Quotes & Sayings About How Were All The Same

The interesting thing, in the photograph, was how the fragile little knock-kneed boy - smiling sweetly, pristine in his sailor suit - was also the old man who'd clasped my hand while he was dying: two separate frames, superimposed upon each other, of the same soul. And the painting, above his head, was the still point where it all hinged: dreams and signs, past and future, luck and fate. There wasn't a single meaning. There were many meanings. It was a riddle expanding out and out and out. — Donna Tartt

Not every girl has a bad-boy problem. Some of my friends get into relationships constantly. Others cheat all the time, or run away. Some get jealous. Some think they are too undateable to even try. Our dating pool is a circus of fuckups, misfits, and past mistakes that we keep on making. The brand of baggage you're carrying on your back is the issue. But most of all, I think we fear the same thing. I think that thing is love. Real love. Think of your first love. Think of how Bambi-like you were, prancing around all excited and in love with everything. Then think of how that happiness was beaten to death with a hatchet, spit on, shit on, leaving you cold. If you watch something you care about get destroyed, you're not going to want to go back to that place, no matter how pleasant it ever was. — Alida Nugent

I'd seen how the top-performing girls at Laurinda were cultivated like hothouse strawberries - bright and lush. Out in the real world, they would bruise. I wanted to see how the Cabinet would cope in two years' time, when they would be in the same classes as my most driven and hard-working Christ Our Saviour friends, and the most tenacious and gifted public school students, the hardy banksias and olive trees and root vegetables that would last all through winter. — Alice Pung

Sometimes he remembered having heard how soldiers under fire in the trenches, and having nothing to do, try hard to find some occupation the more easily to bear the danger. It seemed to Pierre that all men were like those soldiers, seeking refuge from life: some in ambition, some in cards, some in framing laws, some in women, some in playthings, some in horses, some in politics, some in sport, some in wine, and some in government service. 'Nothing is without consequence, and nothing is important: it's all the same in the end. The thing to do is to save myself from it all as best I can,' thought Pierre. Not to see IT, that terrible IT. — Leo Tolstoy

...The same folks who believe this fantasy also believe that the sole motivation for modern man's practice of science is to disprove their beliefs. How despicably arrogant of them to circumvent their burden of proof! It is plainly there for all to see that science wishes to discover and prove the answers to the very same questions that religion claims to already have answers for, whether or not they disprove former assumptions by our ancestors. The religionists should be happy that that their claims might have the chance to be proven wrong, but instead they would rather fear them disproven. I don't know about you, but I smell a guilty conscience. If they were one-hundred percent certain that their claims were of truth, they wouldn't need "faith" in them, nor would they have to dread possible invalidation. — John M. Penkal

I feel good with my husband: I like his warmth and his bigness and his being-there and his making and his jokes and stories and what he reads and how he likes fishing and walks and pigs and foxes and little animals and is honest and not vain or fame-crazy and how he shows his gladness for what I cook him and joy for when I make him something, a poem or a cake, and how he is troubled when I am unhappy and wants to do anything so I can fight out my soul-battles and grow up with courage and a philosophical ease. I love his good smell and his body that fits with mine as if they were made in the same body-shop to do just that. What is only pieces, doled out here and there to this boy and that boy, that made me like pieces of them, is all jammed together in my husband. So I don't want to look around any more: I don't need to look around for anything. — Sylvia Plath

I rested my forehead against the wall and closed my eyes. It wasn't just my curiosity, or my fascination with anatomy, or how I could unhesitatingly chop a rabbit's head off with an ax when a roomful of boys couldn't. Those things were all symptoms of the same sickness - a kind of madness inherited from my father. It was a dangerous pull in my gut drawing me toward the dark possibilities of science, toward the thin line between life and death, toward the animal impulses hidden behind a corset and a smile. — Megan Shepherd

