Quotes about something
page 29

“I had very good eyes once. Though it's another thing to say what I saw. In my experience, it is entirely possible to watch something happen and not to see it at all.”

Anna Funder book All That I Am

Source: All That I Am

“Breeze turned to look out the window. "You were always the best of us, Sazed," he said quietly. "Because you believed in something.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Hero of Ages

“He asked about Dad and about Gran- as if talking about something could make it better. As if wounds needed attention.”

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Source: We Were Liars

“It will pass, it will all pass, we're going to be so happy! If our love could grow any stronger it would grow stronger because there is something horrifying in it”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Love, Happiness

“When you can't bear something but it goes on anyway, the person who survives isn't you anymore; you've changed and become someone else, a new person, the one who did bear it after all.”

Austin Grossman (1969) American writer and game designer

Change, Personality

“All the emotions have something in common. People are quite aware of the sorrow there always is in lust, but they are not so aware of the lust there is in sorrow.”

Graham Greene The Tenth Man

Source: The Tenth Man

People

“I look back one more time. It's like a crater, a hole where something happened.”

Emma Donoghue Room

Source: Room

Time

“Hodge sent me to wake you up. Actually, he offered to wake you up himself, but since it's five a. m., I figured you'd be less cranky if you had something nice to look at.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Jace to Clary, pg. 162
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)

“This first glance of a soul which does not yet know itself is like dawn in the heavens; it is the awakening of something radiant and unknown.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Soul

“Love is giving something you don't have to someone who doesn't want it.”

Jacques Lacan (1901–1981) French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist

Love

“Every time my dreams threaten to become reality, something always happens and I end up alone.”

Jane Green (1968) British writer

Source: Swapping Lives

Dreams, Reality, Time

“The true joy of a moonlit night is something we no longer understand. Only the men of old, when there were no lights, could understand the true joy of a moonlit night.”

Yasunari Kawabata book Palm-of-the-Hand Stories

Source: Palm-of-the-Hand Stories

Men, Understanding, Light, Joy

“Memoir is about handing over you life to someone and saying, This is what I went through, this is who I am, and maybe you can learn something from it.”

Jeannette Walls (1960) American writer and journalist

Life, Learning

“His whole body shakes with the strain as he tries to lift something he knows he can't lift, something everybody knows he can't lift.

But, for just a second, when we hear the cement grind at our feet, we think, by golly, he might do it.”

Ken Kesey book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Thinking

“We do not at present educate people to think but, rather, to have opinions, and that is something altogether different.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

People, Education, Thinking

“You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Sense

“Art makes nothing happen in a way that makes something happen.”

Ali Smith book How to Be Both

Source: How to Be Both

Art, Way

“Don't look pleased with yourself. When Will says 'enterprising, ' he means 'morally deficient. '" "No, I mean enterprising, " said Will. "When I mean morally deficient, I say, 'Now, that's something I would have done.”

Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments

Variant: When Will says 'enterprising', he means 'morally deficient.'"
"No, I mean enterprising," said Will. "When I mean morally deficient, I say, 'Now, that's something I would have done.
Source: The Mortal Instruments

“We cannot love something solely because it has been ignored. It must also be worthy of our attention.”

Zadie Smith (1975) British writer

Love

“I never confuse the cost of something with its value”

Robin Hobb book The Mad Ship

Source: The Mad Ship

“I must always forget how one word is able to pick out another, to manner another, until I have got something I might have said… but did not.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Source: The Complete Poems

Forgetting

“If everyone waited to do something good until they had purely unselfish motivations, no good would ever get done in the world. The point is to do it anyway.”

Wendy Mass (1967) American children's writer

Source: 13 Gifts

World, Motivation, Waiting

“She had waited all her life for something, and it had killed her when it found her.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Their Eyes Were Watching God

Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God

Life, Waiting

“It is me. I am his madness. For years he's been looking for something to put his madness into. And he found me.”

John Fowles book The Collector

Source: The Collector

Madness

“Faith is believing in something you know isn't true.”

Tom Robbins Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

Source: Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

Faith

“Foaly: Confidence is ignorance. If you're feeling cocky, it's because there's something you don't know.”

