Quotes about thing
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“That’s the thing about a human life-there’s no control group, no way to ever know how any of us would have turned out if any variables had been changed.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

Source: Eat, pray, love: one woman's search for everything

Life, Way, Change

“We look not at the things which are what you would call seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal. But the things that are not seen are eternal.”

Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time

Variant: We look not at the things which are what you would call seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal. But the things which are not seen are eternal.
Source: A Wrinkle in Time

“Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Joy

“Some things you cannot wish away or think away. They become part of you when you remember them.”

Alice Hoffman (1952) Novelist, young-adult writer, children's writer

Source: Incantation

Thinking, Parting

“If there's one thing on this planet you don't look like it's a bunch of good luck walkin around.”

Cormac McCarthy book No Country for Old Men

Source: No Country for Old Men

“The things that make me different are the things that make me ME. -Piglet”

A.A. Milne (1882–1956) British author

Variant: The things that make me different are the things that make me.

“When you bring consciousness to anything, things begin to shift.”

Eve Ensler (1953) American playwright, performer, feminist, activist and artist

“For every bad thing in life, there are more good things to tip the balance.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus on Top

Life

“There are so many books I mean to read, and things I mean to see.”

Anne Rice book Merrick

Source: Merrick

Books, Reading

“Any time you need an expert parental hand- (Zarek)
I’ll find Jericho. (Astrid)
Um, could you at least wait until that thing’s housebroken? (Jericho)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dream Warrior

Parent, Time, Waiting

“Me? I slept like the dead, which I hoped wasn’t a sign of things to come.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Hope, Dead

“The worst thing in the world is to try to sleep and not to.”

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

World, Sleep

“No! andare not the same thing at all!”

Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time

Variant: Like and equal are not the same thing at all.
Source: A Wrinkle in Time

“True emptiness is not empty, but contains all things. The mysterious and pregnant void creates and reflects all possibilities. From it arises our individuality, which can be discovered and developed, although never possessed or fixed.”

Jack Kornfield (1945) American writer

Source: A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life

“The things we worry about the most are never the things that bite us. The sharpest teeth always take their nip of us when we are looking the other way.”

Dean Koontz book Forever Odd

Source: Forever Odd

Way

“I've tried everything. I can say to you with confidence, I know a fair amount about LSD. I've never been a social user of any of these things, but my curiosity has carried me into a lot of interesting areas.”

Dan Rather (1931) Journalist, Anchor

Confidence

“Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Personality

“Also … the plan sounded exactly like the sneaky, twisted, ridiculously annoying and noble sort of thing Leo Valdez would do.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

“How pathetic it is to describe these things which can't truly be described.”

Anne Rice book Interview with the Vampire

Source: Interview with the Vampire

“You know I used to be the back porch poet with my book of lines, always hoping knowing all the time, I'm probably never gonna find the perfect rhyme… For heavier things”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

Books, Hope, Time, Perfection

“When I used to picture forever, it was always with the same boy. In my dreams, my future was set. A sure thing. This isn’t the way I’d pictured it. … The future is unclear. But it’s still mine.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: It's Not Summer Without You

Dreams, Way, Boy, Future

“That is our Fairy Tail!! We don't live like we have already died, like you do!! We live with our lives on the lines, you bastard!! If you don't have the courage to change things then you might as well just die!!!”

Hiro Mashima (1977) Japanese manga artist

Courage, Change

“What I think is all I have left. My mind is the only thing that makes me different from a fancy toaster. What we think does matter-it's all we truly have.”

Mary E. Pearson (1955) young-adult fiction writer

Source: The Fox Inheritance

Thinking

“It's a good thing I've got to live with you two or I'd be putting this on YouTube later. And mocking you”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Fade Out

“If your friend is sick and dying, the most important thing he wants is not an explanation; he wants you to sit with him. He's terrified of being alone more than anything else. So, God has not left us alone.”

Lee Strobel (1952) American writer

God

“The sad truth is that certain types of things can't go backward. Once they start going forward, no matter what you do, they can't go back the way they were. If even one little thing goes awry, then that's how it will stay forever.”

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

Variant: Hajime," she began, "the sad truth is that some things can't go backwards. Once they start going forward, no matter what you do, they can't go back to the way they were. If one little thing goes awry, then that's how it will stay forever.
Source: South of the Border, West of the Sun

Truth, Sadness, Way

“Not everything is about beating your head against the wall until it breaks.”
“Just most things.”

Rachel Caine book Glass Houses

Source: Glass Houses

“… his face bore an expression that mingled haughty disdain with a tender, ardent sympathy, as if he would love all things if only his nature could let him forget their defects.”

