Quotes about something
page 36

“There is something truer and more real, than what we can see with the eyes, and touch with the finger.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book Rappaccini's Daughter

Source: Rappaccini's Daughter

“A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to the child, finished and complete. A self is always becoming.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Section 1.10 
Source: The Crosswicks Journal, A Circle of Quiet (1972)
Context: We do have to use our minds as far as they will take us, yet acknowledging that they cannot take us all the way.
We can give a child a self-image. But is this a good idea? Hitler did a devastating job at that kind of thing. So does Chairman Mao. … I haven't defined a self, nor do I want to. A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to the child, finished and complete. A self is always becoming.

“Live your life so that you’ll have no regrets. No matter how hard, no matter how sad, if something is precious to you, protect it with both arms.”

Masashi Kishimoto (1974) Japanese manga artist

“And they did it with something that is basicly worthless in our society - pennies. But overseas, pennies can move mountains”

Greg Mortenson (1957) American mountaineer and humanitarian

Source: Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time

“There was something peculiarly gratifying about shouting in a blind rage until your words ran out.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“If you find yourself drawn to an event against all logic, go. The universe is telling you something.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Source: My Life on the Road

“But maybe it's better to go after something, and not get it, than to not even try.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Crimson Crown

“Before you hate something you should try to understand it.”

Martha Grimes (1931) American crime writer and literature professor

Source: Dakota

Hate, Understanding

“…deep-diving love, a love that excavates you. It’s something you have to have before you die in order to have lived.”

Marisha Pessl (1977) American writer

Source: Night Film

“I never could stand being forced to do something I didn't want to do at a time I didn't want to do it. Whenever I was able to do something I liked to do, though, when I wanted to do it, and the way I wanted to do it, I'd give it everything I had.”

Haruki Murakami book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

“… You seem upset, Charlie. Is something wrong?
Charlie: No, no, I’m okay, I just had to take directions from a mute beaver in a fez to get here, it’s unsettling.”

Christopher Moore book A Dirty Job

Source: A Dirty Job

“We make messes of our lives, but every now and then, we manage to do something that's exactly right. The challenge is figuring out which is which.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Vanishing Acts

“I have been loved,' she said, 'by something strange, and it has forgotten me.”

Djuna Barnes book Nightwood

Source: Nightwood

“For courage, there must be something at stake. I come here with nothing to lose.”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“And if there was one thing I'd finally figured out, it was that your mind is something you always CAN change.”

Jordan Sonnenblick (1969) American writer

Source: Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie

“… for music alone can abolish differences
of language or culture between two people and invoke something indestructible within them.”

Irène Némirovsky (1903–1942) French novelist who died at the age of 39 in Auschwitz

Source: Suite Française

“To realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation and when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Universe, Help, Personality

“Because it strikes me there is something greater than judgement. I think it is called mercy.”

Sebastian Barry book The Secret Scripture

Source: The Secret Scripture

“I want someone to pinch me so I can feel something, anything. I'm sick of this numbness, of feeling so alone and outside of everything, but I know it's too dangerous to wake up."

—Ruth Mendenberg”

Carol Matas book After the War

Source: After the War

“A massive fir, it rose to nearly touch the ceiling at the far end of the ballroom. When Will asked Charlotte how on earth it had gotten in there, she had only waved her hands and said something about Magnus.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

“Isn't there something in living dangerously?”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

Source: Brave New World

“It's much easier, she realized, to be on the verge of something than to actually be it.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

“I don't know what it is about food your mother makes for you, especially when it's something that anyone can make - pancakes, meat loaf, tuna salad - but it carries a certain taste of memory.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Food, Memory, Mother's Day, For Mother

“So what do we do if we get bitten by something deadly?' I asked.
He looked at me as if I were stupid.
'You die, of course. That's what deadly means.”

