Quotes about something
page 31

“It’s in the act of having to do things that you don’t want to that you learn something about moving past the self. Past the ego.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Learning, Past, Moving On

“At the very beginning of my creative life I loved humanity. I wanted to do something good for mankind. Soon I understood that it isn’t possible to save mankind.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

Love, Life

“But when he looked at her—and she looked at him—they both knew that there was something worse than kissing the wrong person. It was wanting to.”

Kristin Hannah book The Nightingale

Source: The Nightingale

Kiss, Personality

“Nobodys life ever goes according to plan.
So why do we keep on planning?
Because that's how we know who we are. By what we intend to be. By what we try to become.
And fail.
I don't say 'fail'. I saw we aim and miss. But we still hit something.”

Orson Scott Card Treasure Box

Source: Treasure Box

Life

“[When] he's here, he's always reading. He says books stop time. I myself think he's crazy… Don't tell anyone, but when he reads something that he likes he gets real happy, turns on the music, and dances by himself, or with a broom sometimes.”

Mark Helprin book Winter's Tale

Source: Winter's Tale

Happiness, Books, Music, Thinking

“But people themselves alter so much, that there is something new to be observed in them for ever.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

People

“There's no end to the absurd things people will do trying to make life mean something.”

William Wharton book Birdy

Source: Birdy

Life, People

“… can I tell you something…? I don't think you're in love with the past. I think you're scared of the future.”

Brad Meltzer book The Inner Circle

Source: The Inner Circle

Love, Thinking, Past, Future

“Arthur blinked at the screens and felt he was missing something important. Suddenly he realized what it was.

"Is there any tea on this spaceship?" he asked.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Tea

“Did you say something Macey?' I asked, but she cut me a look that could kill. She reached into her bag, ripped off a sliver of Evapopaper, and scribbled:
'Can we study tonight? (Tell anyone, and I'll kill you in you sleep!)”

Ally Carter I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Source: I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Sleep, Study

“The child molester skipped breakfast, but said he'd grab a little something on the way to work.”

George Carlin book Brain Droppings

Source: Brain Droppings

Way

“Don't leave yet," he said, his voice hoarse. "Let me do something. Let me feed you. Hold you. Rub your shoulders. Change your oil. Anything, please.”

Robyn Carr American writer

Source: Sunrise Point

Change

“I had a chance at him now. Things were a bit more even. He knew my name, I knew his. He had six years' experience, I had five thousand and ten. That was the kind of odds that you could do something with.”

Jonathan Stroud book The Amulet of Samarkand

Source: The Amulet of Samarkand

Chance

“If she did experience sex--or something close to it--in high school, I'm sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than literary curiosity.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

Love, School, Sex

“The groom always smiles proudly because he's convinced he's accomplished something quite wonderful. The bride smiles because she's been able to convince him of it.”

Judith McNaught book A Kingdom of Dreams

Source: A Kingdom of Dreams

Smile, Wedding

“If you love someone, truly love them, you should never cause them pain. Never fill their eyes with something so close to grief.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book The Killing Dance

Source: The Killing Dance

Love, Pain

“The rich world likes and wishes to believe that someone, somewhere, is doing something for the Third World. For this reason, it does not inquire too closely into the motives or practices of anyone who fulfills, however vicariously, this mandate.”

Christopher Hitchens book The Missionary Position

Source: The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice

World, Motivation

“I want to know that I've accomplished something. I want to feel that it had some meaning. At the last summing up, I want to be sure it wasn't all-for nothing.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

Feeling

“The thing about real life is, when you do something stupid, it normally costs you.”

Darren Shan book Cirque du Freak

Source: A Living Nightmare

Life, Stupidity

“Some of the greatest poetry is revealing to the reader the beauty in something that was so simple you had taken it for granted.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

At an interview with Stephen Colbert at Montclair Kimberley Academy on January 29th, 2010.
2010s

Beauty, Beauty

“They know they’ve won,” Carter guessed. “They’re making a show of it.”
“Yes,” Amos said.
“Well, let’s blow up the boats or something!” I said.
Amos looked at me. “Is that your strategy, honestly?”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

“I knew what it was like to lose someone you loved. You didn't get past something like that, you got through it.”

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

Source: Change of Heart

Love, Past

“And love is always complicated. But still humans most try to love each other, darling. We must get out hearts broken sometimes. This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Love, Heart

“I zipped myself all the way into the sleeping bag of myself, not because I was hurt, and not because I had broken something, but because they were cracking up.”

