Quotes about use
page 59

“We have both lost ourselves and created something else, something that exists only as an interlacing of the two of us.”

Robert James Waller (1939–2017) American writer

“it's no use trying to pretend that mostpeople and ourselves are alike. Mostpeople have less in common with ourselves than thesquarerootofminusone. You and I are human beings; mostpeople are snobs.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

“But the division in him was a sorrow and a torment, and he became accustomed to it only as one gets used to an unhealed and frequently reopened wound.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Source: Doctor Zhivago

“O God, I love you to the edge of madness, Venetia, but I'm not mad yet--not so mad that I don't know how disastrous it might be to you--to us both! You don't realize what an advantage I should be taking of your innocence!”

Georgette Heyer book Venetia

Source: Venetia

Love, God, Madness

“They adore you beacause they think you offer up your friendship and ask for nothing in return. But that's not true-' He took a deep breath. 'You do ask for something. You ask that we never expect you to need us.”

Kamila Shamsie (1973) Pakistani writer

Source: Kartography

Friendship, Thinking

“Judge us not equally, Abraham. We may all deserve hell, but some of us deserve it sooner than others”

Seth Grahame-Smith (1976) US fiction author

Source: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Hell

“I'm trying to think of a witty comeback, when Boggs says brusquely, “Well, don't expect us to be too impressed. We just saw Finnick Odair in his underwear.” I decide to go ahead and like Boggs.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Thinking

“God never witholds from His child that which His love and wisdom call good. God's refusals are always merciful -- "severe mercies" at times but mercies all the same. God never denies us our hearts desire except to give us something better.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Love, Wisdom, God, Time

“If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

Beauty, Beauty

“I used to do drugs, but don't tell anyone because it'll ruin my image.”

Courtney Love (1964) American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist

“Surely you’ve been sent from the heavens to teach us mortals what beauty is.”

Sidney Sheldon book Memories of Midnight

Source: Memories of Midnight

Beauty

“All beings want to be happy, yet so very few know how. It is out of ignorance that any of us cause suffering, for ourselves or for others”

Sharon Salzberg (1952) American writer

Source: Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness

Happiness, Suffering

“All of us lost something. Some of us lost everything.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Lost Herondale

“We are all human; therefore, nothing human can be alien to us.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

“You perhaps now know that desire reduces us to pulp.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: My Mother/Madame Edwarda/The Dead Man

“Societies in decline have no use for visionaries.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

“Morality is of the highest importance -- but for us, not for God.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

God

“It’s tempting to wish for the perfect boss, the perfect parent, or the perfect outfit. But maybe the best any of us can do is not to quit, play the hand we’ve been dealt, and accessorize what we’ve got.”

Candace Bushnell book Sex and the City

Source: Sex and the City

Parent, Perfection

“To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination.”

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

Source: Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope

Way, Communication

“When along the pavement,
Palpitating flames of life,
People flicker around me,
I forget my bereavement,
The gap in the great constellation,
The place where a star used to be”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Life, People, Star, Forgetting

“Of the Seven Dwarfs, the only one who shaved was Dopey. That should tell us something about the wisdom of shaving.”

Tom Robbins Skinny Legs and All

Source: Skinny Legs and All

Wisdom

“Oh no! Don't drag us away from Antartica and take us to the playground of the rich and famous! Not that briar patch! -Max”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Final Warning

“We demand that sex speak the truth […] and we demand that it tell us our truth, or rather, the deeply buried truth of that truth about ourselves wich we think we possess in our immediate consciousness.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Source: The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction

Truth, Sex, Thinking

“When all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American feminist, writer, commercial artist, lecturer and social reformer

Death

“It seems to me that the good lord in his infinate wisdom gave us three things to make life bearable- hope, jokes, and dogs. But the greatest of these was dogs.”

Robyn Davidson (1950) Australian writer

Source: Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback

Life, Wisdom, Dogs, Hope

“You think you can say a few words and end us? There is no end, Eva.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Reflected in You

Thinking

“Getting something and having the wits to use it… those are two different things.”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

“Bending his head over hers, Leo murmured, "When I give you away at the altar, Bea, I want you to remember something. I'm not really giving you away. I'm merely allowing him the chance to love you as much as the rest of us do.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Love in the Afternoon

Love, Chance

“No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

Feeling

“All we could get out of them was that they were taking us to 'Kurokuma'. We didn't know if that was a place or a person. What does it mean, by the way?'
'I'm told it's a term of great respect,' Horace said, unwilling to admit that he didn't know.”

