Bogard Quotes & Sayings

My feeling is that an observer needs to see four hundred and fifty stars to get that feeling of infinitude, and be swept away ... and I didn't make that number up arbitrarily, that's the number of stars that are available once you get dimmer than third magnitude. So in the city, you see a dozen stars, a handful, and it's attractive to no one. And if there's a hundred stars in the sky it still doesn't do it. There's a certain tipping point where people will look and there will be that planetarium view. And now you're touching that ancient core, whether it's collective memories or genetic memories, or something else form way back before we were even human ... astronomer Bob Berman quoted in The End of Night — Paul Bogard

Of one thing be certain: if a CEO is enthused about a particularly foolish acquisition, both his internal staff and his outside advisors will come up with whatever projections are needed to justify his stance. Only in fairy tales are emperors told that they are naked. — Warren Buffett

When I was a kid I got no respect. I told my mother, I'm gonna run away from home. She said, On your mark ... — Rodney Dangerfield

When I lie back and close my eyes, this farthest lip of beach right next to the end of the ocean feels like being up close to an enormous breathing being, the bass drum surf thump reverberating through the sand. Living out here with no lights, alone, you would indeed become sensitive to seasons, rhythms, weather, sounds- right up next to the sea, right up under the sky, like lying close to a lover's skin to hear blood and breath and heartbeat. — Paul Bogard

It is awkward to see a director on the screen. — Shekhar Kapur

The world belongs to the energetic. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Four simple chambers.
A thousand complicated doors.
One of them is yours. — Jill Alexander Essbaum

Twenty-six," you said, before I could ask you.Everyone was gathered around, or anyway they were around us, swirling like loud, bad surf. The crowd was low in the mix, a few yelps, a few catcalls."Twenty-six," you said again, to the crowd, and took a step toward me.
"Don't," I said, though I couldn't decide.
"Twenty-six," you said. "One for each day we've been together, Min."Somebody oohed. Somebody shushed them.
"And I hope that someday I'll do another something stupid and I'll have to say it a million times because that's how long it'll be, together with you, Min. With you. — Daniel Handler

All mystics speak the same language, for they come from the same country. — Louis Claude De Saint-Martin

Fermi turned to Bohr with weary eyes and a slanted smile, and shrugged. "So we thought we had discovered new elements. We even named them - hesperium, ausonium. Wrong! Mythical! They were ordinary old barium and iodine. We were careful - too careful. — Gregory Benford

Doubts about the fundamentals of the gospel exist in certain churches, I am told, to a large extent. My dear friends, where there is a warm-hearted church, you do not hear of them. I never
saw a fly light on a red-hot plate. — Charles Spurgeon

You are a writer when you can't not write. — Denise Pattiz Bogard

With my naked eye, on nights the moon climbs slowly, sometimes so dusted with rust and rose, brown, and gold tones that it nearly drips earth colors and seems intimately braided with Earth, it feels close, part of this world, a friend. But through the telescope, the moon seems- ironically- farther away ... the gray-white moon in a sea of black, its surface in crisp relief, brighter than ever before. I am struck too, by the scene's absolute silence. — Paul Bogard

Before you choose whom to love, take a look at yourself, choose your own word, think about how and reassess your time when you have given life to love, Know your ready or not and make sure you are not there to hurt making regrets on your door and paint the word I wish on your window. — Auliq Ice

In these countless stars, in their clusters and colors and constellations, in the "shooting" showers of blazing dust and ice, we have always found beauty. And in this beauty, the overwhelming size of the universe has seemed less ominous, earth's own beauty more incredible. If indeed the numbers and distances of the night sky are so large that they become nearly meaningless, then let us find the meaning under our feet. — Paul Bogard

To speak of sparing anything because it is beautiful is to waste one's breath and incur ridicule in the bargain. The aesthetic sense- the power to enjoy through the eye, and the ear, and the imagination- is just as important a factor in the scheme of human happiness as the corporeal sense of eating and drinking; but there has never been a time when the world would admit it. — John Van Dyke

This is trash state U.S.A. — Tim Dorsey

It's about knowing that in certain moments you have to offer yourself up as a minor sacrifice to help them accomplish what they need to accomplish. Letting them abuse you, on the other hand, would be a terrible disservice. I know it seems like a fine line, but it's a real one, and it can be done. — Patrick Lencioni

It was a happy cemetery. The — Harper Lee

At least when it comes to light pollution what happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas. — Paul Bogard

These are maybe the most exciting stars, those just above where sky meets land and ocean, because we so seldom see them, blocked as they usually are by atmosphere ... and, as I grow more and more accustomed to the dark, I realize that what I thought were still clouds straight overhead aren't clearing and aren't going to clear, because these are clouds of stars, the Milky Way come to join me. There's the primal recognition, my soul saying, yes, I remember. — Paul Bogard