Jonathan Safran Foer (1977) Novelist

Way, Sleep, Hurt

“If you choose to go looking for something, you'd better be ready for whatever it is you find. Because it may not be what you've been expecting.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Variant: If you choose to be looking for something, you'd better be ready for whatever it is you are find. Because it may not be what you've been expecting.
Source: Vanishing Acts

“For a moment, as Damon glanced toward Elena, their gazes met and something electric passed between them. It made Elena tingle all over, that look did.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Nightfall

“Her father sagged as relief spread through him. “I thought
something awful was happening.”
She frowned. “Something awful was happening. It could have
got stuck in my hair.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Dark Days

“Rae burned me. She has matches or something. Look, look…" Tori pulled down the collar of her T-shirt.
"Leave your cloths on, Tori," Simon said, raising his hands to his eyes. "Please.”

Kelley Armstrong book The Summoning

Source: The Summoning

Clothes

“SITTING TIGHT? Holing up? Waiting for answers?
Those are things I'm not good at.
Planning a massive attack against mechanical geeky-like things when i was already furious and itching to kill something?
Piece o'cake”

James Patterson book Maximum Ride

Source: Max

Waiting

“I hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Love, Hope, Understanding

“I'd wanted a real kiss, something to remember, but i'd long ago learned not to be picky with farewells. They weren't guaranteed or promised. You were lucky, more than blessed, if you got a goodbye at all.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Variant: But I'd long ago learned not to be picky in farewells. They weren't guaranteed or promised.
You were lucky, more than blessed, if you got a good-bye at all.
Source: The Truth About Forever

Kiss, Learning

“When you have too much faith in something, it's bound to hurt you. Too much faith in anything will suck you dry. In this way, all the world is a vampire.”

Poppy Z. Brite (1967) Novelist, short story writer, food writer

World, Faith, Way, Hurt

“Forgiving isn't something you do for someone else. It's something you do for yourself. It's saying, 'You're not important enough to have a stranglehold on me.' It's saying, 'You don't get to trap me in the past. I am worthy of a future.”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

Forgiveness, Past, Future

“The only way I can be angry at you is when I have thought, said, or done something that is unkind in my own opinion.”

Byron Katie (1942) American spiritual writer

Way

“My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. 'Something cannot emerge from nothing,' he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable 'the truth' can be.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

Truth, Understanding, Thinking

“She said people found running to something easier than running from something.”

Sarah Mlynowski (1977) Novelist

Source: Ten Things We Did

People

“It's not enough to have lived. We should be determined to live for something.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

Motivational

“Choose a love and work to make it true, and somehow, something will happen, something you couldn’t plan, will come along to move like to like, to set you loose, to set you on the way to your next brick wall.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: Running from Safety: An Adventure of the Spirit

Love, Way

“when something is right, it will feel easier and much more effortless”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl—A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship

Feeling

“Elphaba looked like something between an animal and an Animal, like something more than life but not quite Life.”

Gregory Maguire book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Life, Animals

“If something is rubbing so hard against you, you can be sure it's working on you.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

“We are one of those couples i used to watch, thinking to myself that I'd never be on the inside of something so special. I remember reassuring myself that it probably looked nicer than it actually was, I am happy to be wrong about that.”

Emily Giffin Something Borrowed

Source: Something Borrowed

Happiness, Thinking

“I knew it was beautiful, but knowing something is beautiful and caring about it are two very different things, and I didn't care.”

Maureen Johnson book Let It Snow

Source: Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances

Beauty

“May be she’ll learn something about what death really is, which is where the pain stops and the good memories begin. Not the end of life but the end of pain.”

Stephen King book Pet Sematary

Source: Pet Sematary

Life, Death, Pain, Learning

“It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it.”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

God

“There was something I wanted, something I envisioned, loving parents, a happy home with everyone smiling at me. A home that no one would ever want to leave, a warm place, a warm person. It exists, I know it does”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

Love, Happiness, Smile, Home

“Knowledge is something which you can use.
Belief is something which uses you.”

Idries Shah book Reflections

Source: Reflections

Knowledge

“We truly believed in something back then, and we knew we were the kind of people capable of believing in something - with all our hearts. And that kind of hope will never simply vanish.”

Haruki Murakami book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

People, Hope, Heart, Hope

“Oh, something is there, waiting for me. Perhaps someday the revelation will burst in upon me and I will see the other side of this monumental grotesque joke. And then I'll laugh. And then I'll know what life is.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Life, Waiting

“How can one not be fond of something that thedespises?”

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

“Mistakes are something that happen by accident. You didn't walk out the door one morning and fall into some guy's bed. You thought about it, for a while. You made that choice.”

Jodi Picoult book The Tenth Circle

Source: The Tenth Circle

Guy

“Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Love, Good Morning

“I prefer winter and fall, when you can feel the bone structure in the landscape---the lonliness of it---the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it---the whole story dosen't show.”

Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009) Realist painter

Feeling, Winter, Waiting, Dead

“What happens to the rest of something when you smash its heart?”

Francesca Lia Block Missing Angel Juan

Source: Missing Angel Juan

Heart

“He smiles at me, and I am suddenly seventeen again - the year I realize that love doesn't follow the rules, the year I understood that nothing is worth having so much as something unattainable”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Love, Smile

“When you already believe something, how can you suddenly stop? When you are a loyal friend, how can you no longer be one?”

Amy Tan The Hundred Secret Senses

Source: The Hundred Secret Senses

“Something in me vibrates to a dusky, dreamy smell of dying moons and shadows.”

Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948) Novelist, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“the past only had whatever power you gave it; life was what you made it and if you wanted something different from what you had, it was up to you to make it happen.”

Sara Zarr (1970) American children's writer

Source: Sweethearts

Life, Past

“I know
the odds are all against me
and I know
you might not feel this way too
but I know
I would rather die trying
to know
if I could mean something to you”

David Levithan The Realm of Possibility

Source: The Realm of Possibility

Way, Feeling

“I know what it's like to squander all your hours and all your tears and all your heart on something which turns out to be nothing. Don't waste your time.”

Sophie Kinsella book Twenties Girl

Source: Twenties Girl

Tear, Time, Heart

“When something horrible happens, it's human nature to want to blame it on someone. We want someone to be held accountable, even though sometimes things just happen.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Abandon

Nature

“I’m not stupid, nor a liar,” I said, “and if I can’t do any good, I can at least do something”

Naomi Novik book Uprooted

Source: Uprooted

Stupidity

“This is how you start to get respect, by offering something that you have.”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

“I can’t believe Sadie’s going to let me have the last word. Our experience together must’ve really taught her something. Ow, she just hit me. Never mind.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

“The only constant in the soul of man is inconstancy; anything and everything else can pass out of fashion--even something as utilitarian as a hill stuffed full of corpses.”

Scott Lynch The Lies of Locke Lamora

Source: The Lies of Locke Lamora

Soul, Fashion

“It seems to me after a fellow has been mutinied against three or four times, there is something to it besides bad luck.”

Naomi Novik book Tongues of Serpents

Source: Tongues of Serpents

Bad luck, Time

“Yes, there was something special about me, and I knew what it was. I was the kind of girl they found dead in a hall bedroom with an empty bottle of sleeping pills in her hand.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Source: My Story

Girl, Sleep, Dead

“A feeling of aversion or attachment toward something is your clue that there's work to be done.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

Feeling

“But I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Thinking, Time

“… some people aren't worth the trouble of being kind to, because they have neither the brains nor the power to make something for themselves out of your kindness.”

Rob Sheffield (1966) American music journalist

Source: Love Is a Mix Tape

People

“I could only stare, any sense that maybe I understood him evaporating as it always did. I'd glimpse something underneath, and he'd snatched it away so fast it left bruises that called me a fool for hoping for more.”

Kelley Armstrong (1968) Canadian writer

Hope, Fools, Sense

“Remember this… develop a sense of nostalgia for something, or you'll never figure out what's important.”

Gary Shteyngart Super Sad True Love Story

Source: Super Sad True Love Story

Sense, Nostalgia

“Atheists don't hate fairies, leprechauns, or unicorns because they don't exist. It is impossible to hate something that doesn't exist. Atheists — like the painting experts hated the painter — hate God because He does exist.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)
Source: You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think: Answers to Questions from Angry Skeptics

God, Hate, Painting

“I suddenly realized. The zebra. It is not something outside of us. The zebra is something inside of us. Our fears. Our own self-destructive nature. The zebra is the worst part of us when we are face-to-face with our worst times. The demon is us!”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

Fear, Nature, Time, Parting