle of it we die, lose a leg, fall in love, or drop a jar of applesauce.”

Natalie Goldberg (1948) American writer

Love, Life

“That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones.”

Raymond Carver (1938–1988) American short story author and poet

“That's right," he said. "I created a a bunch of Forsaken Warriors, had them attack the Institute and kill Madeleine and nearly kill the rest of us, just so that I could keep Clary from at home. And lo and behold, my diabolical plan is working.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Home

“Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.”

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) Welsh poet and writer

Men, Night

“I did the right thing, didn't I? It all worked out in the end.'In the end'? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.”

Alan Moore book Watchmen

Source: Watchmen

“A problem isn't finished just because you've found the right answer.”

Yōko Ogawa book The Housekeeper and the Professor

Source: The Housekeeper and the Professor

Problem

“Hamish's right arm was around Angus's waist as the two of them tangoed past.”

Ally Carter book Heist Society

Source: Heist Society

Past

“MARIE I’m saying that the right man for you might be out there right now and if you don’t grab him, someone else will, and you’ll have to spend the rest of your life knowing that someone else is married to your husband.”

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

Source: When Harry Met Sally

Life

“It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.”

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

“When you’ve found the right one - when you see him, when you’re with him - you’ll feel like you’re coming home.”

Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (1933) American children's writer

Source: Now I'll Tell You Everything

Feeling, Home

“If you are unwilling to defend your right to your own lives,
then you are merely like mice trying to argue with owls.
You think their ways are wrong.
They think you are dinner.”

Terry Goodkind book Naked Empire

Source: Naked Empire

Way, Thinking

“I know. I was hoping," I say.
"Exactly. Because you're desperate," says Haymitch.
I don't argue because, of course, he's right.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Hope

“I suppose that's one of the ironies of life doing the wrong thing at the right moment.”

Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British comic actor and filmmaker

Life

“Hey Baby.
Baby? You're kidding me, right?
I was trying it out. No?
No.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Baby

“In a way, it is beautiful to be young and hard up. With the right wife, and I had her, deprivation became a game.”

Wallace Stegner book Crossing to Safety

Source: Crossing to Safety

Beauty, Way, Game

“Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author’s phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.”

Guy Debord (1931–1994) French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker and founding member of the Situationist International (SI)

Source: Society of the Spectacle (1967), Ch. 8, sct. 207 (confer Comte de Lautréamont, Poésies II, 1870).

Idea, Falseness

“Regin hissed at him and followed Mariketa, with Carrow right behind them. As Carrow passed Bowe, she said, “Prick. You and Twice-Baked here deserve each other.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night

“The right woman is the one you can live with, not the one in your head.”

Gloria Naylor book Mama Day

Source: Mama Day

“The right choice is hardly ever the easy choice.”

Rick Riordan book The Throne of Fire

Source: The Throne of Fire

“Take some books and read; that’s an immense help; and books are always good company if you have the right sort.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Books, Reading, Help

“He was right in saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others.”

Leo Tolstoy book Family Happiness

Part 1, chapter 2 http://books.google.com/books?id=eWU4AAAAYAAJ&q=%22there+is+only+one+enduring+happiness+in+life+to+live+for+others%22&pg=PA22#v=onepage <br class="br">Family Happiness (1859) <br class="br">Variant: There is only one enduring happiness in life&mdash; to live for others.

Life, Happiness

“Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge. The bridge was being repaired: she went right through the Danger sign. The car fell a hundred feet into the ravine, smashing through the treetops feathery with new leaves, then burst into flames and rolled down into the shallow creek at the bottom. Chunks of the bridge fell on top of it. Nothing much was left but charred smithereens.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin (2000) first lines

War, Cars, Sister

“We always have a tendency to see those things that do not exist and to be blind to the great lessons that are right there before our eyes.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: The Pilgrimage: A Contemporary Quest for Ancient Wisdom

“At times to be silent is to lie. You will win because you have enough brute force. But you will not convince. For to convince you need to persuade. And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: Reason and Right”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

Lie, Time

“I am in trouble here. This woman is not right.”

