Joey Kaushik > Joey's Quotes

“I wouldn’t so much as stick my head in a pool hall. Oh, look, this is as far as I go explaining what I am and am not like. I will not explain myself one more time. I will not make an inventory of my attributes for people or mention my goddamn sense of duty. I will not take one more round of his ridiculous, nonsensical crap!” Whereupon,”
― Philip Roth, Indignation

“It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

“If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone?”
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

“Sleep, those little slices of death — how I loathe them.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“Here lies Dobby, a free elf.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

“Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I have a call.”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“Many people die at twenty five and aren't buried until they are seventy five.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“There is love in holding and there is love in letting go.”
― Elizabeth Berg, The Year of Pleasures

“You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Every ounce of my cynicism is supported by historical precedent.”
― Glen Cook, Shadow Games

“I spit on your happiness! I spit on your idea of life--that life that must go on, come what may. You are all like dogs that lick everything they smell. You with your promise of a humdrum happiness--provided a person doesn't ask much of life. I want everything of life, I do; and I want it now! I want it total, complete: otherwise I reject it! I will not be moderate. I will not be satisfied with the bit of cake you offer me if I promise to be a good little girl. I want to be sure of everything this very day; sure that everything will be as beautiful as when I was a little girl. If not, I want to die!”
― Jean Anouilh, Antigone (French language edition)

“If you behaved nicely, the communists wouldn't exist.”
― Jenny Holzer, Jenny Holzer: Truisms And Essays

“Sometimes I think books are the only friends worth having.”
― Susie Derkins

“That's what I've never been able to get about religion: that charmless combination of altruism and insanity. Give me a cynical, self-interested bastard any day of the week; at least you can play chicken with him and know he'll stick to the rules.”
― Mike Carey, Vicious Circle

“Gold was not sure of many things, but he was definite about one: for every successful person he knew, he could name at least two others of greater ability, better, and higher intelligence who, by comparison, had failed.”
― Joseph Heller, Good As Gold

“Can you ever "solve" disease, unemployment, war, or any other societal herpes? Hell no. All you can hope for is to make them manageable enough to allow people to get on with their lives. That's not cynicism, that's maturity.”
― Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“Rich men have dreams. Poor men die to make them come true.”
― Glen Cook, Water Sleeps

“It all depends on what people you're talking about helping. That's the wonderful think about just about every religion on the planet - they're all so incredibly selfish.”
― Derek Landy, Death Bringer

“A politician is a politician whether he's wearing a suit or a funny hat.”
― Reza Aslan

“To sum it all up, the [Ayn] Rand belief system looks like this:
1. Facts are facts: things can be absolutely right or absolutely wrong, as determined by reason.
2. According to my reasoning, I am absolutely right.
3. Charity is immoral.
4. Pay for your own fucking schools.”
― Matt Taibbi, Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America

“It seemed...that intelligence wasn't as pure and unalterable a characteristic as people believed. Being intelligent was like being good: you could be virtuous in one person's company and yet wicked in another's. You could be intelligent with one person and stupid with another. It was partly to do with confidence...In a way she had been more confident when she had been eighteen and foolish. At twenty-three, with Michael, she felt less confident and therefore less intelligent.”
― Julian Barnes, Staring at the Sun

“I want a more difficult life, that's all. What I really want is a first-rate life. I may not get it, but the only chance I have lies in getting out of a second-rate life. I may fail completely, but I do want to try. It's to do with me, not you; so don't worry.”
― Julian Barnes, Staring at the Sun

“I used to think I knew all the answers...That's why I left. I know what to do, I thought. Perhaps you have to persuade yourself you know the answers, otherwise you don't ever do anything. I thought I knew the answers when I married--or at least, I thought I was going to find them out. I thought I knew the answers when I left. Now I'm not sure. Or rather, I know the answers to different things now. Perhaps that's it: we're only capable of knowing the answers to a certain number of things at any particular time.”
― Julian Barnes, Staring at the Sun

“Her ambitions were no longer specifically for happiness or financial security or freedom from disease (thought they included all three), but for something more general: the continuing certainty of things. She needed to know that she would carry on being herself.”
― Julian Barnes, Staring at the Sun

“The trouble was, how could you know what question to ask? It seemed to her that you were in a position to ask a really correct question only if you already knew the answer, and what was the point of that?”
― Julian Barnes, Staring at the Sun

“...as for knowing your own mind, this seemed a bewildering process. How could you know your own mind without using your mind to discover your mind in the first place?”
― Julian Barnes, Staring at the Sun

“To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness - though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless.”
― Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot

“The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.”
― Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot

“Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn't all it's cracked up to be.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“Does character develop over time? In novels, of course it does: otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story. But in life? I sometimes wonder. Our attitudes and opinions change, we develop new habits and eccentricities; but that's something different, more like decoration. Perhaps character resembles intelligence, except that character peaks a little later: between twenty and thirty, say. And after that, we're just stuck with what we've got. We're on our own. If so, that would explain a lot of lives, wouldn't it? And also—if this isn't too grand a word—our tragedy.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending