Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I do think ordinariness is, in a way, the enemy, but not ordinariness as the opposite of flamboyance.
The hardest part of writing is not to get the ideas but to remember, why it is important to get them.
It took me as long as I had known him to get rid of all of his words. Like turning an hourglass over.
I put my hand on the doorknob because I thought maybe her hand was on the doorknob on the other side.
I want to talk about God in a literary way. But I think I would have a very hard time praying to God.
Why is taste, the crudest of our senses, exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other senses?
I'm deeply curious about Jewish things. I've toyed around with the idea of going to rabbinical school.
I can't even say 'hair pie,'' I told him, 'unless I'm talking about an actual pie made out of rabbits.
If the thrill of hunting were in the hunt, or even in the marksmanship, a camera would do just as well.
When it comes to meat, change is almost always cast as an absolute. You are a vegetarian or you are not.
We talked about nothing in particular, but it felt like we were talking about the most important things.
I have made my own choice, which is vegetarianism, but it's not the choice I'm imposing on anybody else.
Weeks passed like boats waiting to sail into the starless dawn, we were full of aimless endless darkness.
One of the greatest opportunities to live our values-or betray them-lies in the food we put on our plates.
But what she was really trying to say was this: I like music better than anything in the world, after you.
It seems entirely possible to me that horrible things can be going on without us becoming horrible people.
Only now do I understand the war against boredom, the lost cause of empty hours, of empty days and nights.
Why do beautiful songs make you sad?' 'Because they aren't true.' 'Never?' 'Nothing is beautiful and true.
I looked at everyone and wondered where they came from, and who they missed, and what they were sorry for.
All really great artists, Jackson Pollack, John Cage, Beckett or Joyce - you are never indifferent to them.
I started carrying blank books like this one around, which I would fill with all the things I couldn't say.
Marriage is like a chess match is initiated and the board expands over time until it takes up all of a life.
I think and think and think, I‘ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.
Reality Hunger is more than thought-provoking; it's one of the most beautiful books I've read in a long time.
I'm sorry for my inability to let unimportant things go, for my inability to hold on to the important things.
Parents are always more knowledgeable than their children, and children are always smarter than their parents.
It broke my heart into more pieces than my heart was made of, why can't people say what they mean at the time?
The images of his infinite pasts and infinite futures washed over him as he waited, paralyzed, in the present.
The question, I've come to think, is not what inspires one to change, but what inspires one to remain changed.
Every factory-farmed animal is, as a practice, treated in ways that would be illegal if it were a dog or a cat.
I will describe my eyes and then begin the story. My eyes are blue and resplendent. Now I will begin the story.
I hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love.
There were things I wanted to tell him. But I knew they would hurt him. So I buried them, and let them hurt me.
She felt as if she were brimming, always producing and hoarding more love inside her. But there was no release.
It was terrible. All of the things we couldn't share. The room was filled with conversations we weren't having.
When you read something you have written, you have to confront some of the lies you have been telling yourself.
Cruelty depends on an understanding of cruelty, and the ability to choose against it. Or to choose to ignore it.
Something having been done just about everywhere just about always is no kind of justification for doing it now.
Just because you're an atheist, that doesn't mean you wouldn't love for things to have reasons for why they are.
I have no need for the past, I thought, like a child. I did not consider that the past might have a need for me.
It was one of the best days of my life, a day during which I lived my life and didn't think about my life at all.
She wanted nothing more than someone to miss, to touch, with whom to speak like a child, with whom to be a child.
It is unrealistic to think you can have an inflexible identity that never has to give or take or make compromises.
My dream went all the way back to the beginning. The rain rose into the clouds, and the animals descended the ramp.
It's hard to draw clear lines between writing and life and I don't think it is necessary to or necessarily good to.
When I looked at you, my life made sense. Even the bad things made sense. They were necessary to make you possible.
Which, then, brings us closer to what we want to communicate: saying what we intend, or trying to say the opposite?
...there are only some many times you can utter "It does not hurt" before it begins to hurt even more than the hurt.
I kept thinking how they were all names of dead people, and how names are basically the only thing dead people keep.
I am not a bad person. I am a good person who has lived in a bad time." Alex's grandfather..Everything is Illuminated