“A memory is its own thing each time it‘s recalled. It‘s not absolute. Stories based on actual events often share more with fiction than fact. Both fiction and memories are recalled and retold. They‘re both forms of stories. Stories are the way we learn. Stories are how we understand each other. But reality happens only once.”
“Luisa likened it to the growth of spiritualism after the First World War. During the 1920s, many who had not been able to bring themselves to accept the loss of life in the trenches and the subsequent influenza epidemic had fallen prey to the belief that they could communicate with their lost loved ones from beyond the grave. They had, in fact, sidestepped grief by convincing themselves that nothing had happened.”
(Seveneves: Neal Stephenson)
“We don‘t believe in anything as simple as metempsychosis — the movement of an individual soul from one body to another. That‘s not what we mean by reincarnation at all... A better analogy might be to a burned-down stump being used to ignite a new candle.”
(Seveneves: Neal Stephenson)
“The only way that our society is going to achieve proper sexual stability and mental health, which are undisputed requirements for maturity, is to know the truth of what people are actually doing in the privacy of their own bedrooms. We must educate people with the truth, not indoctrinate; teach facts, not fallacies; formulate a code that accepts all sexual practices, not preaches asceticism.”
(The Voyeur‘s Journal: Gay Talese)
“Nate remembered seeing photographs of the world‘s oldest people and being enthralled by age of that magnitude; the plate-sized liver spots, the purplish blotches and warts crawling over the skin as though they were breaking down the epidermis and turning it into a rugged, warped map of each passing year.”
(The Waking: T. M. Jenkins)
“It reminded him of the buttons on his mother‘s jacket — amber, translucent, golden. He always longed to stuff them into his mouth and suck on them, expecting some extraordinary treat, and he‘d take them into his mouth and suck and every single time would be terribly disappointed, and every single time he‘d forget about the disappointment — not that he‘d actually forget, he‘d just refuse to believe his memory as soon as he saw them again.”
“Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”
“We are not written for one instrument alone; I am not, neither are you.”
“A child feels some kind of special pain,” he said. “A child has no past and has no future, he just lives in the present and lives it wholeheartedly. When he suffers, he suffers with his whole being.”
"Something wasn't right. I had difficulty reading and putting simple syllables together. I frequently lost my train of thought. Feelings of fear, anxiety, depression, panic, nervousness, embarrassment constantly occupied my beleaguered body and mind. Numerous plans ran through my mind on how I would end my life. I was in a hopeless position, more desperate than anything I'd thought bearable."
"A book goes out like a wave rolling over the surface of the sea. Ideas radiate from the author's mind and collide with other minds, triggering new waves that return to the author. These generate further thoughts and emanations, and so it goes."
"The first time you glimpse yourself through the eyes of a person like that, it's a cold moment. It's like walking past a mirror you've walked past every day of your life, and suddenly it shows you something else, something troubling and strange."
"A plane crash is not simply the sum total of time line + mechanical elements + human elements. It is an incalculable tragedy, one that shows us the ultimate finiteness of human control over the universe, and the humbling power of collective death."
"The pen may be mightier than the sword, yet at their best, each belonged to extravagant men."
"He heard her size before he saw it. Not just the crack of the thick underbrush that the sow moved aside like short grass, but the growl itself, a sound deep like thunder or a falling tree, a bass that could emanate only through connection with some great mass."
"Art is created through commitment -- every production should be a matter of life and death. The experience out of which art is created -- and acting is an art -- must be an intense one, and the result of an intense involvement in something may be elation or depression, victory or defeat."
"The terror and consternation of the Presidential couple may be imagined by anyone who has ever loved a child, and suffered that dread intimation to all parents, that Fate may not hold that life in as high regard, and may dispose of it at will."
"For the first time in days he feels the words gathering inside him, dividing, accumulating, taking on strength and form. Soon, he knows, they will begin to rise up his throat and then they will spill out onto his bruised and ulcerated tongue, and then, whether he likes it or not, whether he wants it or not, he will speak."
Just then, Alexander came up. The lieutenant pointed to Alexander and said to the yogi, "This man has conquered the world! What have you accomplished?" The yogi looked up calmly and replied, "I have conquered the need to conquer the world."
"Mama."
It made my skin crawl the way she said it. Like you'd say, "Tornado," if one was bearing down on you.
"We may all display the American flag without increasing our sense of national security -- in fact, it is fairly clear that the visibility of the flag's display is directly proportional to our insecurity."
"America was a melting pot, but Congress, terrified that the molten mixture was becoming a shade too yellow, had banned all immigrants from China."
"Hunger was the common ground on which everyone woke. The body an infant stirring to mew, each morning, Feed me."
"Realize that the human experience is one of suffering and the resolution of suffering."
"Of all the emotions to describe in retrospect, happiness is perhaps the most dull, but awe is the most difficult."
"In the closet, she became a revolutionary; in the jail cell, she became a Hearst."
"The last time he'd felt anything like this, it was real, a cultivated emotion that rose from admiration, troubles endured and shared, and ground lost and found. It was true love, and his love was worthy."
"Life is no paragraph, and death is no parenthesis."
"You were different. You went on being a soldier, a family man, a vintner, as though in your life I was a condiment, a salt that brought out its full flavor, not its central fact. I was part of your calendar."
"To live without her would be like scooping out the vital parts of himself, and he would be no more than a fragile envelope of skin."
"He hoped they would forgive him; he hoped they would see that this was his apology to them. He was releasing them -- he loved them most of all, and this was what you did for people you loved: you gave them their freedom."
"She's the most important person in the world and her family living in poverty. If our mother so important to science, why can't we get health insurance?"
"Metaphor reveals a writer's true grasp of life. To the degree that you have no metaphor, you have not yet lives much of a life."
"I guess the essence of drama really is when within a person there's conflict between two sides, two impulses, two desires."
"Being human totally sucks most of the time. Videogames are the only thing that make life bearable."
"Human beings are born too soon; they are unfinished, unready as yet to meet the world. Consequently their whole defense from a universe of dangers is the mother, under whose protection the intra-uterine period is prolonged."
"Truth is not biodegradable, even after 3,000 years."
"There'd been so many of these descents; there are so many ways to go down a hill. I remembered the last but one time, when I ran alone, a weeping mess with death behind me. That earlier me was a stranger child for whom I had care and with whom my patience was strained."
"In a word: PERSIST. PERSIST on telling your story. PERSIST on reaching your audience. PERSIST on staying true to your vision..."
"The true Aryan is as blond as Hitler, as slim as Göring, and as tall as Goebbels."
"I put the 'idiot' in 'videotape'."
"I was looking at old photographs, I started thinking that there was a time when these weren't memories."
"He loved her. Surely somewhere in the universe, allowing for the laws of time and space and relativity, there must be a place where that could still be possible."
"Love has no power, because it can only be freely given... Power influences or directs people or processes," Idriss said. "Power is a measure of control, and it is always connected to authority. Power is fear, submitting to greed. There is no fear and there is no greed in love, just as there is no authority or control, which is why it is beyond illusions of power."
