Quotes about something
page 22

“I miss him like one might miss a scar, or wooden leg, something disfiguring but characteristic.”

Nick Hornby (1957) English novelist

“Self respect is something that can't be killed. The worst thing is to kill a man's pretense at it.”

Source: The Fountainhead

“It shattered something inside me that hadn't been broken before.”

E. Lockhart (1967) American writer of novels as E. Lockhart (mainly for teenage girls) and of picture books under real name Emily J…

Source: The Boyfriend List: 15 Guys, 11 Shrink Appointments, 4 Ceramic Frogs and Me, Ruby Oliver

“I have lost everything, Han thought. Then he corrected himself. Every time I think I’ve lost everything, I find there’s still something else to lose.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Gray Wolf Throne

Thinking, Time

“And now I have to stop. Because every time I remember this, I have to cry a little by myself. I don't know why something that made me so happy then feels so sad now. Maybe that is the way it is with the best memories.”

Amy Tan The Kitchen God's Wife

Source: The Kitchen God's Wife

Happiness, Sadness, Way, Feeling

“Yeah, about that,” says Peeta, entwining his fingers in mine. “Don’t try something like that again.” “Or what?” I ask. “Or… or…” He can’t think of anything good. “Just give me a minute.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Thinking

“Is it right,” Jutta says, “to do something only because everyone else is doing it?”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

“All this hoping for something- or someone- that's maybe hopeless. I'm having a hard time processing what I am supposed to believe, or if I'm even supposed to. There is too much information, and I don't like a lot of it.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Hope, Time

“What seems natural to us is probably just something familiar in a long tradition that has forgotten the unfamiliar source from which it arose. And yet this unfamiliar source once struck man as strange and caused him to think and to wonder.”

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

Nature, Thinking

“If you don't like something, change it; if you can't change it, change the way you think about it.”

Mary Engelbreit (1952) American illustrator

Way, Thinking, Change

“You see something you like?" I asked, echoing something I'd said to him ling ago, when he'd caught me in a compromising position at school.
"Lots," he said.
-Rose (Roza) to Dimitri”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

School

“Believe, when you are most unhappy, that there is something for you to do in the world. So long as you can sweeten another's pain, life is not in vain.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

We Bereaved (1929)

Life, Pain, World

“The bruises go away, and so does how you hate, and so does the feeling that everything you receive from life is something you have earned.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

Life, Hate, Feeling

“[W]hen a group of people make something sacred, the members of the cult lose the ability to think clearly about it. Morality binds and blinds.”

Jonathan Haidt (1963) American psychologist

Source: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion

People, Thinking

“He's been sent by the devil to destabilize something that was already fragile. How could I fall in love so quickly with someone I don't even know?”

Paulo Coelho book Adultery

Source: Adultery

Love

“You're going to pass something down no matter what you do or if you do nothing. Even if you let yourself go fallow, the weeds will grow and the brambles. Something will grow.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“We don't read novels to have an experience like life. Heck, we're living lives, complete with all the incompleteness. We turn to fiction to have an author assure us that it means something.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Life, Reading

“Always there is something worth saying
about glory, about gratitude.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: What Do We Know

Gratitude

“I buy wine according to the bottle design. After I get down the first glass it all tastes okay to me so I figure you go for something classy to look at on the table”

Janet Evanovich (1943) Novelist

Source: Smokin' Seventeen

Wine

“Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.”

Euripidés (-480–-406 BC) ancient Athenian playwright

Question, Learning, Deep

“It's not enough to be American. You always have to be something else, Irish-American, German-American, and you'd wonder how they'd get along if someone hadn't invented the hyphen”

Frank McCourt book 'Tis

§14
'Tis (2000)
Source: ' Tis: a Memoir
Context: Why is it the minute I open my mouth the whole world is telling me they're Irish and we should all have a drink? It's not enough to be American. You always have to be something else, Irish-American, German-American, and you'd wonder how they'd get along if someone hadn't invented the hyphen.

“The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Source: The Benefactor (1963), Ch. 1, p. 1, Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN 0-312-42012-9

Truth

“Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before! What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. What if Christmas… perhaps… means a little bit more!”

Dr. Seuss book How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

Variant: "Maybe Christmas...", he thought, "... Doesn't come from a store."
"Maybe Christmas... perhaps... means a little bit more!"
Source: How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1957)

Christmas, Christmas

“You can't dwell on what might have been… and it's not fair to condemn him for something he hasn't done.”

