Anyway By Quotes & Sayings

Whence all this passion towards conformity anyway? Diversity is the word. Let man keep his many parts and you will have no tyrant states. Why, if they follow this conformity business, they'll end up by forcing me, an invisible man, to become white, which is not a color but the lack of one. Must I strive towards colorlessness? But seriously and without snobbery, think of what the world would lose if that should happen. America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain. — Ralph Ellison

Answer Professor Mandell's letter when you get a chance and the patience. Ask him not to send me any more poetry books. I already have enough for 1 year anyway. I am quite sick of it anyway. A man walks along the beach and unfortunately gets hit in the head by a cocoanut. His head unfortunately cracks open in two halves. Then his wife comes along the beach singing a song and sees the 2 halves and recognizes them and cries heart breakingly. That is exactly where I am tired of poetry. Supposing the lady just picks up the 2 halves and shouts into them very angrily "Stop that!" Do not mention this when you answer his letter, however. It is quite controversial and Mrs. Mandell is a poet besides. — J.D. Salinger

I was a radioman when I first went into the Navy, so I learned to type by taking Morse code. So I was using the typewriter from day one. My handwriting wasn't any good anyway. — Robert Stone

We are to have no pictures which the puritan and the narrow, animated by an obsolete dogma, cannot approve of. We are to have no theaters no motion pictures, no books, no public exhibitions of any kind, no speech even which will anyway contravene his limited view of life. — Theodore Dreiser

Courage is not walking into battle with no fear - you should know this as a soldier. Courage is feeling great fear, but walking forward anyway.
Lady Lavender by Lynna Banning — Lynna Banning

Admitting that this job isn't always easy doesn't make somebody a bad mother. At least, it shouldn't. We're all on this ride together. We are not the first ones to ever accidentally tell our children to shut up, or wonder - just for a moment - what it would be like if we'd never had children. We aren't the first mothers to feel overwhelmed and challenged and not entirely fulfilled by motherhood. And we certainly won't be the last. Nothing can be lost by admitting our weaknesses and imperfections to one another. In fact, quite the opposite is true. We will be better mothers, better wives, and better women if we are able to finally drop the act and get real. Who are we pretending for, anyway? — Jill Smokler

And even my sense of identity was wrapped in a namelessness often hard to penetrate, as we have just seen I think ... Yes, even then, when already all was fading, waves and particles, there could be no things but nameless things, no names but thingless names. I say that now, but after all what do I know now about then, now when the icy words hail down upon me, the icy meanings, and the world dies too, foully named. All I know is what the words know, and the dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning, a middle and an end as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead. And truly it little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing. Saying is inventing. Wrong, very rightly wrong. You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is wept. To hell with it anyway. — Samuel Beckett

Now there's something for you to think about. If you don't know that you can't do something, isn't there a remote possibility that you'll go ahead and do it anyway in absolute defiance of physical law? That might be one of the drawbacks of education. If you don't know that you can't pick yourself up by the scruff of the neck and hold yourself at arm's length, maybe you can. — David Eddings

If you are honest, people may deceive you. Be honest anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfishness. Be kind anyway. All the good you do today will be forgotten by others tomorrow. Do good anyway. Amat — Fredrik Backman

Whether someone does right by you or wrong by you thank them anyway. — Nikki Rowe

Faith and fear, they tell me, can't coexist. I try to practice by doing what I'm afraid to do, and I manage (now and then, anyway) by means of faith. Faith that I will do myself more good than harm by the risks I am willing to take as a writer. And faith, finally, that the best service I can do myself is to do the best and most honest work of which I am capable. — Lawrence Block

He could have told George a writer creates a character as a way to reveal consciousness, increase the flow of meaning. This is how we reply to power and beat back our fear. By extending the pitch of consciousness and human possibility. This poet you've snatched. His detention drains the world of one more thimble of meaning. He should have said these things to that son of a bitch, although actually he liked George, but he'd never considered the matter in quite this way before and George would have said that terrorists do not have power and anyway Bill knew he'd forget the whole thing before much time went by. — Don DeLillo

Presumably there is indeed no purpose in the ultimate fate of the cosmos, but do any of us really tie our life's hopes to the ultimate fate of the cosmos anyway? Of course we don't; not if we are sane. Our lives are ruled by all sorts of closer, warmer, human ambitions and perceptions. — Richard Dawkins

But..." I'm not ready for you to stop being my problem.

"It makes more sense, Park. If you leave soon, you can still get home by dark.:

"But if I leave soon..." His voice dropped. "I leave soon."

"We have to say good-bye anyway." she said. "Does it matter if it's now or a few hours from now or tomorrow morning?"