Philip Pullman book The Amber Spyglass

Source: The Amber Spyglass

Love, Nature, Forgetting

“When you stay too long in the same place, things and people go to pot on you, they rot and start stinking for your special benefit.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night

People

“There are few things more dangerous than inbred religious certainty.”

Bart D. Ehrman (1955) American academic

Source: God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question - Why We Suffer

“It is one thing to lead by example with half a dozen soldiers at your back. It is wholly another with ten thousand.”

Steven Erikson book Deadhouse Gates

Source: Deadhouse Gates

“Don't dwell on things. Don't stay in one place too long. It was the only way to stay ahead of sadness.”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Variant: Don't stay in one place too long. It was the only way to stay ahead of the sadness.
Source: The Lost Hero

Sadness, Way

“My life has been long, and believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things, sometimes trembling, but daring, still.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Love, Life

“I like to think I have the guts to stand up anonymously in a western democracy and call for things no-one else believes in—like peace and justice and freedom.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Source: Wall and Piece (2007)

Peace, Justice, Democracy, Thinking

“I'm not sure there's such thing a thing as a normal life.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Life

“Ammu said that human beings were creatures of habit, and it was amazing the kind of things one could get used to.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“Since the moment I laid eyes on Jericho Barrons, I wanted him. I wanted him to do things to me that pink and clueless MacKayla Lane was shocked and appalled and… okay, yeah, well, utterly fascinated to find herself thinking about.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

Thinking

“There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult—to begin a war and to end it.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Book Three, Chapter XXII.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Three

War, People

“Did you just grab my butt?” I whispered. “What?” “Curran!” “Yes?” I could hear controlled laughter in his voice. Unbelievable. I sped up. “We’re tracking ghouls and you’re grabbing my butt.” “I always make sure to pay attention to important things.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Shifts

Laughter

“God nowhere tells us to give up things for the sake of giving them up. He tells us to give them up for the sake of the only thing worth having--viz., life with Himself. It is a question of loosening the bonds that hinder the life…”

Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) British missionary

Source: My Utmost for His Highest: Selections for the Year

Life, God, Question

“Men explain things to me, still. And no man has ever apologized for explaining, wrongly, things that I know and they don't.”

Rebecca Solnit book Men Explain Things To Me

Source: Men Explain Things to Me

Men

“We're going to be okay."

Here's the thing about being a spy: sometimes all you have are your lies. They protect your cover and keep your secrets, and right then I needed to believe that it was true even when all the facts said otherwise.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: United We Spy

Secret

“The only unbearable thing is that nothing is unbearable.”

Christopher Hampton (1946) British playwright, screenwriter and film director

Source: Total Eclipse

“I hope if there is another world, we will not be judged too harshly for the things we did wrong here—that we will at least be forgiven for the mistakes we made out of love.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Source: 20th Century Ghosts

Love, World, Hope

“What does he do, Clarice? What is the first and principal thing he does, what need does he serve by killing? He covets. How do we begin to covet? We begin by coveting what we see every day.”

Thomas Harris The Silence of the Lambs

Source: The Silence of the Lambs

“Here had lived someone else who knew that the only thing waiting at home was a sense of loneliness.

Sometimes it is comforting.

Most often, it isn't.”

Jim Butcher book Storm Front

Source: Storm Front

Home, Sense, Waiting, Loneliness

“I think the important thing to remember is that all relationships benefit from a bit of breathing room. Especially friendships. It's only when you find yourself without the women who understand you that you realize there are very few women who will.”

Megan Crane (1973) American novelist

Source: Frenemies

Women, Friendship, Understanding, Thinking

“The insides of our own minds are the scariest things there are.”

Robin McKinley book Sunshine

Source: Sunshine

“There's naught as nice as th' smell o' good clean earth, except th' smell o' fresh growin' things when th' rain falls on 'em.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden

Source: The Secret Garden

“There is no plan. All is hazard. And the only thing that will preserve us is ourselves.”

John Fowles book The Magus

Source: The Magus

“People complain about the bad things that happen to em that they don't deserve but they seldom mention the good. About what they done to deserve them things. I don't recall that I ever give the good Lord all that much cause to smile on me. But he did.”

Cormac McCarthy book No Country for Old Men

Source: No Country for Old Men (2005)

People, Smile

“… there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Life, World

“Lord Peter Wimsey: I have the most ill-regulated memory. It does those things which it ought not to do and leaves undone the things it ought to have done. But it has not yet gone on strike altogether.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book Gaudy Night

Gaudy Night (1936)

Memory

“I guess I don't really understand you yet,' I said. 'I'm not all that smart. It takes me a while to understand things. But if I do have time, I will come to understand you -- better than anyone else in the world ever can.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

World, Understanding, Time

“Regret for the things we have done will be tempered by time. It is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.”

Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986) American journalist

Time

“He wished he could reassure his mother: a man wants many things in life, but when one of them is also the right thing, he would be a fool not to choose it.”

Jess Walter book Beautiful Ruins

Source: Beautiful Ruins

Life, Fools

“Most things disappoint till you look deeper.”

Graham Greene (1904–1991) English writer, playwright and literary critic

Disappointment

“Happiness is a myth. It was invented to make us buy new things.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Happiness

“I can only assume that there’s only one thing more frustrating than not being able to find someone, and that’s not being found. I would want someone to find me, more than anything.”

Cecelia Ahern book A Place Called Here

Source: A Place Called Here

“It isn't easy, it doesn't count if it's easy, it's the hardest thing. Forgiveness. Which is maybe where love and justice finally meet.”

Tony Kushner (1956) American playwright and screenwriter

Source: Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches

Love, Justice, Forgiveness

“All men kill the thing they hate, too, unless, of course, it kills them first.”

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

"The Crow and the Scarecrow", The New Yorker (date unknown); Further Fables for Our Time (1956). This is derived from Oscar Wilde's statement "All men kill the thing they love..."
From Fables for Our Time and Further Fables for Our Time

Men, Hate

“When you grow up--and from the look of things, you have awhile--but you learn things never go back to normal simply because everyone's sorry. Sorry is ridiculous.”

Marisha Pessl Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Source: Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Learning

“Let me get this thing straight, Inigo--we had SCRAPS for dinner? I'M in YOUR fantasy and the best you can come up with is SCRAPS?" She turned toward the door then. "You have no chance of winning my heart.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

Chance, Heart

“But in the end it wasn't up to me. The bigs things never are. Birth, I mean, and death. And love. And what love bequeaths to us before we're born.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book Middlesex

Source: Middlesex

Love, Death, Birth

“His gaze travelled down me, then zipped back to my face. "Sorry."
"Focus, Rafe."
"I am. Just on the wrong thing.”

Kelley Armstrong (1968) Canadian writer

Source: The Calling

Travel

“Craziness was considered funny, like all other things that were in reality frightening and profoundly shameful.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Reality

“No matter how much you keep encouraging someone who is blindfolded to stare through the cloth, he still won’t see a thing.".”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Clothes

“You know what the Buddhists say?
Don't cling to things, because everything is impermanent.”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Variant: Don't cling to things because everything is impermanent.
Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

“I realize now that the reality of things is not something you convey to people but something you make.”

Haruki Murakami book The Elephant Vanishes

Source: The Elephant Vanishes

People, Reality

“I've given guys blow jobs just because I've run out of things to talk about.'
Oh, Rae. Who hasn't”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Crooked Little Heart

Guy

“I believe a woman, in order to be a good wife, must be (among other things) both sensual and maternal.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Source: Let Me be a Woman

Maternity

“For most people, there are only two places in the world. Where they live and their TV set. If a thing happens on television, we have every right to find it fascinating, whatever it is.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

Source: White Noise

People, World

“We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.”

Joan Didion book Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Source: Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Love, Betrayal, Forgetting

“It wasn't a thing I had consciously missed, but having it now reminded me of the joy of it; that drowsy intimacy in which a man's body is accessible to you as your own, the strange shapes and textures of it like a sudden extension of your own limbs.”

Diana Gabaldon book Voyager

Source: Voyager

Joy

“…You don’t want the best of times to be just one thing, forever. You have to have a lot of bests of times, each one topping the last. You know?”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

Time

“Nobody knows how things will turn out, that's why they go ahead and play the game… You give it your all and sometimes amazing things happen, but it's hardly ever what you expect.”

Gennifer Choldenko book Al Capone Does My Shirts

Source: Al Capone Does My Shirts

Game, Hope

“I crouched on the beam. The bunnycat shivered less than a foot away.
"Here… " Bunny? Kitty? "Here, cute creature thing… Don't be scared.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Breaks

“Thank God for books and music and things I can think about.”

Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Algernon

Source: Flowers for Algernon

God, Books, Music, Thinking

“I knew a Buddhist once, and I've hated myself ever since. The whole thing was a failure.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

2000s, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century (2004)
Source: Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century

Hate, Failure

“I remember my own childhood vividly… I knew terrible things. But I knew I mustn't let adults know I knew. It would scare them”

Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) American illustrator and writer of children's books

Childhood

“Sometimes," he sighed, "I think the things I remember are more real than the things I see.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Thinking