“And uh, forget the money. Because, if you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you will spend your life wasting your time. You will be doing things you don’t like doing in order to go on living, that is, in order to do things you don’t like doing, which is stupid. Better to have a short life that is full of things you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way.” - Alan Watts
Oh, don't get me wrong, I love money as much as the next guy. But at the cost of happiness? Better be a big fucking check.
"I'm a Catholic whore, currently enjoying congress out of wedlock with my black jewish boyfriend who works at a millitary abortion clinic. So hail Satan, and have a lovely afternoon madam." Truly, one of the great movie quotes.
So you found a girl who thinks really deep thoughts/ What's so amazing about really deep thoughts?/ Boy you best pray that I bleed real soon, how's that thought for you? -Tori Amos, Silent All These Years
"All I ask is the chance to prove that money can't make me happy." Spike Milligan "Your whole life is on the other side of the glass. And there is nobody watching." Alan Bennett "The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense." Tom Clancy "I have spent most of my life worrying about things that have never happened." Mark Twain (I have my doubts about the authenticity of this one, but love it anyway)
From one of the first pages of The Gift by Alison Croggon. I just love the way it's written. "Freedom was a fantasy she gnawed obsessively in her few moments of leisure, like an old bone with just a trace of meat; and like all illusions, it left her hungrier than before, only more keenly aware of how her soul starved within her, its wings wasting with the despair of disuse."
“If there are twelve clowns in a ring, you can jump in the middle and start reciting Shakespeare, but to the audience, you'll just be the thirteenth clown” -- Adam Walinsky.
Pretty much any quote by Albert Einstein "Two things are infinite - the universe and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." "The significant problems we face cannot be solved on the same level of consciousness that created them." "Imagination is more important than knowledge." "Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better."
Pretty much any quote by Michel De Montaigne: "I want death to find me planting my cabbages, careless of death, and even more of my unfinished garden." A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband. My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened. A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears. Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know. The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself. Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do.
I thought that was Mark Twain, but I could be mistaken. Here's one that Avi Steinberg quoted in his book The Lost Book of Mormon. The quote is by Vladimir Nabokov, and it's worth pondering by any writer: "Literature was born not the day a boy crying "wolf, wolf" came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels; literature was born on the day when a boy came crying "wolf, wolf" and there was no wolf behind him. That the poor little fellow because he lied too often was finally eaten up by a real beast is quite incidental. But here is what is important. Between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall story there is a shimmering go-between. That go-between, that prism, is the art of literature."
And my last quote reminded me of another one, which I finally tracked down: "A writer is a world trapped in a person". -- Victor Hugo
"A plate of food will never say 'No' to you." - A college buddy ... following a discussion about girls
One of my favorite quotes is "Believe in me, who believes in you." I'm not sure where it's originally from though.
From The Great Gatsby: "I like large parties. They're so intimate. At small parties there isn't any privacy."
From P G Wodehouse... The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required. I feel that way about some authors' speeches myself
"People might look at you a bit funny, but it’s okay. Artists are allowed to be a bit different." - Bob Ross I don't know why, but I love this quote
"So, wait, the looters take over the government and we have a train crash? Holy shit, we really are living in an Ayn Rand novel." - Dan Lyke
Fine with me. I don't know Dan personally, but I enjoy his blog (www.flutterby.com), and I doubt if he'd mind being quoted - interesting guy.