Wendelin Van Draanen Flipped

Source: Flipped

“Make sure, as often as possible, you are doing something you’d be happy to die doing.”

Matt Haig (1975) British writer

Source: The Humans

Happiness

“He knew that there was a difference between something that makes you happy and something that
doesn’t make you unhappy. The trick was convincing yourself these were one and the same.”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

Happiness

“There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 2

People, Personality

“It's when you give something that you have very little of, that you truly give. - Arthur”

Marc Levy book If Only It Were True

Source: If Only It Were True

“Happiness is pretty simple: someone to love, something to do, something to look forward to.”

Rita Mae Brown (1944) Novelist, poet, screenwriter, activist

Source: Hiss of Death

Love, Happiness

“But I want to feel like life matters. I
had something real with you, but then the realness scared me. I decided to go for other things instead.”

David Levithan Boy Meets Boy

Source: Boy Meets Boy

Life, Feeling

“There’s always someone who knows something.”

Stephen King book Hearts in Atlantis

Source: Hearts in Atlantis

“To really touch something, she is learning—the bark of a sycamore tree in the gardens; a pinned stag beetle in the Department of Etymology; the exquisitely polished interior of a scallop shell in Dr. Geffard’s workshop—is to love it.”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

Love, Tree, Learning

“Pretend to be a delinquent?" I asked clarifying.
"You can do it," Dave advised me. "Just don't smile, and try to look like you're considering stealing something.”

Sarah Dessen book What Happened to Goodbye

Source: What Happened to Goodbye

Smile

“Sydney: Ever had that happen? Once you can’t have something, you want it that much more.”
Adrian: “Yes. It happens all the time.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

Time

“Though, if you think about it, hostile, dethroned pseudodeities probably make disagreeable neighbors. You'll have to figure out something to do with him.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Final Empire

Hostility, Thinking

“Love is when you meet someone who tells you something new about yourself.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

Source: Mad Love

Love, Relationship, Cute, Romantic

“I held my breath as we do sometimes to stop time when something wonderful has touched us…”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 2

Time

“Men love a submissive woman, Damon said simply. Even when they say the don't. There's just something about a beautiful, soft woman looking to them to protect and take care of them that inspires a man to greatness.”

Maya Banks (1964) Author

Source: Sweet Surrender

Love, Men, Beauty

“There is something in me maybe someday
to be written; now it is folded, and folded,
and folded, like a note in school.”

Sharon Olds (1942) American poet

School

“As far as I was concerned men were something you had around the place, not particularly interesting, but quite harmless. I had never shown the slightest feeling for them, and apart from my never wearing a skirt, saw nothing else in common between us.”

Jeanette Winterson book Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Source: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Men, Feeling

“We all believe that we are a certain kind of person, but we never know until we do something that proves otherwise, or until we die.”

Chuck Klosterman book Downtown Owl

Source: Downtown Owl

Personality

“May I suggest that you all read? And often. Believe me, it's nice to have something to talk about other than the weather and the Queen's health. Your mind is not a cage. It's a garden. And it requires cultivating.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

Health, Reading, Weather

“Happiness is something you lay siege to, it is a battle like a game of go. I will take hold of all the pain and snuff it out.”

Shan Sa book The Girl Who Played Go

Source: The Girl Who Played Go

Pain, Happiness, Game

“If you are facing a new challenge or being asked to do something that you have never done before don’t be afraid to step out. You have more capability than you think you do but you will never see it unless you place a demand on yourself for more.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Thinking

“My Saturday Night. My Saturday night is like a microwave burrito. Very tough to ruin something that starts out so bad to begin with.”

Michael Chabon book The Yiddish Policemen's Union

Source: The Yiddish Policemen's Union

Night

“In the morning, when the nothing vase casts a something shadow, like the memory of someone you've lost, what can you say about that?”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Memory

“She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Understanding

“How could you go about choosing something that would hold the half of your heart you had to bury?”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Mercy

Heart

“The thing about leaving something behind for the last time is that you rarely realize you're doing it.”