Stephen King book Misery

Source: Misery

“Sit in a room and read--and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time.”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Source: The Power of Myth

People, Books, Time, Reading

“You know someone's right for you when the things they don'tto say are even more important than the things they do.”

Jodi Picoult book Sing You Home

Source: Sing You Home

“One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment.”

Hart Crane (1899–1932) American writer

“for some reason, dying men always ask the question they know the answer to. perhaps it's so they can die being right.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Men, Question

“You have to let other people be right' was his answer to their insults. 'It consoles them for not being anything else.”

André Gide book The Immoralist

Source: The Immoralist

People

“You have no right to make jigsaws of people.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Howl's Moving Castle

Source: Howl's Moving Castle

People

“It doesn’t seem right? Another part of him wondered, Since when do I worry about what’s right?”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Parting

“It's strange, but when it comes right down to it I never do fall apart--even when I'm sure I will.”

Judy Blume (1938) American children's writer

Source: Forever . . .

“You can't right the wrongs because you'll never understand the cause and you'll be too busy dodging the effect.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: Eye Scream

Understanding, Business

“Right now I'd like all my troubles to stand in front of me in a straight line, and one by one I'd give each a black eye.”

Shannon Hale The Goose Girl

Source: The Goose Girl

“Yes, you should talk," he said. "Sometimes a sad man can talk the sadness right out through his mouth. Sometimes a killin' man can talk the murder right out of his mouth.”

John Steinbeck book The Grapes of Wrath

Source: The Grapes of Wrath

Sadness

“"Oh," I say under my breath. "Tick, tock." My eyes sweep around the full circle of the arena and I know she's right. "Tick, tock. This is a clock."”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Katniss, p. 325
The Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire (2009)
Source: Mockingjay

“A Time For Prayer

"In times of war and not before,
God and the soldier we adore.
But in times of peace and all things righted,
God is forgotten and the soldier slighted."

-Rudyard Kipling”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

God, War, Peace, Time

“I'm not myself.' '… You can never say that. You're just a piece of yourself right now that you don't like.”

Jodi Lynn Anderson American children's writer

Source: Tiger Lily

“Rise above principal and do what's right.”

Joseph Heller (1923–1999) American author

“But sticking to rules just because they're there does not make them right. You need to learn when the rules should be broken.”

Ilsa J. Bick (1957) American writer

Source: Ashes

Learning

“No one ever likes the right person.”

Bret Easton Ellis The Rules of Attraction

Source: The Rules of Attraction

Personality

“The universe doesn't decide what's right or not right. You do.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Universe

“The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right!”

Larry Niven (1938) American writer

As quoted by Arthur C. Clarke in "Meeting of the Minds : Buzz Aldrin Visits Arthur C. Clarke" by Andrew Chaikin (27 February 2001) http://web.archive.org/web/20010302082528/http://www.space.com/peopleinterviews/aldrin_clarke_010227.html

“As it stands right now, I lead Richard Pryor in heart attacks, two to one. However, Richard still leads me, one to nothing, in burning yourself up.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Heart

“I’m a professional bodyguard. (Leta)
Yeah, right. (Aiden)
Nope. All true. I know seventy-two ways to kill a man and sixty-nine of them look like an accident. (Leta)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Upon the Midnight Clear

Way

“Perhaps the most tragic thing about mankind is that we are all dreaming about some magical garden over the horizon, instead of enjoying the roses that are right outside today.”

Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) American businessman and philanthropist

Dreams

“I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

Source: Brave New World

“Consider yourself lucky for having met him, for he's the kind of man who'll prove you right.”

Nicholas Sparks book Safe Haven

Source: Safe Haven

“When she kissed me, I had the feeling my brain was melting right through my body.”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

Feeling, Kiss

“That’s us,” he said. “Those five nuts right there.”
Which one is me?” I asked.
The little deformed one,” Zoe suggested.
Oh, shut up.”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Variant: That's us," he said. "Those five nuts right there."

"Which one is me?" I asked.

"The little deformed one," Zoe suggested.

"Oh, shut up.
Source: The Titan's Curse

“Jem: Come in.
Jace: Where's Brother Zachariah?
Jem: I'm right here. Jace Herondale. And once more a Herondale is the object of my deliverance. I should have anticipated.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire