Quotes about use
page 69

“The Net’s interactivity gives us powerful new tools for finding information, expressing ourselves, and conversing with others. It also turns us into lab rats constantly pressing levers to get tiny pellets of social or intellectual nourishment.”

Nicholas Carr (1959) American writer

Source: The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains

“Money to me had always been merely something the sheep used to show each other how wonderful they were.”

Jeff Lindsay book Dexter Is Delicious

Source: Dexter Is Delicious

Money

“Those who fear the imagination condemn it: something childish, they say, something monsterish, misbegotten. Not all of us dream awake. But those of us who do have no choice.”

Patricia A. McKillip (1948) American fantasy writer

Fear, Dreams, Imagination

“Ford!" he said, "there's an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script forthey've worked out.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“No, vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part Two: Soul and Body, p 56

Fear, Success

“Artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself.”

Alan Moore V for Vendetta

Source: V for Vendetta

Truth, Lie

“We are none of us perfect, and… we learn to take these imperfections and make them only a small part of who we are”

Patricia Briggs book Bone Crossed

Source: Bone Crossed

Learning, Parting, Perfection

“Pigmentation was a quick and convenient way of judging a person. One of us, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once proposed we instead judge people by the content of their character. He was shot.”

Jon Stewart book Earth (The Book)

Source: Earth (The Book): A Visitor's Guide to the Human Race

People, Way, Personality

“I suspect there will never be a requiem for a dream, simply because it will destroy us before we have the opportunity to mourn it's passing.”

Hubert Selby Jr. Requiem for a Dream

Source: Requiem for a Dream

Dreams

“The very worst impulses of humankind can survive generations, centuries, even millennia. And the best of our individual efforts can die with us at the end of a single lifetime.”

Elizabeth Kostova book The Historian

Source: The Historian (2005), Ch. 9
Context: There is survival and survival, the historian learns to his grief. The very worst impulses of humankind can survive generations, centuries, even millennia. And the best of our individual efforts can die with us at the end of a single lifetime.
Context: My dear and unfortunate successor:
I shall conclude my account as rapidly as possible, since you must draw from it vital information if we are both to — ah, to survive, at least, and to survive in a state of goodness and mercy. There is survival and survival, the historian learns to his grief. The very worst impulses of humankind can survive generations, centuries, even millennia. And the best of our individual efforts can die with us at the end of a single lifetime.

Effort

“Things do not always happen the way I would have wanted, and it's best that I get used to that.”

Paulo Coelho book Like the Flowing River

Source: Like the Flowing River

Way

“The important thing was that we were being polite and not saying all the things that were making us unhappy, which was the only way we knew how to love each other.”

Ruth Ozeki book A Tale for the Time Being

Source: A Tale for the Time Being

Love, Way

“We were, the two of us, still fragmentary beings, just beginning to sense the presence of an unexpected, to be-aquired reality that would fill us and make us whole.”

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

Source: South of the Border, West of the Sun

Reality, Sense

“Why have you chosen to spare me?”
“I want us to be…what is your word? Friends.”
“Psychotic rapists don’t have friends.”
“I was unaware you were a psychotic rapist or I would not have offered.”
“Ha.” I’d set myself up for that one.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Variant: I want us to be... what is your word? Friends."
"Psychotic rapists don't have friends."
"I was unaware you were a psychotic rapists or I would not have offered."
(Mac & V'lane)
Source: Bloodfever

“The things that make us happy make us wise.”

John Crowley book Little, Big

Source: Little, Big

Happiness

“Our stories are so fundamental to us that it’s easy to forget that we choose them.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Here I Am

Source: Here I Am

Forgetting

“The two men who have done the greatest harm to the world are Christ and Columbus. Christ taught us guilt and sacrifice, to live only in the other world, and Columbus discovered America and materialism.”

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

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

Men, World, Christ

“The art of life is not controlling what happens to us, but using what happens to us”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Life, Art

“And this is the forbidden truth, the unspeakable taboo - that evil is not always repellent but frequently attractive; that it has the power to make of us not simply victims, as nature and accident do, but active accomplices.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

Truth, Nature, Evil

“Perhaps it is our fear, that in the silence between stories, in the moment of falling, the fear that we will never find the one story which will save us, and so we lunge for another, and we feel safe again, if only for as long as we are telling it.”

Nick Flynn (1960) American writer

Fear, Feeling, Silence

“We laugh & it pits the world against us.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

World

“Nothing haunts us like the things we don't say.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: Have a Little Faith: a True Story

“My grandmother is a little Cuban woman who cooks all day and speaks Spanish. Your grandmother watches pay-per-view porn."
"She used to watch the Weather Channel, but she said there wasn't enough action."

-Ranger and Stephanie”

Janet Evanovich book To the Nines

Source: To the Nines

Weather, Cooking

“Real leaders are people who “help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

People, Fear, Help, Selfishness

“We're all curious about what might hurt us.”

Federico García Lorca (1898–1936) Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director

Hurt

“What sucks the worst is… this world was a gift to us, and we broke it, and part of the deal is that if we want things right, we have to fix it ourselves. But we can't. We try, but we can't.”

Dean Koontz book Forever Odd

Source: Forever Odd

World, Parting

“the work of salvation, in its full sense, is (1) about whole human beings, not merely souls; (2) about the present, not simply the future; and (3) about what God does through us, not merely what God does in and for us.”

N.T. Wright (1948) Anglican bishop

God, Soul, Sense, Future

“We shall know what things are of overmastering importance when they have overmastered us.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book Gaudy Night

Source: Gaudy Night

“Theyʹre shooting at us,ʺ I said incredulously. ʺTheyʹre actually shooting at us!”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

“Use me, God. Show me how to take who I am, who I want to be, and what I can do, and use it for a purpose greater than myself.”

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

God

“… The friends we have lost do not repose under the ground… they are buried deep in our hearts. It has been thus ordained that they may always accompany us…”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Heart

“We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

"The Meaning of Life: The Big Picture", Life Magazine (December 1988)
Interviews
Context: For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stonewritten. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.

Death, War, Drink, Beer

“When in situations of stress we wonder if there is any more in us to give, we can be comforted to know that God, who knows our capacity perfectly, placed us here to succeed”

Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) Mormon leader

God

“The two biggest self-deceptions of all are that life has a 'meaning'and each of us is unique.”

David Byrne (1952) Scottish alternative rock musician and promoter of world music

Life

“That's the paradox of loss: How can something that's gone weigh us down so much?”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

Loss

“You're free to join us, but only if you promise not to stare at the new kid." Miles laughs.
"Staring is very rude. Didn't anyone ever tell you that?”

Alyson Nöel book Evermore

Source: Evermore

“ʺWhy,ʺ he began slowly, ʺis Victor Dashkov joining us?ʺ
ʺWell, itʹs kind of a funny story…ʺ”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

“It's always been hard for me to tell the difference between denial and what used to be known as hope.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Source: Wonder Boys

Hope

“But shouldn't all of us on earth give the best we have to others and offer whatever is in our power?”

Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet

Source: Fairy Tales

“They all deserve to die.
Even you, Mrs. Lovett
Even I.

Because the lives of the wicked should be made brief
For the rest of us death would be relief.”

Stephen Sondheim (1930) American composer and lyricist

Source: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Death

“That's one of the central problems of history, isn't it, sir? The question of subjective versus objective interpretation, the fact that we need to know the history of the historian in order to understand the version that is being put in front of us.”

Julian Barnes book The Sense of an Ending

Source: The Sense of an Ending

History, Understanding, Question, Problem

“Please be peaceful. We believe in law and order. We are not advocating violence, I want you to love your enemies… for what we are doing is right, what we are doing is just -- and God is with us.”

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

Love, God, Peace, Law

“My goal is not to be better than anyone else, but to be better than I used to be.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

Variant: you don't need to be better than any one else you just need to be better than you used to be

“Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.”

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

Love, Art

“There is little consolation in the fact that millions of people are unhappier than we are. Why should other people's misery make us happier or more content?”

Azar Nafisi (1955) Iranaian academic and writer

People

“Ruin, eldest daughter of Zeus, she blinds us all, that fatal madness—she with those delicate feet of hers, never touching the earth, gliding over the heads of men to trap us all. She entangles one man, now another.”

Homér Iliad

Source: The Iliad

Men, Daughters, Madness

“The sad thing is, people don't want to believe that the person they're in love with is out of his mind, drinking and using, so if you give them even half an excuse, they're going to want to believe it.”