"Are you kidding?" he looked down at her, hoping he'd miss his turn. "Yes. — Rainbow Rowell

Does fidelity even have any meaning in cases where it's not absolute? And what value does it have if it's going to be violated someday anyway? The smallest crimes are the largest. By perpetrating them you demonstrate that you are capable of anything. — Stig Saeterbakken

Truth is ... we all will die someday. None of our days are promised in anyway. But by choosing to live great, helping others along our way ... will help brighten humanity each and everyday! — Timothy Pina

I'm not the creative one. I know that. If Rory Storm hadn't come along ... and then The Beatles ... I would have continued running around in teddyboy gangs. Today, well ... I'd probably be a laborer. I'm glad I'm not, of course. It'll be nice to be part of history ... some sort of history anyway. What I'd like to be is in school history books and be read by kids. — Ringo Starr

In a thousand ways, you live by the sword and you die by the sword. When you allow other people to determine your best choices; when you allow yourself to be carried along by what other people think your life should be, could be, must be; when you hand them the pen and tell them to write your story, you don't get the pen back. Not easily anyway. I — Shauna Niequist

If you're new, then perhaps you've seen it. Have you seen it, by chance?"
I frowned. "It?"
"Yes. It."
"It ... what?" I asked cautiously, facing the old faery again. "What are you looking for?"
"I don't know." She sighed heavily, seeming to shrink in on herself. "I don't remember. I just know I lost it. You haven't seen it, have you?"
"No," I told her firmly. "I haven't seen it."
"Oh." The old creature sighed again, shrinking down a little more. "Are you sure? I thought you might have seen it."
"So, anyway," Puck broke in, before the conversation could go in another circle. — Julie Kagawa

I'll tell you a thing that will shock you. It will certainly shock the readers of Writer's Digest. What I often do nowadays when I have to, say, describe a room, is to take a page of a dictionary, any page at all, and see if with the words suggested by that one page in the dictionary I can build up a room, build up a scene. ... I even did it in a novel I wrote called MF. There's a description of a hotel vestibule whose properties are derived from Page 167 in R.J. Wilkinson's Malay-English Dictionary. Nobody has noticed. ... As most things in life are arbitrary anyway, you're not doing anything naughty, you're really normally doing what nature does, you're just making an entity out of the elements. I do recommend it to young writers. — Anthony Burgess

You are going to be measured anyway by some means, fair or foul. Usually the one doing the measuring has nothing specific in mind; so he does it by the seat of his pants. Careers are destroyed in this manner. — Phil Crosby

For my whole career in retail, I have stuck by one guiding principle. It's a simple one, and I have repeated it over and over and over in this book until I'm sure you're sick to death of it. But I'm going to say it again anyway: the secret of successful retailing is to give your customers what they want. — Sam Walton

The worst part is, you know they're not going to be together forever. I mean, come on, she's fifteen. Okay, sixteen. Still. It's not like they're going to get married or anything. Even if they last a couple of years which they won't she'll go to one college and he'll go to another, and pretty soon they'll forget all about each other. That's what always happens. That's why teenage dating is so dumb, because it's doomed to fail. You'd think people would have learned that by now, but I guess they haven't. They go right on falling in love and thinking it's going to survive high school. Allie and Burke, true love always. Whatever.
Anyway, happy birthday, Allie. I hope it was a good one. — Michael Thomas Ford

Because the end of a friendship isn't even formally acknowledged - no Little Talk, no papers served - you walk around effectively heartbroken but embarrassed to admit it, even to yourself. It's a special, open-ended kind of pain, like having a disease that doesn't even have a name. You worry you must be pathetically oversensitive to feel so wounded over such a thing. You can't tell people, "My friend broke up with me," without sounding like a nine-year-old. The only phrase I can think of that even recognizes this kind of hurt - "You look like you just lost your best friend" - is only ever spoken by adults to children. You can give yourself the same ineffectual lecture your parents used to give you as a kid: anyone who'd treat you this way isn't a very good friend and doesn't deserve your friendship anyway. But the nine-year-old in you knows that the reason they've ditched you is that you suck. — Tim Kreider

Think of a "discovery" as an act that moves the arrival of information from a later point in time to an earlier time. The discovery's value does not equal the value of the information discovered but rather the value of having the information available earlier than it otherwise would have been. A scientist or a mathematician may show great skill by being the first to find a solution that has eluded many others; yet if the problem would soon have been solved anyway, then the work probably has not much benefited the world [unless having a solution even slightly sooner is immensely valuable or enables further important and urgent work]. — Nick Bostrom

Remember, healing through forgiveness takes place in the soul and subconscious, not by a face to face confrontation that ends in hugging and tears of joy. In fact, chances are that would never happen anyway, so you are setting yourself up for failure if that is your expectation. — Sharon Critchfield