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

Source: The Emperor of Nihon-Ja

Way, Personality

“If there's a single lesson that life teaches us, it's that wishing doesn't make it so.”

Lev Grossman The Magicians

Source: The Magicians

Life

“Give us what belongs to us in peace, and if you don't give it to us in peace, we will take it by force.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

Peace

“If there is something comforting - religious, if you want - about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long.”

Thomas Pynchon book Gravity's Rainbow

Source: Gravity's Rainbow

“To take what there is, and use it, without waiting forever in vain for the preconceived — to dig deep into the actual and get something out of that — this doubtless is the right way to live.”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

Notebook entry, London, 1889-05-12.

Way, Waiting

“Imagination is a gift given to us from God and each one of us use it differently.”

Brian Jacques (1939–2011) British fiction writer known for Redwall animal fantasy novels

God, Imagination

“We all make mistakes, but intelligence enables us to do it on purpose.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

Intelligence

“God does not give us more than we can handle," I am told but I wonder if God doesn't overestimate me just a little. Or perhaps, and this is likely, I underestimate God.”

Julia Cameron (1948) American writer

Source: Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance

God

“The fact thatis the word we use for almost everything—on terrorism, drugs, even poverty—has certainly helped to desensitize us to its invocation; if we wage wars on everything, how bad can they be?”

Glenn Greenwald (1967) American journalist, lawyer and writer

Source: A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency

War, Help

“Our leaders know we’re turning into a giant ghetto and they are taking every last hubcap they can get their hands on before the rest of us wake up and realize what’s happened.”

Matt Taibbi (1970) author and journalist

Source: Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America

“How could she tell him that we come to love those who save us?”

Jenna Blum book Het familieportret

Source: Those Who Save Us

Love

“We must use time creatively - and forever realize that the time is always hope to do great things.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Hope, Time

“In the end, I worry that my arrogance shall destroy us all.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Final Empire

“All god wants us to do is do what he asks us to do.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

God

“No, none of us seem so very real.

We're only supporting characters in the lives of each other.

Any real truth, any precious fact will always be lost in a mountain of shattered make-believe.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Tell-All

Source: Tell-All

Truth, Mountain, Support

“God help us for we knew the worst too young.”

Rudyard Kipling book The Light That Failed

Source: The Light That Failed

God, Help

“Most of us tend to belittle all suffering except our own," said Mary. "I think it's fear. We don't want to come too near in case we're sucked in and have to share it.”

Elizabeth Goudge (1900–1984) English fiction writer

Source: The Scent of Water

Fear, Thinking, Suffering

“Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

“What, eBay isn't good enough for us?”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Final Warning

“Ordinary, said Aunt Lydia, is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Time

“I know there is strength in the differences between us,
And I know there is comfort where we overlap.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Overlap
Song lyrics

Cute, Romantic, For Her, love

“There are only two things that can screw this up for us: you and me."
"Then we're doomed for sure.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bleeds

“It is the imagination that argues for the Divine Spark within human beings. It is literally a decent of the World's Soul into all of us.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

World, Soul, Imagination

“The word friends doesn't seem to stretch big enough to describe how we feel about each other. We forget where one of us starts and the other one stops.”

Ann Brashares The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

Source: The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

Feeling, Forgetting

“I smiled back, the importance of manners, my mother always said, is inversely related to how inclined one is to use them, or, in other words, sometimes politeness is all that stands between oneself and madness.”

Nicole Krauss book Great House

Source: Great House

Smile, Madness

“Weary or bitter of bewildered as we may be, God is faithful. He lets us wander so we will know what it means to come home.”

Marilynne Robinson Home

Source: Home

God, Faith, Home

“Jane Austen easily used half a page describing someone else's eyes; she would not appreciate summarizing her reading tastes in ten titles.”

Tracy Chevalier (1962) American writer

Reading

“Most of us are called on to perform tasks far beyond what we believe we can do.”

Lloyd Alexander book The Book of Three

Author's Note
Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book I: The Book of Three (1964)
Context: Most of us are called on to perform tasks far beyond what we believe we can do. Our capabilities seldom match our aspirations, and we are often woefully unprepared. To this extent, we are all Assistant Pig-Keepers at heart.