The best Book Quotes (Page 22)

She didn't give a damn about some of them, but she had grown to learn that inattention can be a stratagem to avoid pain, and that it is often misread as shallowness and indifference.

I expect most psychiatrists have a patient or two they'd like to refer to me.

Can you smell his sweat? That peculiar goatish odor is trans-3-methyl-2 hexenoic acid. Remember it, it's the smell of schizophrenia.

Power is much easier to acquire than it is to hold on to.

Here is the truth about tragedy: it's good for the soul.

Sex is for anyone; the aftermath is for lovers.

I kept hearing that "better to have loved and lost" bullshit. Another falsehood. Trust me, it is not better. Don't show me paradise and then burn it down.

A beating hurts for a little while. The shame of cowardice never leaves.

Before we go forward, we have to look back.

Love your parents - while we are busy growing up, they are growing old.

Perception is often more important than reality.

You look like several large orangutans made you their love slave.

Some people, no matter how easy the path they are given on the walk of life, will find a way to mess it all up. Ray Levine was one of those people.

You want people lined up, Will. You want the good guys on one side, the bad on the other. It doesn't work that way, does it? It is never that simple. Love, for example, leads to hate. I think that was what started it all. Primitive love.

And bad stays. Bad doesn't go away. You bury bad, it digs itself out. You throw bad in the middle of the ocean, it comes back at you like a tidal wave.

Those who believe that we are anything other than animals are blind. All humans are savages. The ones who are well fed are just lazier. They don't need to kill to get their food. So they dress up and find so-called loftier pursuits that make them believe that they are somehow above it all. Such nonsense. Savages are just hungrier. That was all. You do horrible things to survive. Anyone who believes that they are above that is delusional.

Survival is the thing. The mind will twist to survive. Anything can become normal.

Don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon!

I ordered a cheeseburger and a beer from a waitress who looked as though she wanted to be in one of those want-to-get-away? commercials. She called me hon. I love when a waitress calls me hon.

The first sip of beer on a hot day is like that first finger-dip when you open a new jar of peanut butter.

You don't worry about happiness and fulfilment when you're starving.

"Terrific," Simon said. "The psychos are on my side."

Most religious people don't believe the dogma, Ash. We take from it what we want, we discard what we don't. We form whatever narrative we like - kind God, vengeful God, active God, laid-back God, whatever. We just make sure we get something out of it. Maybe we get life everlasting while people we resent burn for eternity. Maybe we get something more concrete - money, a job, friends. You just change the narrative.

There are virtually no major life decisions you make that are not in some way based on your finances.

Some people are drawn to trouble. Some people, no matter how easy the path they are given on the walk of life, will find a way to mess it all up.

You've made plenty of short stories long. But never, ever, have you made a long story short.

I said everyone looks happy. That was kinda my point. If you judge the world by Facebook, you wonder why so many people take Prozac.

A voice flat enough to fit under a door crack.

Hope could be a wonderful thing. But hope could crush you anew every single day. Hope could be the cruelest thing in the world.

We get mad at someone for cutting us off in traffic or for taking too long to order at Starbucks or for not responding exactly as we see fit, and we have no idea that behind their facade, they may be dealing with some industrial-strength shit. Their lives may be in pieces. They may be in the midst of incalculable tragedy and turmoil, and they may be hanging on to their sanity by a thread. But we don't care. We don't see. We just keep pushing.

She dabbed her eye. A sarcastic rejoinder came to my lips, but I bit it back.

Hope is cruel. Hope reminds me of what almost was. Hope makes the physical ache return.

Kids don't do what their parents say - they do what they see their parents do. So who was to blame here?

Sure, on a larger scale, it was healthy to have people out there you cared about more than yourself. She knew that. But then there was the abject fear you would lose it. They say possessions own you. Not so. Loved ones own you. You are forever held hostage once you care so much.

Most were conspiracy nuts, the kind who think Elvis and Jimi Hendrix are jamming on some island off Fiji.

This was a place where tattoos outnumbered teeth.

Part of the human condition is that we all think that we are uniquely complex while everyone else is somewhat simpler to read. That is not true, of course. We all have our own dreams and hopes and wants and lust and heartaches. We all have our own brand of crazy.

You live among this ridiculous wealth and you get lost. You worry about nonsense like spirituality and inner health and satisfaction and relationships. You have no idea what it is like to starve, to watch yourself turn to bones.

Memories, you see, hurt. The good ones most of all.

The world doesn't give even the slightest damn about us or our petty problems.

Trust is like that. You can break it for a good reason. But it still remains broken.

He didn't believe in karma, but then again there was no reason to poke karma in the ribs.

Summer romances come to an end. That was part of the deal. They are built like certain plants or insects, not able to survive more than one season. I thought we would be different. We were, I guess, but not in the way I thought. I truly believed that we would never let each other go. The young are so dumb.

Feeding teenage boys was like filling a bathtub with a grapefruit spoon.

Years fly by, but the heart stays in the same place.

The cardinal rule: You never have to take back words you don't say.

The hunchback sees the hump of others - never his own.

We humans can't see straight. We are always biased. We always protect our own interests.

That's the problem with falling in love. It makes you start talking like a bad country song.

Yvonne started humming the QuickGo jingle, one of those torturous tunes that enters through the ear canal and proceeds to ricochet around the skull in search of an escape route it will never find.