Douglas Adams book Last Chance to See

Source: Last Chance to See

“If you discovered something that made you tighten inside, you had better try to learn more about it.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

Source: Message in a Bottle

“He learned that when people are very poor they still have something to give and the impulse to give it.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

People, Learning

“I could make him mine. But I don't want him. I want someone else. It feels strange to have spent so much time wishing for something, for someone, and then one day, suddenly, to just stop.”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

“It was possible that a miracle was not something that happened to you, but rather something that didn’t.”

Jodi Picoult book The Tenth Circle

Source: The Tenth Circle

“Yeah, well, I’ll be glad to birth it if it means I can name him something normal. (Zarek)
Yeah, yeah. This from a man who whines like a two-year-old when he stubs his toe. I’d like to see you survive ten hours of childbirth. (Astrid)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dream Warrior

“Saying hello to something new means saying good-bye to something old and loved.”

Phyllis Reynolds Naylor book Incredibly Alice

Source: Incredibly Alice

“Our task is to educate their (our students) whole being so they can face the future. We may not see the future, but they will and our job is to help them make something of it.”

Ken Robinson (1950) UK writer

Source: The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

Education, Future, Help

“… real loneliness is having no one to miss. Think yourself lucky you've known something worth missing.”

Emma Donoghue (1969) Irish novelist, playwright, short-story writer and historian

Thinking, Loneliness

“In my experience, boys are predictable. As soon as they think of something, they do it. Girls are smarter—they plan ahead. They think about not getting caught.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: Half-Moon Investigations

Girl, Boy, Thinking

“YOU COULD LOCK the Gasman in a padded cell with some dental floss and a bowl of Jell-O, and he'd find a way to make something to explode.”

James Patterson book Maximum Ride

Source: Max

“I will tell you something about stories… They aren't just entertainment. Don't be fooled. They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death.”

Leslie Marmon Silko book Ceremony

Source: Ceremony

Death, Fools, Fight

“It is on a day like this one,
a little later a little earlier
that you descover without surprise
that something is wrong
that you don't know how to live
and you will never know”

Georges Perec book A Man Asleep

Source: Un homme qui dort

“Wouldn't it be something if we could have things we love in abudance without their losing that special attraction the want of them held for us.”

Dolly Parton (1946) American singer-songwriter and actress

Source: Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business

“Life is just this way, broken, and I am crazy to hope for something else.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

Life, Hope, Way

“There was something wrong with her. She did not know what it was but there was something wrong with her. A hunger, a restlessness. An incomplete knowledge of herself. The sense of something farther away, beyond her reach.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie book Half of a Yellow Sun

Source: Half of a Yellow Sun

Hunger, Knowledge, Sense

“Something inside me had dropped away, and nothing came in to fill the cavern.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

“Like it takes so little not only to change something, but to make you forget the way it once was, as well.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

Way, Change, Forgetting

“There is something about jumping a horse over a fence, something that makes you feel good. Perhaps it's the risk, the gamble. In any event it's a thing I need.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

As quoted in "Visit to Two-Finger Typist" by Elliot Chaze in LIFE magazine (14 July 1961)

“It touched me to be trusted with something terrible.”

Elizabeth Kostova book The Historian

Source: The Historian

“Remember, most of us got something for nothing the first time just by showing up here at birth. Now we have to qualify.”

Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

“When I first met you, I felt a kind of contradiction in you. You’re seeking something, but at the same time, you are running away for all you’re worth.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

“And I am pretty sure that's the point of reading fiction -- so someone else can say in a way you never would have something you recognize immediately.”

Curtis Sittenfeld (1975) Novelist, short story writer

“…Tell me, has anything odd happened to you recently?
What do you mean, odd?'
Unusual. Deviating from the customary. Something outside the usual parameters of normalcy. An occurrence of unprecedented weird.”

Jasper Fforde book Lost in a Good Book

Source: Lost in a Good Book

“If you lie to your husband - even about something so banal as how much you drink - each lie is a brick in a wall going up between you, and when he tells you he loves you, it's deflected away.”

Mary Karr (1955) American writer

Source: Lit

Love, Lie, Drink

“To do something very common, in my own way.”

Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) American poet, essayist and feminist

“He had to choose between something he had become accustomed to and something he wanted to have.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

“You love someone, you've got to let something go.”