Eoin Colfer Artemis Fowl

Source: Artemis Fowl (2001)

Feeling, Confidence

“But just because you bury something, that doesn’t mean it stops existing.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: We'll Always Have Summer

“I enjoy the fun of failure. It's fun to fail, I kept repeating. It's part of being ambitious; it's part of being creative. If something is worth doing, it's worth doing badly”

Gretchen Rubin (1966) American writer

Source: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

Failure, Parting

“What is a teacher? I'll tell you: it isn't someone who teaches something, but someone who inspires the student to give of her best in order to discover what she already knows.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: The Witch of Portobello (2007), p. 78.
Source: The Witch Of Portobello

Teachers

“And when it comes, her kiss is like something not so much felt as found.”

Libba Bray Going Bovine

Source: Going Bovine

Kiss

“I missed him so much I would sometimes turn to tell him something before I forgot he was gone. In spite of all that, and all the emotion boiling around inside me, all I could think of to say was: “You’re blue.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Thinking

“I'm sorry' I said again. Whenever someone tells you something said, it's the only thing you can think to say, even if you're already said it before.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Source: A Walk to Remember

Thinking

“Just because a person isn't talking about something doesn't mean it's not on their mind. Often, in fact, it's why they won't speak of it.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Source: Saint Anything

Personality

“God knows I am not too hippy. Perhaps because I am too much around the hip and I fear fads for, like anybody else, I like something that tends to last.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: More Notes of a Dirty Old Man: The Uncollected Columns

God, Fear

“It is within our power not to make a judgement about something, and so not disturb our minds; for nothing in itself possesses the power to form our judgements.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

“Bring something incomprehensible into the world!”

Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) French philosopher

Source: A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

World

“Just because something’s damaged doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be treated with respect”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

“It's like male geeks don't know how to deal with real live women, so they just assume it's a user interface problem. Not their fault. They'll just wait for the next version to come out- something more "user friendly.”

Douglas Coupland Microserfs

Source: Microserfs

Women, Problem, Waiting

“You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Life

“Just because you refuse to acknowledge something, refuse to look at it or think about it, doesn’t mean it’s not there, that it doesn’t affect you and the choices you make in your life.”

Rachel Gibson (1961) American writer

Source: Tangled Up In You

Life, Thinking

“It was the time of year, the time of day, for a small insistent sadness to pass into the texture of things. Dusk, silence, iron chill. Something lonely in the bone.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

Source: White Noise

Sadness, Silence, Time

“By now he had learned enough to know that when he was getting annoyed at somebody else, it was usually because there was something that he himself should be doing, and he wasn't doing it.”

Lev Grossman The Magician King

Source: The Magician King

Learning

“The book smelled dusty and old but also carried a sweet tang, a hint of something inviting. She opened to the first page and started to read, pronouncing the words in a reverent whisper.”

Shannon Hale (1974) American fantasy novelist

Books, Reading

“There is something in the nature of tea that leads us into a world of quiet contemplation of life.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 224

Life, World, Nature, Tea

“Good God, Rachel, cant you go five minutes… sweet sticky hell on a stick!' the demon exclaimed, his thoughts reeling from anger to concern as he realized I was hopped up on something.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Black Magic Sanction

God, Hell, Anger

“You can’t immerse yourself in something,” Prof said softly, “without coming to respect it.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: Firefight

“There was something horribly depressing, she felt, about watching the weather report. That life could be planned like the perfect summer picnic drained it of spontaneity.”

Galt Niederhoffer (1975) American writer

Source: The Romantics

Life, Summer, Perfection, Weather

“I had a desire to see something besides my own shores, if only to be content to return to them someday. If I wish to live in my native land and love her, it should not be out of ignorance.”

Margaret George (1943) American writer

Source: Mary Queen of Scotland and The Isles

Love

“Did your mom ever tell you, ‘If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything’? She was right–and talking nicely also applies when you’re talking to yourself, even inside your head. (339)”

Victoria Moran (1950) American writer

Source: Younger by the Day: 365 Ways to Rejuvenate Your Body and Revitalize Your Spirit

Moms

“Dark matter has a gravitation effect on other objects. You can't see it, you can't feel it, but you can watch something being pulled in its direction.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Feeling

“God only allows us to see such things when he wants something to change”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Source: Aleph

God, Change

“Something came out from my heart into my throat and then into my eyes.”