We were smothered in advice. We were told the food to take, otherwise we would starve; what lines of communications to leave open; secret methods of getting our stuff out. And the hardest thing in the world to explain was that all we wanted to do was to report what Russian people were like, and what they wore, and how they acted, what the farmers talked about, and what they were doing about rebuilding the destroyed parts of their country. This was the hardest thing in the world to explain. We found that thousands of people were suffering from acute Moscowitis - a state which permits the belief of any absurdity and the shoving away of any facts. Eventually, of course, we found that the Russians are suffering from Washingtonitis, the same disease. We discovered that just as we are growing horns and tails on the Russians, so the Russians are growing horns and tails on us. — John Steinbeck

The upscale neighborhoods in Blue Sky Hill weren't all lily white anymore, but you could be sure their kids didn't wear our kind of clothes, or get free lunches at the Summer Kitchen, or pick up used books and magazines down at the Book Basket store, or go to the public school. These days it wasn't about what color you were, but how much money you had. The same, only different. It was still people not wanting to be with people who weren't their kind. — Lisa Wingate

He felt as though his brain were on fire. She had come to him, what joy! And then, how she had looked at him! She seemed more beautiful than ever before. Beautiful with a beauty that combined all of the woman with all of the angel, a beauty that would have made Petrarch sing and Dante kneel. He felt as though he were swimming in the deep blue sky. At the same time he was horribly disconcerted, because there was dust on his boots. — Victor Hugo

They were nearly to Annie's by now, and they made the rest of the trip in silence, Peter frowning out at the road with a look of deep concentration. Emma didn't blame him; after all, she'd insulted his entire system of beliefs. But how were you every supposed to get anywhere if you always stuck to the same route? He spent so much time charting out the world that he barely had a chance to get lost in it. — Jennifer E. Smith

Gradually the events of the preceding night crept with silent, blood-stained feet into his brain and reconstructed themselves there with terrible distinctness. He winced at the memory of all that he had suffered, and for a moment the same curious feeling of loathing for Basil Hallward that had made him kill him as he sat in the chair came back to him, and he grew cold with passion. The dead man was still sitting there, too, and in the sunlight now. How horrible that was! Such hideous things were for the darkness, not for the day. — Oscar Wilde

A critical faculty is a terrible thing. When I was eleven there were no bad films, just films I didn't want to see, there was no bad food, just Brussels sprouts and cabbage, and there were no bad books - everything I read was great. Then suddenly, I woke up in the morning and all that had changed. How could my sister not hear that David Cassidy was not in the same class as Black Sabbath? Why on EARTH would my English teacher think that 'The History of Mr Polly' was better than 'Ten Little Indians' by Agatha Christie? And from that moment on, enjoyment has been a much more elusive quality. — Nick Hornby

Presently Arnaud folded the paper napkin, in the same careful way he always folded a table napkin, and said I ought to follow Chantal's suggestion and get a job in teaching a nursery school. (So Maman had mentioned that to Mme. Pons, too) I should teach until I had enough working time behind me to claim a pension. It would be good for me in my old age to have an income of my own. Anything could happen. He could be killed in a train crash or called up for a war. My father could easily be ruined in a lawsuit and die covered with debts. There were advantages to teaching, such as long holidays and reduced train fares.
"How long would it take?" I said. "Before I could stop teaching and get my pension."
"Thirty-five years," said Arnaud. "I'll ask my mother. She had no training, either, but she taught private classes. All you need is a decent background and some recommendations. — Mavis Gallant

Exactly what she was doing - tears leaked from the corners of her eyes and wove crooked paths down her cheeks. How could she have been so insensitive to her own sister? Chapter 24 All week Cassie had worked feverishly to put Steve out of her mind, but it hadn't worked. She couldn't wait to see him, and a week had never dragged on for so long. Nothing felt the same without him at the construction site, running the project. Saturday morning, Cassie was up early. The Hoedown was being held in an airport hangar, and a lot of work had to be done in order to get the space ready. Several other volunteers arrived to work off their hours by putting up long folding tables and chairs, placing red-and-white checkered plastic tablecloths across the tables, and then setting the tables, lining each place setting up perfectly. To the front of the hangar was a mechanical bull quartered off with stacks of hay. In the middle of the room were tables displaying — Debbie Macomber