Mark Haddon book A Spot of Bother

Source: A Spot of Bother

“Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something.”

Robert Penn Warren book All the King's Men

All the King's Men (1946)

“Autumn finally arrived. And when it did, I came to a decision. Something had to give: I couldn't keep on living like this.”

Haruki Murakami book South of the Border, West of the Sun

Source: South of the Border, West of the Sun

Autumn, Decision

“At the beauty of what she had stumbled onto, at the fear that something terrible would happen because she was not vigilant enough. She cried at the fear of something so good that she would not be brave enough to bear it.”

Rebecca Wells book Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Source: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“What it must feel like, I thought, to look at something, anything really, and know that it’s for the last time?”

Jonathan Tropper (1970) American writer

“There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty - unless she is wed to something more meaningful - is always superficial.”

Donna Tartt book The Secret History

Source: The Secret History

Love, Beauty, Wedding

“The only way you can be the best at something is to be the best you can be.”

Susan Beth Pfeffer book Life As We Knew It

Source: Life As We Knew It

“Can I ever come back here' he asked, and the Woodsman said something very strange in reply.
'Most people come back here,' he said, 'in the end”

John Connolly The Book of Lost Things

Source: The Book of Lost Things

“That's not a real answer.'
Says who?'
Says me. I mean real fear, like of failure, of death, of regret. Like that. Something that keeps you awake nights, questioning your very existence.'
Clowns.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Death, Fear, Failure, Question

“Yes, no matter how we defend ourselves against the outside we’re always licked by something from the inside. There’s no defense against betrayal, and we all betray ourselves.”

Alfred Bester book The Stars My Destination

Source: The Stars My Destination (1956), Chapter 12 (p. 188).

“I can't get through the year without getting kicked out or blowing something up.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

“Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.”

Seth Godin (1960) American entrepreneur, author and public speaker

Art, Courage, Change, Personality

“I don't care," said Seth. "I would have done it. I would have sold my soul for you. You and me… I told you. Something's always going to keep us near each other… even if we aren't together.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus Heat

“I just thought to my self, all of a sudden, that we had something in common. A natural chemistry, if you will. And I had a feeling that something big was going to happen. To both of us. That we were, in fact, meant to be together.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

Feeling, Nature

“When people tell a lie about something, they have to make up a bunch of lies to go with the first one. ‘Mythomania’ is the word for it.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

“She had given birth to me and nursed me and brought me up. She had known me before I knew myself and now she had no say in the matter. Life started out one thing and then suddenly turned a corner and became something else.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book Middlesex

Source: Middlesex

“a book always keeps something of its owner between its pages.”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkspell

“It's hard to be the one always waiting. I mean, there's something to be said for the hero who charges off to battle, but when you get right down to it there's a whole story in who's left behind.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

“Everyone’s death means something”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

“It hurts to let go. Sometimes it seems the harder you try to hold on to something or someone the more it wants to get away. You feel like some kind of criminal for having felt, for having wanted. For having wanted to be wanted.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Feeling, Hurt, Relationship

“… science fiction is something thathappen - but usually you wouldn't want it to. Fantasy is something thathappen - though often you only wish that it could.”

Arthur C. Clarke book The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

Source: The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

“When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.”

John Wyndham book The Day of the Triffids

Source: Book opening line. (Ch.1, p.7) [Page numbers per the Penguin Books paperback, 1954 reprint.]

“I asked you what you wanted and you said you didn't want anything. And I told you I wasn't planning on giving you anything; I was planning on giving you something.”

David Levithan book Every You, Every Me

Source: Every You, Every Me

“For most of us, once something was busted, it was game over. I would have loved to know how it felt, just once, to have something fall apart and see options instead of endings.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Source: Saint Anything

“It is in these moments of tender and ridiculous nostalgia that I know something inside me is still broken.”

Steve Almond (1966) American writer

Source: My Life in Heavy Metal: Stories

“clatter of a typewriter suggests that you're actually building something.”