Wendy Mass (1967) American children's writer

Source: The Candymakers

Time

“An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

As quoted without citation in Discovering Evolutionary Ecology: Bringing Together Ecology And Evolution (2006) by Peter J. Mayhew, p. 24
Attributed

Sex, Personality

“You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

"My Neighbor's Son"
To My Daughters, With Love (1967)

Feeling

“In the long run men only hit what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Men

“Of course there’s something there; unfortunately, there’s always something ‘there.’ Something you will one day be sorry you saw.”

Mary Gaitskill (1954) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Source: Veronica

“Their goal was in sight. They had a Titan with a very loud kitten on their side. That had to count for something.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

“But I always worked harder when I was up against something, or when someone assumed I couldn't succeed. That's what drove me, all those nights studying. The fact that so many figured I couldn't do it.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

Study, Night

“Jackson has devised a game called "Real or Not Real" to help Peeta. He mentions something he thinks happened, and they tell him if it's true or imagined, usually followed by a brief explanation.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Imagination, Game, Thinking, Help

“No, i mean enterprising." said Will. "When I mean morally deficient, I say, `Now, that is something i would have done´”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“Let me get this straight. First you decide I'm a demon because of a power I didn't ask for and don't even understand. Then when that falls through you label me a fallen sybil and a ho. Am I missing something or do you just not like me”

Karen Chance book Touch the Dark

Source: Touch the Dark

Understanding

“Not every child has an equal talent or an equal ability or equal motivation, but they should have the equal right to develop their talent and their ability and their motivation, to make something of themselves.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Motivation

“I can’t begin to tell you the things I discovered while I was looking for something else.”

Shelby Foote (1916–2005) Novelist, historian

“Grandma said […] when you come on something that is good, first thing to do is share it with whoever you can find; that way, the good spreads out to where no telling it will go.”

Forrest Carter book The Education of Little Tree

Source: The Education of Little Tree

Way, Grandma

“It's easier to start over than to work to make something last.”

Rachel Hawthorne (1950) American author

Source: Thrill Ride

“What is going to happen in the course of my day that will be an improvement over lying on something very soft, underneath something very warm, wearing only underwear, doing absolutely nothing, all by myself?”

Chuck Klosterman book Downtown Owl

Source: Downtown Owl

Lying

“Because something is significantly wrong with a creature that sacrifices its children’s lives to settle its differences.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Katniss (p. 377)
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay (2010)
Context: I no longer feel any allegiance to these monsters called human beings, despite being one myself. I think that Peeta was onto something about us destroying one another and letting some decent species take over. Because something is significantly wrong with a creature that sacrifices its children’s lives to settle its differences.

Children

“The right to be irresponsible and stupid is something I hold very dear. And luckily it is something I do well.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

Stupidity

“Just because something bears the aspect of the inevitable one should not, therefore, go along willingly with it.”

Philip K. Dick The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

Source: The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

“my youth,
one time,
that time
I knew
even through the
nothingness,
it was a
celebration
of something not to
do
but only
know.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Youth, Time

“The secret of joy in work is contained in one word — excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

The Joy of Children (1966)

Secret, Joy, Motivational

“Living is the challenge. Not dying. Dying is so easy. Sometimes it only takes ten seconds to die. But living? That can take you eighty years and you do something in that time.”

Melina Marchetta book Looking for Alibrandi

Source: Looking for Alibrandi

Time

“Anyone can be crazy. That's usually just because there's something screwed up in your wiring, you know? But suicide is a whole different thing. I mean, how much do you have to hate yourself to want to just wipe yourself out?”

Michael Thomas Ford (1968) American writer

Source: Suicide Notes

Hate, Suicide

“To believe all men honest is folly. To believe none is something worse.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Men

“We did not lack modesty—on the contrary—but something urgently drove us to defy modesty together as immodestly as possible.”

Georges Bataille book Story of the Eye

Source: Story of the Eye

“Child, it's a very bad thing for a woman to face the worst that can happen to her, because after she's faced the worst she can't ever really fear anything again…. Scarlett, always save something to fear— even as you save something to love…”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

Love, Fear

“An idea is something you have; an ideology is something that has you”

Morris Berman (1944) American historian

Idea

“To memorize something, it's best to write it down.”

Koushun Takami book Battle Royale

Source: Battle Royale

“I suppose I do have one embarrassing passion- I want to know what it feels like to care about something passionately.”

Susan Orlean (1955) American journalist

Source: The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession

Feeling, Passion

“I give boring people something to discuss over corn.”