Sex, like race, is a visible, immutable characteristic bearing no necessary relationship to ability." The analogy had special meaning in the constitutional context: In a series of cases triggered by Brown v. Board of Education, the court had said that laws that classified on the basis of race were almost always unconstitutional, or deserving "strict scrutiny." The court had said in Reed that it wasn't applying strict scrutiny, but then it seemed to do so anyway. Were laws that classified what men and women could do blatantly unconstitutional the way laws classifying by race were? RBG boldly urged the court to say they were. — Irin Carmon

When the weather's nice, my parents go out quite frequently and stick a bunch of flowers on old Allie's grave. I went with them a couple of times, but I cut it out. In the first place, I don't enjoy seeing him in that crazy cemetery. Surrounded by dead guys and tombstones and all. It wasn't too bad when the sun was out, but twice - twice - we were there when it started to rain. It was awful. It rained on his lousy tombstone, and it rained on the grass on his stomach. It rained all over the place. All the visitors that were visiting the cemetery started running like hell over to their cars. That's what nearly drove me crazy. All the visitors could get in their cars and turn on their radios and all and then go someplace nice for dinner - everybody except Allie. I couldn't stand it. I know it's only his body and all that's in the cemetery, and his soul's in Heaven and all that crap, but I couldn't stand it anyway. I just wished he wasn't there. — J.D. Salinger

The annoying thing about reading is that you can never get the job done. The other day I was in a bookstore flicking through a book called something like 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (and, without naming names, you should be aware that the task set by the title is by definition impossible, because at least four hundred of the books suggested would kill you anyway), but reading begets reading
that's sort of the point of it, surely?
and anybody who never deviates from a set list of books is intellectually dead anyway. — Nick Hornby

Two plus three is five, check the email, one plus seven is, check the email, eight, check the email, which comes to a total of, who the hell am I anyway, eighty five. This is how he dismembers his day, in the most painful way, moment by moment. A bigger man would just shoot it, put it out of its misery. — Miranda July

No one really knows the value of book tours. Whether or not they're good ideas, or if they improve book sales. I happen to think the author is the last person you'd want to talk to about a book. They hate it by that point; they've already moved on to a new lover. Besides, the author never knows what the book is about anyway. — Rosecrans Baldwin

I don't know what you think of me. And you certainly would never picture us together. But probably peanut butter was just peanut butter for a long time, before someone ever thought of pairing it with jelly. And there was salt, but it started to taste better when there was pepper. And what's the point of butter without bread? (Why are all these examples of FOODS?!!?!?!?!?!?!) Anyway by myself I'm nothing special. But with you I could be. — Jodi Picoult

If women allow themselves to be consoled for their culturally determined lack of access to the modes of intellectual debate by the invocation of hypothetical great goddesses, they are simply flattering themselves into submission (a technique often used on them by men). All the mythic versions of women, from the myth of the redeeming purity of the virgin to that of the healing, reconciliatory mother, are consolatory nonsenses; and consolatory nonsense seems to me a fair definition of myth, anyway. Mother goddesses are just as silly a notion as father gods. If a revival of the myths gives women emotional satisfaction, it does so at the price of obscuring the real conditions of life. This is why they were invented in the first place. — Angela Carter

Here goes. See, my boyfriend and I decided to stay together for the summer, you know, even though he had to go visit some family in nowhereville. At least, that's what he told me. Anyway, everything was fine at first, because you know, we talked every night, and then boom, he just stopped calling. So I called and texted him like the good girlfriend I am, and it wasn't stalkerish, I swear, because I stopped after, like, the thirtieth time. A week goes by before he finally hits me back, and he was totally drunk and all, hey, baby, I miss you and what are you wearing, like no time had passed, and I was all, you so do not deserve to know. — Gena Showalter

His name is Tristan, by the way."
"Tristan?"
"Yes. Oh, I should have told you. You must have wondered about my own name. It was my father. Great Wagnerian. It nearly ruled his life. It was music all the time
mainly Wagner.
"I'm a bit partial myself."
"Ah well, yes, but you didn't get it morning, noon and night like we did. And then to be stuck with a name like Siegfried. Anyway, it could have been worse
Wotan, for instance. — James Herriot

She said it was different, because the balance of power was equal between women so sex was an even-steven transaction. I said "even-steven" was a sexist phrase, if she was going to be like that, and anyway that argument was outdated. She said I had trivialized the issue and if I thought it was outdated, I was living with my head in the sand.
(...)
I said there was more than one way of living with your head in the sand and that if Moira thought she could create Utopia by shutting herself up in a women-only enclave she was sadly mistaken. Men were not just going to go away, I said. You couldn't just ignore them . — Margaret Atwood