Jean Rhys book Voyage in the Dark

Source: Voyage in the Dark

Heart

“Did that remind anybody else of something?"
"Yes," Eve said, tapping her lower lip with a bloodred fingernail. "How much I need to shave her head while she's sleeping.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Ghost Town

Sleep

“Rules and Things Number 63: Never, Ever Say Something Bad About Someone You Don't Know--Especially When You're Around a Bunch of Strangers. You Never Can Tell Who Might Be Kin to That Person or Who Might Be a Lip-Flapping, Big-Mouth Spy.”

Christopher Paul Curtis book Bud, Not Buddy

Source: Bud, Not Buddy

Personality

“The real alchemy consists in being able to turn gold back again into something else; and that's the secret that most of your friends have lost.”

Edith Wharton book The House of Mirth

Source: The House of Mirth

Secret

“You mean a bad heel?" I said. "Couldn't I just, like, wear something besides sandals? No offense."
-Percy”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

“Don't treat me like I am something that happened to you.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

“A good artist should be isolated. If he isn't isolated, something is wrong.”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

“No one could really hate a saint, could they? They can't really hate God either. When they want to Hate Him and His saints they have to find something like themselves and pretends it's God and hate that.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

Source: Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred And Profane Memories Of Captain Charles Ryder

God, Hate

“Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used "to tell" at all.”

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist

Variant: A sign is anything that can be used to tell a lie.
Source: Trattato di semiotica generale (1975); [A Theory of Semiotics] (1976)

Truth, Lie, Study

“I've wished for things and never really had the chance… It's time to stop dreaming and do something about it. You've got to know what you want, then… go.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Six Rules of Maybe

Dreams, Chance, Time

“When something needs to be ironed I put it in the ironing basket. If a year goes by and the item is still in the basket I throw the item away. This is a good system since eventually I end up only with clothes that don’t need ironing.”

Janet Evanovich Three to Get Deadly

Source: Three to Get Deadly

Clothes

“Your reality, isn’t restricted by this cell we live in. If you read something, if you study something, you transcend any cell you’re inside of”

Manuel Puig (1932–1990) Argentine author and screenwriter

Reality, Study, Reading

“Always expect something to go wrong," he told him. "Believe me, if you're wrong, you're not dissapointed. If you're right, you're ready for it.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: Erak's Ransom

“Sacrifice is a part of life. It's supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to.”

Mitch Albom book The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Source: The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2003)

Life, Parting

“I think that gay marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947) actor, businessman and politician of Austrian-American heritage

Marriage, Thinking

“(Looking at their son on ultrasound.)
He looks like an angel. (Cassandra)
I don’t know. I think he looks like a frog or something. (Wulf)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Kiss of the Night

Angels, Thinking

“Truth was, if you were going to believe something, it was best to believe in stuff that made the world seem a more interesting place.”

Christopher Brookmyre Not the End of the World

Source: Not the End of the World

Truth, World

“You can't spend your whole life criticizing something and then, when you have the chance to do it better, refuse to go near it.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

Life, Chance

“When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

Interview in O : The Oprah Magazine (November 2000)

Personality, Gratitude

“When God allows something to be taken from you, He replaces it with something better.”

Janette Oke (1935) Canadian writer

Source: A Searching Heart

God

“It is not desire.
Instead it is something deeper. I don't want to be with him
constantly and forever. I want to be with him for the moment,
and I want the moments to go on forever.”

David Levithan The Realm of Possibility

Source: The Realm of Possibility

“Being good is something that one must choose over and over again, every day, throughout the day, for the rest of one’s life.”

Cate Tiernan (1961) American novelist

Source: Immortal Beloved

Life

“What she said was always strange. It had happened long ago. It seemed insignificant. And yet it was something you remembered forever. The words as well as the story. The voice as much as the words.”

Marguerite Duras (1914–1996) French writer and film director

Source: Summer Rain

“He looks," Simon had once said to Isabelle, "like he's thinking about something deep and meaningful, but if you ask him what it is, he'll punch you in the face.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Thinking

“What makes something special is not just what you have to gain, but what you feel there is to lose.”