Aimee Bender (1969) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Girl in the Flammable Skirt

People

“There is no shame in not knowing something. The shame is in not being willing to learn.”

Alison Croggon (1962) contemporary Australian poet, playwright and fantasy novelist

Source: The Naming

Learning

“Knowing something and understanding it were not the same thing.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The Time Keeper

Understanding

“The rejection didn't faze him. "Fine. If I can't have you, then you do the taking. Have all of me, part of me, a small piece, whatever you want. Just please, have something.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Eternal

Variant: Fine. If I can't have you, then you do the taking. Have all of me, part of me, a small piece, whatever you want. Just please, have something.
Source: Lover Eternal

Parting

“Wroth, darling,” she purred, smiling so sweetly. “I can’t wait for the next time I get to put my mouth on you.” In an instant the smile faded and she snapped her teeth and yanked her head back as if she was chewing something free.”

Kresley Cole book The Warlord Wants Forever

Source: The Warlord Wants Forever

Smile, Time, Waiting

“So are you gonna cry about it like a punk, or are you gonna do something?”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: We'll Always Have Summer

Cry

“Torn between fear and something that resembled love, she wrestled with questions she never dreamed she would face: How could she leave? Then again, how could she stay?”

Jodi Picoult book Picture Perfect

Source: Picture Perfect

Love, Fear, Dreams, Question

“So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around?”

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

Books, Way, Reading

“I don't believe in pessimism. If something doesn't come up the way you want, forge ahead. If you think it's going to rain, it will.”

Clint Eastwood (1930) actor and director from the United States

Way, Thinking

“Personally, I don’t like inherently happy people. I don’t trust them. I think there’s something seriously wrong with anyone who isn’t at least a little let down by the world.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: How to Kill a Rock Star

Happiness, People, World, Thinking

“You can't prove that something doesn't exist. You can only prove that something does exist.”

John Connolly book The Gates

Source: The Gates

“Where you are is who you are. The further inside you the place moves, the more your identity is intertwined with it. Never casual, the choice of place is the choice of something you crave.”

Frances Mayes book Under the Tuscan Sun

Source: Under the Tuscan Sun

“Dispel, v.
It was the way you said, “I have something to tell you.” I could feel the magic drain from the room.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Way, Feeling

“All your life you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye, and when something nudges it into outline it is like being ambushed by a grotesque.”

Tom Stoppard book Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Source: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Life, Truth

“But when a girl gives a boy a dead squid - that had to mean something.”

William Goldman The Silent Gondoliers

Source: The Silent Gondoliers

Girl, Boy, Dead

“I kept waiting for him to lay bare something more than this pointed unobjectionableness, but all that rose to the surface was more surface”

Philip Roth book American Pastoral

Source: American Pastoral

Waiting

“There's something liberating about not pretending. Dare to embarrass yourself. Risk.”

Drew Barrymore (1975) American actress, director and producer

“The world is divided into those who screw and those who do not. He distrusted those who did not—when they strayed from the straight and narrow it was something so unusual for them that they bragged about love as if they had just invented it.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Love in the Time of Cholera

Source: Love in the Time of Cholera

Love, World

“If you're going to do something wrong, at least enjoy it.”

Leo Rosten (1908–1997) American writer

“You can only become great at something you are willing to sacrifice for”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

“We tried it again and it didn't work out. Sour milk is always sour milk. When something goes bad it stays bad. You don't put sour milk in the refrigerator one day, and take it out the next and expect it to taste sweet.”

Eric Jerome Dickey (1961) American author

Source: Thieves' Paradise

“I want to do something splendid before I go into my castle, something heroic or wonderful that won't be forgotten after I'm dead. I don't know what, but I'm on the watch for it, and mean to astonish you all some day.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Variant: I want to do something splendid... something heroic or wonderful that won't be forgotten after I'm dead. I don't know what, but I'm on the watch for it and mean to astonish you all someday.
Source: Little Women

Dead

“I would walk along the quais when I had finished work or when I was trying to think something out. It was easier to think if I was walking and doing something or seeing people doing something that they understood.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast

People, Thinking

“Suppose something goes wrong? Suppose you need a big full-figure woman like me to help straighten things out?"
Lula”

Janet Evanovich Four to Score

Source: Four to Score

Help

Quotes about something page 22

Quotes about something
page 22