Being an adult, it seemed, was horrible. But being a child was awful too, and moving from one state to the other only meant you were moving closer to death, with so much and so little to talk about all at the same time, and how was that even possible? — Alison Espach

I remember lying on the beach that afternoon, looking at Audrey while trying at the same time not to look because I knew if she caught me she'd turn away. I remember wondering if I had been that way with my own mother once, always distant, always trying to disappear, always dismissing her, she who had held me in her womb and squeezed me out. How ungrateful we all once were, we daughters who become mothers only to learn how it feels, the endless cycle of rejection. I remember thinking about my mother that day, wishing I could tell her how sorry I was. — Laurie Foos

In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true ... Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness. — Hannah Arendt

to be grave without affectation: to observe carefully the several dispositions of my friends, not to be offended with idiots, nor unseasonably to set upon those that are carried with the vulgar opinions, with the theorems, and tenets of philosophers: his conversation being an example how a man might accommodate himself to all men and companies; so that though his company were sweeter and more pleasing than any flatterer's cogging and fawning; yet was it at the same time most respected and reverenced: — Marcus Aurelius

I thought back to Europe, where this journey began, then to Berkeley and even Madison, where the plans were first hatched. I thought about how the road led through Amsterdam, Paris and Greece, how for Guy and Sarah it continued through Central Asia, and how for me it detoured through East Africa. I thought about how many people had started off on this same journey, and how few had made it this far. I thought about how, of all the possible destinations this was the farthest outpost, the most remote spot of all - Kathmandu was the end of the road. — Terry Tarnoff

Let's say that the God the Christians pray to is real. He actually exists. But this God is the same as the one that the Jews pray to and the same as the one that the Muslims pray to and whatever other religions are praying to a God, He is the one. One God with many faces. Most of these religions contain the myth of the Anti-Christ, a being who will come one day and lead the world astray, lead the world to a place of sin and evil. Who could this Anti-Christ be ... Consider the God with many faces. How many wars have been fought in His Name? How many people have been beaten, jailed, and maimed to prove His points. Think of the Inquisition, the Holocaust, Salem, and the Sudan. All of these tragedies carried out in His name. Why is it accepted that He is a force for good? If we were to look for the Anti-Christ just by his accomplishments, wouldn't we clearly suspect the being who is the cause of so much woe? — S.T. Rogers

The Prayer of Examine produces within us the priceless grace of self-knowledge. I wish I could adequately explain to you how great a grace this truly is. Unfortunately, contemporary men and women simply do not value self-knowledge in the same way that all preceding generations have. For us technocratic knowledge reigns supreme. Even when we pursue self-knowledge, we all too often reduce it to a hedonistic search for personal peace and prosperity. How poor we are! Even the pagan philosophers were wiser than this generation. They knew that an unexamined life was not worth living. — Richard J. Foster

Pareto explained how every elite is overthrown by a jealous minority which stirs the masses by denouncing the abuses of the establishment and finally replaces it. Elites, as he said, circulate. Naturally, their names and the rationalizations of their privileges change. But it is important to note also that each elite inspires a new socio-political mythology by which the new situation is interpreted for the occasion. Yet the same leitmotiv runs through all these self-glorifications: "where would the people be if it were not for our services? — Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen

The world had seen the same thing happen many times before. After it happened in Nazi Germany, all the big, powerful countries swore, "Never again!" But here we were, six harmless females huddled in darkness, marked for execution because we were born Tutsi. How had history managed to repeat itself? How had this evil managed to surface once again? Why had the devil been allowed to walk among us unchallenged, poisoning hearts and minds until it was too late? — Immaculee Ilibagiza