I don't really have a style icon but I really admire the way people dress like Gaga, Rihanna and Gwen Stefani. It's good to be inspired by singers who write music and dress incredibly - rather than models and people in the fashion industry who dress immaculately anyway because it's their style. — Ellie Goulding

We can no longer communicate with the apes by direct language, nor can we understand, without special study, their modes of communication which we have long since replaced by more elaborate forms. But it is at least presumable that they could still detect in our speech, at least when it is public and elaborate, the underlying tone values with which it began. Thus if we could take a gibbon ape to a college public lecture, he would not understand it, but he would "get a good deal of it." This is all the students get anyway. — Stephen Leacock

She turned her own Bible to John 13. The pastor began to preach about how Jesus loved Peter even though he knew ahead of time that Peter would deny him three times. "God loves us in the same way," Reverend Mitchell said. "Not because of what we do, but because of who he is. We can't earn God's favor by working for it. We don't earn it by our beauty or our possessions, for God is the one who gives those things anyway. His love is not dependent on anything. He loved us when we were unlovable, just as he did Peter. — Colleen Coble

Economists tell us that the 'price' of an object and its 'value' have very little or nothing to do with one another. 'Value' is entirely subjective economic value, anyway while 'price' reflects whatever a buyer is willing to give up to get the object in question, and whatever the seller is willing to accept to give it up. Both are governed by the Law of Marginal Utility, which is actually a law of psychology, rather than economics. For government to attempt to dictate a 'fair price' betrays complete misunderstanding of the entire process. — L. Neil Smith

You're not going to win by automatically going out there. It's hard to know what people really expect of you, and I've never tried to live up to expectations anyway. That's no way to play baseball. — Greg Maddux

He would have died soon, but more painfully. Anyway, it was Urban Bloodshed Limitation. First rule: limit bloodshed by making sure that none of your own gets spilled. — Margaret Atwood

What are children anyway? Midget drunks. They greet you in the morning by kneeing you in the face and talking gibberish. They can't even walk straight. — Dylan Moran

We are not grand because we are at the top of the food chain or because we can alter our environment - the environment will outlast us with its unfathomable forces and unyielding powers. But rather than be bound and defeated by our insignificance, we are bold because we exercise our will anyway, despite the ephemeral and delicate presence we have in this desert, on this planet, in this universe. — Aron Ralston

I don't like going out on a date unless I know the broad a little bit beforehand. By the way, 'broad' to me is not a detrimental term for women; it's simply another word for female. Anyway, I don't really go out a whole lot, because there aren't many girls I like to take out and spend a whole evening with - at least not an evening in public. — Joe Namath

I gotta say, by the way our day is going I really don't want to go inside."
Sam says as he turns off the ignition anyway.
"Dammit."
He opens the door and slams it behind him. — Amy Lunderman

There's still another problem which puzzles a lot of people - whether or not a baby will come within the budget. Our sentimental advice is to have one anyway, if you want one and have been through the marriage ceremony. The people who wait till they can afford a baby seldom have one at all except by surprise. — Marjorie Hillis

If someone loved you -someone decent and kind that is- you had a responsibility not to trample all over her heart. And while he had no intention of hurting Emma, he knew that he could injure her just by not loving her back.
Of course, maybe, he did love her back.
But then again, maybe she didn't love him in the first place. She hadn't actually said as much. He couldn't very well love someone back if she didn't love him first.
He could, however, love her first.
And that meant that he was going to have to convince her to love him back.
But the question was moot anyway because he hadn't yet decided to love her.
Or had he? — Julia Quinn

Now see the nasturtiums. The leaves are like tiny green parasols blown inside-out and the flowers are terrifically garish. In every village we pass through, see how they are everywhere, how they fill every gap in every wall, every crack in every path.
The nasturtiums have it figured out, how survival's just a matter of filling in the gaps between sun up and sun down. Boiling kettles, peeling potatoes, laundering towels, buying milk, changing light-bulbs, rooting wet mats of pubic hair out of the shower's plughole. This is the way people survive, by filling one hole at a time for the flightiest of temporary gratifications, over and over and over, until the season's out and they die off anyway, wither back into the wall or path, into their dark crevasse. This is the way life's eaten away, expended by the onerous effort of living itself. — Sara Baume