David Sedaris book Me Talk Pretty One Day

Source: Me Talk Pretty One Day

“A lot can change between planning something and actually doing it. But maybe all that really matters is that anything is different at all.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

“Every relationship is an education. Each new person we welcome into our hearts is a chance to evolve into something radically different than we used to be. But what happens when those people disappear from our lives?”

Brian K. Vaughan (1976) American screenwriter, comic book creator

Source: Saga #30

People, Education, Chance, Heart

“And it's wrong of you to think that love leaves room for nothing else. It's possible to love something and still condescend to it.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie book Half of a Yellow Sun

Source: Half of a Yellow Sun

“Perhaps I’m tired of waiting for something I may never find.”

Maya Banks (1964) Author

Source: Sweet Persuasion

“Wherever you are, at any moment, try and find something beautiful. A face, a line out of a poem, the clouds out of a window, some graffiti, a wind farm. Beauty cleans the mind.”

Matt Haig book Reasons to Stay Alive

Source: Reasons to Stay Alive

“It's different being afraid when there's the hope it will amount to something.”

Justin Cronin The Passage

Source: The Passage

“He would work through the night and sleep until lunch. There wasn't really much else to do. Make something, and die.”

Ian McEwan book Amsterdam

Source: Amsterdam

“Who says there has to be a point?" He asked. "Or a reason. Maybe it's just something you have to do.”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

“All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

“A deserted library in the morning - there's something about it that really gets to me. All possible words and ideas are there, resting peacefully.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

“Why is it that loving something provides such little protection from betrayal?”

Ayelet Waldman book Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

Source: Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

“Your numbness is something perhaps you cannot help. It is what the world has done to you. But your coldness. That is what you do to the world.”

Lorrie Moore (1957) American writer

Source: Self-Help

“Grandma frowned and yelled something in Russian. She could have been saying, 'Open up, your best friend is here.' On the other hand, it could have been, 'America is a great country because of canned ravioli.”

Laurie Halse Anderson (1961) American children's writer

Source: Prom

Grandma, Country

“Part of doing something is listening. We are listening. To the sun. To the stars. To the wind.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: Swiftly Tilting Planet

Star, Sun, Parting

“If you love something/Set it free/If it loves you/It will come back to you/ If it doesn't--hunt it down and kill it.”

Harry Crews (1935–2012) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Source: Body

“What’s in that backpack, by the way? You’re always guarding it like it holds national security secrets or something. (Tory)
Dirty underwear. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

“On the contrary, there is something pleasing about his mouth when he
speaks. And there is something of dignity in the way his trousers cling to those most English parts
of him.”

Seth Grahame-Smith book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Source: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

“You must reach inside yourselves where I live like a story, not old, not young laughing at my own sorrow, weeping pearls at weddings, wielding a torch to melt sand into something clear and bright.”

Francesca Lia Block (1962) American children's writer

Source: The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold

“To give your positive or negative attention to something is a way of giving energy. The most damaging form of behavior is withholding your attention.”

Masaru Emoto (1943–2014) Japanese writer

Source: The Hidden Messages in Water

“Your decision to be, have and do something out of ordinary entails facing
difficulties that are out of the ordinary as well. Sometimes your greatest asset is
simply your ability to stay with it longer than anyone else.”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

“When we really want to go for something better, we shall smash the old. Until then, any sort of proposal, or making proposals, is no more than a tiresome game for self-important people.”

D.H. Lawrence book Women in Love

Source: Women in Love

“I suppose he must have taken about a nine or something in hats. Shows what a rotten thing it is to let your brain develop too much.”

P.G. Wodehouse book The Inimitable Jeeves

Source: The Inimitable Jeeves

“I don't want to do the type of writing where I recite biography, parentage and education. I want to rise up from the words on the page and do something, hurt someone.”

Don DeLillo book Cosmopolis

Source: Cosmopolis

Education, Hurt

“It felt very good to have him walking beside her. Good like rest and quiet, like something you could live without but you needed anyway. That you had to learn how to miss, and then you'd never stop missing it.”

Marilynne Robinson book Lila

Source: Lila