None were left now to unname, and yet how close I felt to them when I saw one of them swim or fly or trot or crawl across my way or over my skin, or stalk me in the night, or go along beside me for a while in the day. They seemed far closer than when their names had stood between myself and them like a clear barrier: so close that my fear of them and their fear of me became one same fear. And the attraction that many of us felt, the desire to feel or rub or caress one another's scales or skin or feathers or fur, taste one another's blood or flesh, keep one another warm, that attraction was now all one with the fear, and the hunter could not be told from the hunted, nor the eater from the food. — Ursula K. Le Guin

How Adewen stuffed her braid in her mouth at that! Or she'd cover her mirth with her hands and shake till you'd think that the fit was upon her. She did the same too when she wept so you'd never be sure which she hid with her hands, her tears or her cackling. I think there were times she herself didn't know, nor does anyone know at times. Laugh till you weep. Weep till there's nothing left but to laugh at your weeping. In the end it's all one. — Frederick Buechner

The battle for control of science went on. Many administrations and Congresses hadn't wanted technology or the environment assessed at all, as far as Anna could see. It might get in the way of business. They didn't want to know. For Anna there could be no greater intellectual crime. It was incomprehensible to her: they didn't want to know. And yet they did want to call the shots. To Anna this was clearly crazy. Even Joe's logic was stronger. How could such people exist, what could they be thinking? On what basis did they build such an incoherent mix of desires, to want to stay ignorant and to be powerful as well? Were these two parts of the same insanity? — Kim Stanley Robinson

I've written about the giving of trust as though it were a simple formula for building loyalty. But it isn't simple at all. The talent that is an essential ingredient of leadership tells the leader whom to trust and how much to trust and when to trust. The rule is (as with children) that trust be given slightly in advance of demonstrated trustworthiness. But not too much in advance. You have to have an unerring sense of how much the person is ready for. Setting people up for failure doesn't make them loyal to you; you have to set them up for success. Each time you give trust in advance of demonstrated performance, you flirt with danger. If you're risk-averse, you won't do it. And that's a shame, because the most effective way to gain the trust and loyalty of those beneath you is to give the same in equal measure. — Tom DeMarco

The second glimpse came through Squirrel Nutkin; through it only, though I loved all the Beatrix Potter books. But the rest of them were merely entertaining; it administered the shock, it was a trouble. It troubled me with what I can only describe as the Idea of Autumn. It sounds fantastic to say that one can be enamored of a season, but that is something like what happened; and, as before, the experience was one of intense desire. And one went back to the book, not to gratify the desire (that was impossible - how can one possess Autumn?) but to reawake it. And in this experience also there was the same surprise and the same sense of incalculable importance. It was something quite different from ordinary life and even from ordinary pleasure; something, as they would now say, "in another dimension." The — C.S. Lewis

Come to represent for all of us, I thought of all my friends from one end of the country to the other and how they were really all in the same vast backyard doing something so frantic and rushing-about. — Jack Kerouac

The forest has been growing for hundreds of years. Each time a child is born, a tree is planted. You could see from his tree how old a person was. The tall and thick tree trunks, which gave the most shade, belonged to people who had already returned to the spirit world. But the trees of the living and the dead stood in the same grove, sought their nourishment from the same soil and the same rain. They stood there waiting for the children that were not yet born, the trees that had not yet been planted. In that way the forest would grow, and the age of the village would be visible for all time. No one could tell from a tree whether someone was dead, only that he had been born. — Henning Mankell