I find something repulsive about the idea of vicarious redemption. I would not throw my numberless sins onto a scapegoat and expect them to pass from me; we rightly sneer at the barbaric societies that practice this unpleasantness in its literal form. There's no moral value in the vicarious gesture anyway. As Thomas Paine pointed out, you may if you wish take on a another man's debt, or even to take his place in prison. That would be self-sacrificing. But you may not assume his actual crimes as if they were your own; for one thing you did not commit them and might have died rather than do so; for another this impossible action would rob him of individual responsibility. So the whole apparatus of absolution and forgiveness strikes me as positively immoral, while the concept of revealed truth degrades the concept of free intelligence by purportedly relieving us of the hard task of working out the ethical principles for ourselves. — Christopher Hitchens

Killing oneself is, anyway, a misnomer. We don't kill ourselves. We are simply defeated by the long, hard struggle to stay alive. When somebody dies after a long illness, people are apt to say, with a note of approval, "He fought so hard." And they are inclined to think, about a suicide, that no fight was involved, that somebody simply gave up. This is quite wrong. — Sally Brampton

The humble woman is surprised by all the good that she sees around her rather than scandalized by what she cannot judge anyway. The humble woman is grateful for her successes but not disheartened by her failures. She enjoys her gifts and readily admits her mistakes. She maintains a sense of humor, whether the news from Wall Street is giddy or glum. She faces her character defects without getting discouraged. Her humble confidence in God's love and her enchantment with the kabod Yahweh shape a hedge of thorns against self-absorption and frees her for an unselfconscious presence to others. — Brennan Manning

They biggest man with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest man with the smallest mind-think big anyway. — John C. Maxwell

If, in all that you wish to do, you begin by asking yourself: am I certain that I would wish to do this an infinite number of times? This should be for you the most solid centre of gravity ... My doctrine says, the task is to live your life in such a way that you must wish to live it again - for you will anyway! If striving gives you the highest feeling, then strive! If rest gives you the highest feeling, then rest! If fitting in, following and obeying give you the highest feeling, then obey! Only make sure you come to know what gives you the highest feeling, and then spare no means. Eternity is at stake! This doctrine is mild in its treatment of those who do not believe in it. It has neither hell nor threats. But anyone who does not believe merely lives a fugitive life in the consciousness of it. — Friedrich Nietzsche

You probably have a client list a mile long. I shouldn't expect royal treatment." His mouth twitched. "Although I guess I do anyway." Cinder's heart tripped as his grin caught her by surprise, every bit as charming and unexpected as it had been at the market. — Marissa Meyer

I was surprised by how many people think of themselves as procrastinators, but, like me, seem to get a lot done anyway. — John Perry

Current government regulation interferes with honest voluntary exchanges by imposing arbitrary terms and requiring tons of paperwork disclosing information no one wants anyway. — John Stossel

If they shoot at you, shoot back. If it's one of my people, don't worry about blasting one by accident. Jayne would kill them anyway for endangering you. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I don't want to be swallowed by the darkness. Nor do I want to be blinded by the beautiful facade. No, I want to be part of a people who see the darkness, know it's real, and then, then, then, light a candle anyway. And hold that candle up against the wind and pass along our light wherever it's needed from our own homes to the halls of legislation to the church pulpit to the kitchens of the world. — Sarah Bessey

I can't find good people" becomes "I can't know who my A players are until I challenge them to find out." "Nobody cares as much as I do" becomes "I haven't figured out how they care in their own way that can harmonize with the way that I do." "I can't afford to invest time in someone who is just going to leave anyway" becomes "I don't have time to do anything else." "I'm not a therapist, I don't have the skills to help them with their personal problems" becomes "I'm not a therapist, but I am two steps ahead of this person as a professional and can help them grow by sharing the things I've learned along the way." "We just need better systems and more communication" becomes "We don't need more communication. We need to start speaking a different language." Imagine — Jonathan Raymond

A man has no business to be depressed by a disappointment, anyway; he ought to make up his mind to get even. — Mark Twain

He's comming to meet me on Sun. Cant wait!! ... Please God let him love me!! ... This could be it [followed by five happy faces] ... Hes going to publish my pictures Im so glad I didn't sleep with him either! ... I hate for men to want sex all the time. I hate sex anyway. (1992, diary entry as she prepares for a meeting with Paul Marciano, head of Guess.) — Anna Nicole Smith

You may be a good person, and some people will nonetheless still treat you terribly. We don't always get what we give, but that's fine, because you aren't giving it for them anyway, at least not exclusively. It's really all a statement by, about and for you. How you treat others is really about who you choose to be in this — Bryant McGill

And what does she mean by love, anyway? People use that word and mean all sorts of things by it. — Jude Morgan