Andre Agassi (1970) US tennis player

Feeling

“Like a word on a page that you’ve printed and read a million times, that suddenly looks strange or wrong, foreign. And you feel scared for a second, like you’ve lost something, even if you’re not sure what it is.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

Feeling, Time, Reading

“When you grow up and have children of your own, do please remember something important: A stodgy parent is not fun at all! What a child wants - and DESERVES - is a parent who is SPARKY!”

Roald Dahl book Danny, the Champion of the World

Danny, the Champion of the World (1975)
Context: A Message to Children Who Have Read This Book - When you grow up and have children of your own, do please remember something important: a stodgy parent is no fun at all. What a child wants and deserves is a parent who is SPARKY.

Children, Parent

“I am always amazed by people who know something is wrong but still insist on ignoring it, as if that will somehow make it go away. They spare themselves the confrontation, but end up boiling in resentment anyway.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

People

“Did you run any of this by Curran?”
“I told him I was about to do something idiotic and dangerous, and he told me to go ahead and let him know if he could help in any way.”
“I don’t understand your relationship.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Binds

Way, Understanding, Help

“You can call me Agent Mickelson,' he told me with a smile. 'What about you? Is Max short for something? Maxine?'
'No, Dean. It's just Max.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: School's Out—Forever

Smile

“I am so busy doing nothing… that the idea of doing anything - which as you know, always leads to something - cuts into the nothing and then forces me to have to drop everything.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

Idea, Business

“Rose, I cheat at cards and buy liquor for minors. But I would never, ever force you into something you don't want.”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Source: Spirit Bound

Cheating

“There is something about veganism that is not easy, but the difficulty is not inherent in veganism, but in our culture.”

Will Tuttle book The World Peace Diet

Source: The World Peace Diet (2005), Ch. 12
Source: The World Peace Diet: Eating for Spiritual Health and Social Harmony

“Why do I feel like something's missing in my life without them and they don't feel the same about me?”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Saving Francesca

Life, Feeling

“If you act like you can do something, then it will work.”

Walter Isaacson book Steve Jobs

Source: Steve Jobs

“Nostalgia is masochism and masochism is something masochists love to share.”

Andrei Codrescu (1946) American writer

Source: New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings from the City

Love, Nostalgia

“And it was because of their long history that he searched for something to say, something that would get them back to where they had been.

All that came to him was…”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Mine

History, Search

“When something dies is the greatest teaching.”

Shunryu Suzuki (1904–1971) Japanese Buddhist missionary

Source: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice

“If this were a movie, I would bust a secret move so fierce the entire place would be razed to the ground. I'd finish with something snappy like "And don't forget my soda, punk" while I strolled off into the night.”

Libba Bray Going Bovine

Source: Going Bovine

Secret, Night, Forgetting

“She wasn't much to look at but she was something to think about.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

Thinking

“But you'll be killed!"
"I'll be fine. Besides, we've got no choice."
Annabeth glared at me like she was going to punch me. And then she did something that surprised me even more. She kissed me.”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

Kiss

“When you fear to fail, you fear something that has not happened yet. You predict your own failure, and by inaction, lock yourself into it.”

Robin Hobb book Ship of Destiny

Source: Ship of Destiny

Fear, Failure

“Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do?”

Bret Easton Ellis book American Psycho

Source: American Psycho

Evil

“If we communicated with something like music, we would never be misunderstood, because there is nothing in music to understand.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

Music, Communication, Understanding

“Whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it's because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It's your mission on earth.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Soul, Universe

“Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken.”

Jane Austen book Emma

Source: Emma

Truth

“All you can do is hope for a pattern to emerge, and sometimes it never does. Still, with a plan, you only get the best you can imagine. I'd always hoped for something better than that.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby

Hope, Imagination

“If anyone stops us, as long as we mumble something pretentious about the glory of death, we should be fine.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Death

“Clary - "Look you can date whoever you want and I will totally support you. I am all about support. Support is my middle name."

Simon- "So that's why you never told me your middle name. I figured it was something embarrasing.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Variant: Look, you can date whoever you want and I will totally support you. I am all about support. Support is my middle name.”
“So that’s why you never told me your middle name. I figured it was something embarrassing.
Source: City of Glass

Support

Quotes about something page 29

Quotes about something
page 29