Herein lay the rub. The Americans, like all Western armies, defined "winning" as killing the enemy and securing control over the battlefield. Their opponents in previous conflicts had generally accepted the same definition. Not so the Moros. What was important to them was the struggle and how one conducted oneself, personally and as a people, not necessarily a measurable outcome. They knew from the beginning they were no match for American firepower. It was a one-sided contest, what today is termed "asymmetric warfare," but so what? Their measure was how well one did against the odds, the more overwhelmingly they were against one, the greater the glory. And being that life is transitory anyway, what mattered most was how much courage was shown and how well did one die. The Americans and the Moros were using different score cards for the same game. To the Moros, it was they who had "won. — Robert A. Fulton

Once you create and dominate a niche market, then you should gradually expand into related and slightly broader markets. Amazon shows how it can be done. Jeff Bezos's founding vision was to dominate all of online retail, but he very deliberately started with books. There were millions of books to catalog, but they all had roughly the same shape, they were easy to ship, and some of the most rarely sold books - those least profitable for any retail store to keep in stock - also drew the most enthusiastic customers. Amazon became the dominant solution for anyone located far from a bookstore or seeking something unusual. Amazon then had two options: expand the number of people who read books, or expand to adjacent markets. They chose the latter, starting with the most similar markets: CDs, videos, and software. Amazon continued to add categories gradually until it had become the world's general store. The name itself brilliantly encapsulated the company's scaling strategy. — Peter Thiel

All my adult life I've felt drawn to ask long-married couples how they were able to stay together. All of them said the same thing: We worked hard at it. — Randy Pausch

This revolution was a legend in the making. The kind of tale that sprawled out long before me and far beyond my reach. The sort of epic that was told over and over to explain how the world was never the same after this handful of people lived and fought and won or died trying. And after it happened, the story seemed somehow inevitable. Like the world was waiting to be changed, needing to be saved, and the players in the tale were all plucked out of their lives and moved into places exactly where they needed to be, like pieces on a board, just to make this story come true. But it was wilder and more terrifying and intoxicating, and more uncertain, than I'd ever thought. And I could be part of it. If I wanted to. It was getting way too late to rip myself out of this story now, or to rip it out of me. "Where — Alwyn Hamilton

Yeah, it stings. But at least I feel something. Something besides hungry. Something besides afraid. Weird. I always thought cutters were sick. Sicker than me, even. But with a single swipe I understand why they do it. Why they like it, even though they hate it. I let the water run over the cut, ratchet it hotter, watch the blood slow, stutter, almost halt. I like the way the exposed flesh looks, all pinkish white. It looks new, although I know that isn't right. It's the same age as my skin, as my bones. Me. It's been there with me since the beginning. Been with me through thick. Thin. Daddy. Suddenly, I don't like how it looks at all. — Ellen Hopkins

We often want our enemies' next step to be repentance because we want them to admit what they did to hurt us or how they are wrong. But there may be other steps they need to take first. Jesus accepted the people who were unacceptable and made it clear He wants us to do that too. Not many people ever get condemned into life change. But people get loved into life change all the time. It is God's kindness that leads us to repentance (Rom. 2:4), and He empowers us to extend that same kindness to others. — Todd Stevens

You're a hopeless romantic," said Faber. "It would be funny if it were not serious. It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books. The same things could be in the 'parlor families' today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios, and televisors, but are not. No,no it's not books at all you're looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type or receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us. Of course you couldn't know this, of course you still can't understand what I mean when i say all this. You are intuitively right, that's what counts. — Ray Bradbury

I suddenly felt that it was all the same to me whether the world existed or whether there had never been anything at all: I began to feel with all my being that there was nothing existing. At first I fancied that many things had existed in the past, but afterwards I guessed that there never had been anything in the past either, but that it had only seemed so for some reason. Little by little I guessed that there would be nothing in the future either. Then I left off being angry with people and almost ceased to notice them. Indeed this showed itself even in the pettiest trifles: I used, for instance, to knock against people in the street. And not so much from being lost in thought: what had I to think about? I had almost given up thinking by that time; nothing mattered to me. If at least I had solved my problems! Oh, I had not settled one of them, and how many there were! But I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Johnny Jewel is how people were maybe two hundred years ago. Back then, when people got up in the morning, they knew what they had to do to get through the day - there were 100% less decisions. Nowadays, we have to decide what we want to buy in grocery stores, what job to take, what work to do. But not Johnny. For him, it's all right there - it's a freer state, and that's what my music is looking for ... To understand Johnny, you should think of William Blake. He was the same kinda guy. — Tom Verlaine