Anthony Kiedis book Scar Tissue

Source: Scar Tissue

Love, People, Sadness, Drink

“Because when everyone dreams, but only a few realize their dreams, that makes cowards of us all.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

Dreams

“Reminds us that greatness lies even in the smallest of moments, in the humblest of hearts, and we shall, each of us, be called to greatness. Whether we shall rise to meet it or let it slip away is the challenge put before us all.”

Libba Bray book The Sweet Far Thing

Source: The Sweet Far Thing

Heart

“Besides love and sympathy, animals exhibit other qualities connected with the social instincts which in us would be called moral.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume I, chapter III: "Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals — continued", pages 100-101 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=113&itemID=F937.1&viewtype=image <br class="br">The Descent of Man (1871) <br class="br">Context: As man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races. If, indeed, such men are separated from him by great differences in appearance or habits, experience unfortunately shews us how long it is before we look at them as our fellow-creatures. Sympathy beyond the confines of man, that is humanity to the lower animals, seems to be one of the latest moral acquisitions. It is apparently unfelt by savages, except towards their pets. How little the old Romans knew of it is shewn by their abhorrent gladiatorial exhibitions. The very idea of humanity, as far as I could observe, was new to most of the Gauchos of the Pampas. This virtue, one of the noblest with which man is endowed, seems to arise incidentally from our sympathies becoming more tender and more widely diffused, until they are extended to all sentient beings. As soon as this virtue is honoured and practised by some few men, it spreads through instruction and example to the young, and eventually through public opinion.

Love, Animals

“The Essence of Knowledge is, having it, to use it.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Knowledge

“Everything in the gospel teaches us that we can change if we need to, that we can be helped if we truly want it, that we can be made whole, whatever the problems of the past.”

Jeffrey R. Holland (1940) Mormon leader

Source: Created for Greater Things

Problem, Change, Past, Help

“Something is wrong here: sex has been with us since the human race began its existence, yet I would estimate that 90 percent of human beings still suffer enormous inhibitions in this area.”

Xaviera Hollander (1943) Dutch prostitute

Sex, Suffering

“Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.”

Cormac McCarthy book All the Pretty Horses

Source: All the Pretty Horses

Past

“And I remembered something else that makes us human: faith, the only weapon in our arsenal to battle doubt.”

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

Source: Change of Heart

Faith

“Seven, Richie thought. That's the magic number. There has to be seven of us. That's the way it's supposed to be.”

Stephen King book It

Source: It

Way

“We know how it ends practically before it starts. That's why stories appeal to us. They give us the clarity and simplicity our real lives lack.”

Anne Bishop (1955) American fiction writer

Source: Daughter of the Blood

“We all posses different gifts and abilities. How we use those gifts determines who we are.”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

Source: Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary

“An awareness of death encourages us to live more intensely.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Death

“And if we know how to light a fire, why do we carry tinder around with us?"

Because you're humans," the little one explained serenly. "You're stupid.”

Silvana De Mari book The Last Dragon

Source: The Last Dragon

Stupidity, Light

“To love God is to love His will. It is to wait quietly for life to be measured by One who knows us through and through. It is to be content with His timing and His wise appointment.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Love, Life, God, Time

“Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

“You don't blame us for being here, do you? After all, we have no place to go. No home… Incidentally, what an excellent day for an exorcism…”

William Peter Blatty book The Exorcist

Source: The Exorcist

Home

“I am sure there is Magic in everything, only we have not sense enough to get hold of it and make it do things for us”

Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden

Source: The Secret Garden

Sense

“I do not tell lies. Mother used to say that this was because I was a good person. But it is not because I am a good person. It is because I do not tell lie.”

Mark Haddon (1962) English writer and illustrator

Lie, Personality

“We all have our sorrows, and although the exact delinaments, weight and dimensions of grief are different for everyone, the color of grief is common to us all.
I know, he said, because he was human, and therefore, in a way, he did.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

Color, Way

“We are so used to releasing words, we don't know what to do with them if they stay. No matter how many times we let them go, they come back. The words that matter always stay.”

David Levithan The Realm of Possibility

Source: The Realm of Possibility

Time

“Imagine that human existence is defined by an Ache: the Ache of our not being, each of us, the center of the universe; of our desires forever outnumbering our means of satisfying them.”

Jonathan Franzen book How to Be Alone

Source: How to Be Alone

Imagination, Universe

“That's what I'm living on now, honey, dreams, dreams of what I used to do.”

Fannie Flagg book Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Source: Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Dreams

“I wish to confound all these people, to create a work of art of a supernatural realism and of a spiritualist naturalism. I wish to prove… that nothing is explained in the mysteries which surround us.”

Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848–1907) French novelist and art critic

People, Art, Nature

“other people maay be there to help us, teach us, guide us aolng our path, But the lesson to be learned is always ours”

Melody Beattie (1948) American writer

People, Learning, Help

“My boy, that was a TV show. I used a stunt double. I always use a stunt double. Except in love scenes. I insist on doing those myself.”

William Shatner (1931) Canadian actor, musician, recording artist, author, and film director

Love, Boy

“There are some men in this world who are born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father's one of them.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Men, World

“Storiesto be read, David's mother would whisper. They needed it. It was the reason they forced themselves from their world into ours. They wanted us to give them life.”

John Connolly The Book of Lost Things

Source: The Book of Lost Things

Life, World, Reading

“I have discovered the value of psychology and psychiatry, that their teachings can undo knots in us and permit life to flow again and aid us in becoming more truly human.”

Jean Vanier (1928–2019) Canadian humanitarian

Source: Becoming Human

Life

“And the Bastard grant us... in our direst need, the smallest gifts: the nail of the horseshoe, the pin of the axle, the feather at the pivot point, the pebble at the mountain's peak, the kiss in despair, the one right word. In darkness, understanding.”

Lois McMaster Bujold book Paladin of Souls

Source: Paladin of Souls (2003), p. 44

Mountain, Understanding, Kiss, Despair

“The rule is: don’t use commas like a stupid person. I mean it.”

Lynne Truss (1955) British writer

Source: Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

Stupidity, Personality

“It's not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us.”

Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

Hurt

“Our own choices might not be as good as those that are made for us.”

Sebastian Faulks book Birdsong

Source: Birdsong

“I am wholly yours - you are everything to me; we will sustain each other in all the ills of life it may please fate to inflict upon us; you will soothe my troubles; I will comfort you in yours.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

Life, Fate

“It amazes me how people are often more willing to act based on little or no data than to use data that is a challenge to assemble.”

Robert J. Shiller (1946) American economist

People

“She said, 'Believe it or not, I used to be idealistic.' I asked her what 'idealistic' meant. 'It means you live by what you think is right.' 'You don't do that anymore?' 'There are questions I don't ask anymore.”

Jonathan Safran Foer (1977) Novelist

Question, Thinking

“I've found, in my own writing, that a little hatred, keenly directed, is a useful thing.”

Alice Walker book In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose

Source: In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose

“Yes, you are nosy. You're a dreadfully nosy, horribly bossy, appallingly clean old woman. Control yourself. You're victimizing us all.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Howl's Moving Castle

Source: Howl's Moving Castle

“I shall never eat duck again. I cannot believe I used to like duck. The duck betrayed me.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Vampires, Scones, and Edmund Herondale

“After all, how many of us had tried to forget something traumatic… only to find it printed on the back of our eyelids, tattooed on our tongues?”

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

Source: Change of Heart

Tattoo, Forgetting

“God fills us with all sorts of yearnings that go against the grain of the world—but the fact those yearnings often come to nothing, well, I doubt that’s God’s doing.” She cut her eyes at me and smiled. “I think we know that’s men’s doing.”

Sue Monk Kidd (1948) Novelist

Source: The Invention of Wings

Men, God, World, Smile

“Only mystery allows us to live, only mystery.”

Federico García Lorca (1898–1936) Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director

“Let us have the candor to acknowledge that what we call “the economy” or “the free market” is less and less distinguishable from warfare.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Citizenship Papers (2003), The Failure of War
Context: Let us have the candor to acknowledge that what we call “the economy” or “the free market” is less and less distinguishable from warfare. For about half of the last century, we worried about world conquest by international communism. Now with less worry (so far) we are witnessing world conquest by international capitalism. Though its political means are milder (so far) than those of communism, this newly internationalized capitalism may prove even more destructive of human cultures and communities, of freedom, and of nature. Its tendency is just as much toward total dominance and control.