He was regarded merely as an eccentric employee of indifferent merit, and his post of deputy chief clerk was the highest he would ever reach. Well aware of this, he made it a rule never to show any zeal, except in special circumstances. It is true that in these cases his zeal was clothed with a spirit of vengeance directed against the whole human race - this being his second favourite occupation. Petitbidois would have liked to hold the reins of power. This being beyond his sphere, he utilized the small driblets of authority which came his way for the purpose of casting ridicule upon established law and order, by making it act as a sort of unintelligent and, if possible, malicious Providence. 'The world is an idiot place anyway,' he would say, 'so why worry? Life is just a lottery. Let us leave the decision to chance. — Gabriel Chevallier

If I became lost in the multiverse, exploring infinite parallel dimensions, my only criterion for settling down somewhere would be whether or not I could find you: and once I did, I'd stay there even if it was a world ruled by giant spider-priests, or one where killer robots won the Civil War, or even a world where sandwiches were never invented, because you'd make it the best of all possible worlds anyway, and plus we could get rich off inventing sandwiches. — Tim Pratt

Katy, that the whole world can be involved in this madness we call war, and all the while the flowers and the bees and the seasons keep on doing what they must, wise but never weary in their wait for humanity to come to its senses and remember the beauty of life? It is queer, but my love and longing for the world are always deepened by my absence from it; it's wondrous, don't you think, that a person can swing from despair to gleeful hunger, and that even during these dark days there is happiness to be found in the smallest things?) Anyway, — Kate Morton

Pessimists try to convince you the world sucks, optimists already know it does and smile anyway. — Jonathan Harnisch

After that, all the while Millie was eating the pudding ... we both tore Christopher's character to shreds. It was wonderful fun ... He drove everyone mad in Chrestomanci Castle by insisting on silk shirts and exactly the right kind of pajamas. 'And he could get them right anyway by magic,' Millie told me, 'if he wasn't too lazy to learn how ... But the thing that really annoys me is the way he never bothers to learn a person's name. If a person isn't important to him, he always forgets their name.'
When Millie said this, I realized that Christopher had never once forgotten my name ... — Diana Wynne Jones

Advice to explorers everywhere: if you would like to recieve due credit for your discoveries, keep a detailed account of your journeys as Columbus did. On Septemeber 28, 1492, after four weeks at sea, he writes: Dear diary ... I means journal. Yes, dear journal. That's what I meant to say. Whew. Anyway, we have yet to discover America, and the crew has become increasingly rebellious. I have decided to turn back if we have not spotted it by Columbus Day. Will write again later if not killed by crew. P.S. Last night's buffet was fabulous, the ice sculptures magnificent. — Cuthbert Soup

If you dread tomorrow it's because you don't know how to build the present, and when you don't know how to build the present, you tell yourself you can deal with it tomorrow, and it's a lost cause anyway because tomorrow always ends up being today don't you see ... We have to live with the certainty that we'll get old and that it won't look nice or be good or feel happy. And tell ourselves that it's now that matters: to build something now at any price using all our strength. Always remember that there's a retirement home waiting somewhere and so we have to surpass ourselves every day, make every day undying. Climb our own personal Everest and do it in such a way that every step is a little bit of eternity. That's what the future is for: to build the present with real plans made by living people. — Muriel Barbery

How long have I been here? I haven't been able to tell day from night with eyes covered." [Vincent]
"Nor could you anyway, in here. There are no windows and the walls are so thick you cannot hear the church bells. It was built so that the one who prayed here would not be aware of the passage of time or the world outside. When we reach into the higher planes, we pass beyond time. Only the body is governed by time, but that too, I will change". [Sylvian] — Karen Maitland

I got dosed by you and
Closer than most to you and
What am I supposed to do
Take it away I never had it anyway — Red Hot Chili Peppers

In space there are no seasons, and this is as true of the ships that cross the distances between humanity's far-flung homes. But we measure our seasons anyway: by a smile, a silence, a song. — Yoon Ha Lee

Anyway ... she's asleep, turned away from me on her side. The usual stratagems and repositionings have failed to induce narcosis in me, so I decide to settle myself against the soft zigzag of her body. As I move and start to nestle my shin against a calf whose muscles are loosened by sleep, she sense what I'm doing, and without waking reaches up with her left hand and pulls the hair off her shoulders on the top of her head, leaving me her bare nape to nestle in. Each time she does this I feel a shudder of love at the exactness of this sleeping courtesy. My eyes prickle with tears, and I have to stop myself from waking her up to remind her of my love. At that moment, unconsciously, she's touched some secret fulcrum of my feelings for her. — Julian Barnes

Well, when you're being held at gunpoint by a geriatric madman in a metal skirt, you've kind of hit rock bottom anyway. It can't really get much worse. — Jonathan Stroud

He raises his glass, and I surprise myself by doing the same. Then he looks me square in the eye. There's a lot in that look. It's enticing, nerveracking. Like a roller coaster that you know is going to make your heart plummet down into your stomach, but it must be what you want, because you get on anyway. — Rebecca Serle

There is a history of gay people pretending to be straight. I want to balance the sides. I'm a straight person pretending to be gay. I've had a lot of people to imitate. It's easy when you're British; we're camp by nature, anyway. — Robbie Williams

Most of the members of the convent were old-fashioned Satanists, like their parents and grandparents before them. They'd been brought up to it, and weren't, when you got right down to it, particularly evil. Human beings mostly aren't. They just get carried away by new ideas, like dressing up in jackboots and shooting people, or dressing up in white sheets and lynching people, or dressing up in tie-dye jeans and playing guitars at people. Offer people a new creed with a costume and their hearts and minds will follow. Anyway, being brought up as a Satanist tended to take the edge off it. It was something you did on Saturday nights.
And the rest of the time you simply got on with life as best you could, just like everyone else. — Terry Pratchett

God is not good, or wise, or intelligent anyway that we know. So, people like Maimonides in the Jewish tradition, Eboncina in the Muslim tradition, Thomas Aquinas in the Christian tradition, insisted that we couldn't even say that God existed because our concept of existence is far too limited and they would have been horrified by the ease with which we talk about God today. — Karen Armstrong

You start by allowing your own world to be corrupted by their warped values, and then you gradually start using their sadistic methods and eventually end up adopting bits of their sick ideology. And even then, when you have become just like them, they will eventually turn on you anyway. Normal people are savage beasts. — Frank Portman

Our practical faith in progress has ramified and hardened into an ideology
a secular religion which, like the religions that progress has challenged, is blind to certain flaws in its credentials. Progress, therefore, has become 'myth' in the anthropological sense. By this I do not mean a belief that is flimsy or untrue. Successful myths are powerful and often partly true. [ ... ] The myth of progress has sometimes served us well
those of us seated at the best tables, anyway
and may continue to do so. [ ... ] Progress has an internal logic that can lead beyond reason to catastrophe. (4-5) — Ronald Wright

There seem to be a lot of gay people there ... Oh please, as if that's what I meant by that. Trust me, none of them would ever want to fuck you anyway. They're gay, not blind. — Justin Halpern

And everyone drank too much coffee too, at the wrong times and for the wrong reasons. They drank it when they came in every morning to get going, and then again in the afternoon to keep going. They ran on caffeine fumes all day and never fucking got anywhere. Then they went home spent and empty and crashed in front of the TV every night and slept away the few hours they had for themselves. All these motherfuckers are always talking about the best ways to manage your time. The fact is any time spent at work not sleeping in the bathroom is wasted time, and it's hard to sleep when you're pumped full of caffeine. Everyone's awake for the wrong part of their lives. And by the weekend they're too exhausted from all the frantic, useless activity to even care, and it's only fucking two days off anyway. Nobody has the time or the energy to do what they really want, or to even figure out what that is. — Paul Neilan

We cannot see the universe. We are in the darkness of a trench, a deep cut, dark water heavier than earth, presences lit by our own blood, little biolumes, heroic and pathetic Promethei too afraid or weak to steal fire but able still to love. Gods are among us and they care nothing and are nothing like us.
This is how we are brave: we worship them anyway. — China Mieville

You know how long's the universe. It's seven million freeways side by side. You know how high. So high the moon just falls. But little punks, you still know the hardcore of the universe. It's cause you're hardcore too. You're made of pure universe, under your bones. And nothing ever starts shit by meaning to. We meant to break down the amerikan dream throwing bottles. All we broke was bottles. What worked was one stolen handful of flax seed. All ages shows in the highschool parkade, and the keys to the bandroom door. Their dream was a joke anyway. What worked was a nother joke. — Noah Wareness

Romeo came forward and grabbed me by the shoulders. "What the hell were you thinking?"
I stared at him blankly.
He blew out a frustrated breath. "You got in between me and a chair, Rimmel."
"He was going to hit you," I said, grim. "I wasn't just going to stand there. I won't let him hurt you."
"I'd rather him hurt me than you." His voice was gentle. Then he smirked. "That chair wouldn't have hurt me anyway. — Cambria Hebert

It's like irresistible poison: I'm mesmerized by the way it's making me feel though it has the potential to crush my soul and I drink it down anyway. — J.A. Redmerski

Never coming back here, she thought.
With a groan, she levered herself into a sitting position and discovered a painful crick in her neck. Never ever. She launched herself off the bed and limped over to the door and put here eye to the viewer, was treated to a fish-eye view of a small, dapper, well-dressed man holding a bunch of white roses.
Okay. Man with flowers. Carey looked around the room. The windows opened on short tethers so guests couldn't throw furniture or each other out into the street, and she was too high to jump anyway. She looked around the room again, looking for possible weapons. There was a rickety-looking chair by the desk in the corner, but it would probably fall to bits even before she hit anyone with it. She looked through the viewer. The little man knocked again. Not urgently, not in an official we-have-come-to-take-you-to-the-gulag kind of way, but in the manner of a gentleman visiting his lady friend with a nice bunch of roses. — Dave Hutchinson

I am surprised." She scanned the script rapidly. "Th-this is a p-pack of lies!" He looked worried. "Have you always had that little speech impediment?" he asked cautiously. "N-no, it's my souvenir from the Escobaran psych service, and the l-late war. Who came up with this g-garbage, anyway?" The line that particularly caught her eye referred to "the cowardly Admiral Vorkosigan and his pack of ruffians." "Vorkosigan's the bravest man I ever met." Gould took her firmly by the upper arm, and guided her to the shuttle hatch. "We have to go, now, to make the holovid timing. Maybe you can just leave that line out, all right? Now, smile. — Lois McMaster Bujold

It's a radical time for musicians, a really revolutionary time, and I believe revolutions like Napster are a lot more fun than cash, which by the way we don't have at major labels anyway, so we might as well get with it and get in the game. — Courtney Love

Humans! They lived in a world where the grass continued to be green and the sun rose every day and flowers regularly turned into fruit, and what impressed them? Weeping statues. And wine made out of water! A mere quantum-mechanistic tunnel effect, that'd happen anyway if you were prepared to wait zillions of years. As if the turning of sunlight into wine, by means of vines and grapes and time and enzymes, wasn't a thousand times more impressive and happened all the time ... — Terry Pratchett

Quit getting bent out of shape about changes to the privacy policy of this free service you voluntarily use. Judging by the last few photos you posted from spring break, you're not too concerned with privacy anyway. — Tyler Stanton

That poem you like, how does it end?"
He knows how it ends. He's looked it up by now, that's why he asks.
But I answer him anyway.
"'We have lingered in the chambers of the sea, by sea-girls wreathed
with seaweed red and brown, till human voices wake us, and we drown.'"
Eliot shakes his head. "It does not need the last three words. The last
three words are wrong."
I laugh at his correcting a Nobel prize-winning poet, but I agree. I
know what drowning feels like. It doesn't need water. And human voices,
if they say the right things, can save you.
"Eliot, do you have a pen I can borrow?"
I can feel him smiling in the dark, and we watch the sea caress the
sand.
"That man in the poem, Mr. Prufrock, he was a coward, wasn't he?"
Eliot says.
My answer to his question is the same as his answer to mine. — Ray Cluley

What can you say about a guy who lets himself be saddled with a baby when he's thirty-five and losing his hair? Love? Forget about that till you're past seventy, and by then the parts will have stopped working anyway. — Gunter Grass

If ghosts had heads, my walls would be covered with mounted ghost heads. Okay, that sounds pretty scary and kind of gross, but anyway, I could handle a little late-night fright by myself. I — J.L. Bryan

Max had often heard Laundromats were a good place to meet women. He wasn't sure why, since he wasn't one to speak to strangers while folding his underwear, so he didn't imagine women would be any more comfortable doing so. But he'd tried it anyway, using a comforter that didn't fit in his washing machine as an excuse to spend time in the town's only Laundromat.
After spending ninety minutes listening to the life story of a man who was newly divorced, Max had decided the rumor of Laundromats being a good place to meet women was probably started by a Laundromat owner. — Shannon Stacey

When I'm talking to people, I find myself quoting the three organizing rules of Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter was initiated by three young women, and too few people know that. But, anyway, the first one is lead with love. The second is low ego, high impact. The third is move with the speed of trust. I must say those make me feel very hopeful for the future. — Gloria Steinem

No mistaking his accent. He was English. And rich, judging by his threads. Double-breasted coat. Fisherman-style, but the kind you saw on runways, not gangways. He was weaving in place and reeked of alcohol.
That sealed it for me. I hauled off and punched him.
He fell gracefully. Knee, hip, shoulder. Like some part of him had decided,What the heck. I'm passing out tonight anyway. Might as well get started now. — Veronica Rossi

People stopping you in the street, though, is very different from being hounded by the press, which is the kind of attention that celebrities get, and I'm probably too old for that kind of thing to happen anyway. I think it happens more when you're dating all sorts of different very handsome actors or something. They want gossip and scandal, and they know they're not going to get it from me because I'm too old to be scandalous. Of course, they could read the book - although it's not really a scandalous book. — Grace Coddington