I've never had tastes of people my own age. All of my friends when I was 15 were in their 40s. I'm not actually mature, just very self-conscious around people my own age because I feel like I'm supposed to act the same way they act and I don't know how. — Jesse Eisenberg

When the main crowd of worshipers reached the short bridge spanning the pond, the ragged sound of honky-tonk music assailed them. A barrelhouse blues was being shouted over the stamping of feet on a wooden floor. Miss Grace, the good-time woman, had her usual Saturday-night customers. The big white house blazed with lights and noise. The people inside had forsaken their own distress for a little while. Passing near the din, the godly people dropped their heads and conversation ceased. Reality began its tedious crawl back into their reasoning. After all, they were needy and hungry and despised and dispossessed, and sinners the world over were in the driver's seat. How long, merciful Father? How long? A stranger to the music could not have made a distinction between the songs sung a few minutes before and those being danced to in the gay house by the railroad tracks. All asked the same questions. How long, oh God? How long? — Maya Angelou

How strange it is. We have these deep terrible lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep and real. Shouldn't they paralyze us? How is it we can survive them, at least for a little while? We drive a car, we teach a class. How is it no one sees how deeply afraid we were, last night, this morning? Is it something we all hide from each other, by mutual consent? Or do we share the same secret without knowing it? Wear the same disguise? — Don DeLillo

Many days later another caravan was passing and a man saw something on top of the highest dune there. And when they went up to see, they found Outka, Mimouna and Aicha; they were still there, lying the same way as when they had gone to sleep. And all three of the glasses,' he held up his own little tea glass, 'were full of sand. That was how they had their tea in the Sahara. — Paul Bowles

And so went the rest of our conversation, with me having to constantly stop and explain what I'd just said. Each time, Dorian had some gentry equivalent for whatever I described. Some were more far-fetched than others, like when he said he was certain gorging on cake all day would achieve the same results as a blood-sugar test. He also had a very complicated explanation about how balancing a chicken in a tree was a well-established gentry method of determining gender. I was almost certain he knew there was no real equivalent to half the things I told him about and that he was making most of this up on the spot. He was simply trying to entertain me with the outlandish. — Richelle Mead

Nin knew how much humans loved money, riches, and material things - though he never really could understand why. The more technologically advanced the human species got, the more isolated they seemed to become, at the same time. It was alarming, how humans could spend entire lifetimes engaged in all kinds of activities, without getting any closer to knowing who they really were, inside. — Jess C. Scott

And how could I be sure that other people were not doing the same - playing the game to be accepted but suspecting all the time that they were different? — Graeme Simsion

There's a Greek legend - no, it's in something Plato wrote - about how true lovers are really two halves of the same person. It says that people wander around searching for their other half, and when they find him or her, they are finally whole and perfect. The thing that gets me is that the story says that originally all people were really pairs of people, joined back to back, and that some of the pairs were man and man, some woman and woman, and others man and woman. What happened was that all of these double people went to war with the gods, and the gods, to punish them, split them all in two. That's why some lovers are heterosexual and some are homosexual, female and female, or male and male. — Nancy Garden

There was a time I stopped talking, just like you. My reasons were a little bit different, but... I think the feelings of being ashamed of myself and hating myself... are the same. Here it says "to like yourself." What does that mean? Good things---how are you supposed to find them? I only know things that I hate about myself. Because that's all I know: I hate myself. Even if your force yourself to find good things... it feels so empty. It doesn't work that way. People like your teacher just don't get it.
I think... when you hear someone say they like you for the first time... then you can begin to like yourself. I think when someone accepts you for the first time... you feel like you can forgive yourself a little. You can begin to face your fears.

~Yuki — Natsuki Takaya

We got talking about how some people were selfish and some weren't, and the difference between right-wing people and left-wing people. You said it all came down to imagination. Conversative people don't usually have very much, so they find it hard to imagine what life is like for people who aren't just like them. They can only empathise with people just like they are: the same sex, the same age, the same class, the same golf club or nation or race or whatever. Liberals can pretty much empathise with anybody else, no matter how different they are. It's all to do with imagination, empathy and imagination are almost the same thing, and it's why artists, creative people, are almost all liberals, left-leaning. a character in The Steep Approach to Garbadale: Iain Banks. — Iain Banks

No matter how much we have in common with someone, we will always have something that sets us apart; makes us different; unique. This is a good thing. Just think how boring the world would be if everyone were all the same! — Raven Williams

I think that every one whom you may ask how to write a play will reply, if he really can write one, that he doesn't know how it is done. It is a little as if you were to ask Romeo what he did to fall in love with Juliet and to make her love him; he would reply that he did not know, that it simply happened.
Well, my dear friend, if you want me to be quite frank, I'll own up that I don't know how to write a play. One day a long time ago, when I was scarcely out of school, I asked my father the same question. He answered: It's very simple; the first act clear, the last act short, and all the acts interesting. — Alexandre Dumas-fils

Sometime on a bright blue day
When everything is very clear
And there are no wrinkles in the sky
It's good to go to a quiet place
And lie down on your back and look at the world
Or put your face deep in the grass
And your arms around the ground
And remember how it was when you were little
And remember you're still the same you
Only you got bigger on the outside is all that happened. — Bobby Markels

On hearing the jingle of harness behind them, they turned. Melletin and Yelena were fast catching up, both grinning broadly.

"How did it go?" Ramil called.

"Would you believe it: he threatened to lock me up in his mother's house if I didn't behave!" exclaimed Yelena, sticking her tongue out at Melletin. "I threw a roll at him and he clipped me around the ear. The soldiers were all about to beat him up when I burst into tears and begged his forgiveness. We had a passionate reconciliation and went on our way with their good wishes for our marital harmony."

Melletin rubbed his lips. "Where's the next checkpoint, Yelena? I can't wait to do that again."

"Watch it, sir: I'll report you," Yelena threatened, but she looked very pleased all the same. — Julia Golding

I wrote every day throughout my twenties. For a while, I had a boyfriend who was a musician, and he practiced every day. He played scales; I wrote small fictional scenes. It was the same idea - to keep your hand in your craft, to stay close to it. On bad days, when I felt no inspiration at all, I would set the kitchen timer for thirty minutes and make myself sit there and scribble something, anything. I had read an interview with John Updike where he said that some of the best novels you've ever read were written in an hour a day; I figured I could always carve out at least thirty minutes somewhere to dedicate myself to my work, no matter what else was going on or how badly I believed the work was going. — Elizabeth Gilbert

You sure changed your tune mighty fast." Kane's hands were busily tugging his dress shirt from his slacks. His knuckles accidently brushed against Avery's throbbing hard-on causing him to screw his eyes shut as an all-consuming need coursed through his veins. He couldn't help but let out a groan as those same knuckles skated up and down his length again; this time, no doubt, with deliberate intent. Kane knew exactly how to push his buttons and bring his body to life. In a matter of seconds, his husband managed to get him out of his shirt, undo his pants, had his slacks pushed partway down his thighs, and had a hand down the front of his silk boxers. — Kindle Alexander

Oh, I was lucky, you know, to get anyone. I was what they called an old bride of twenty-six. Of course I married him. Everyone needs to keep something private from their family.
Like a shutter in a rainstorm, banging against the window, I venture forth, retreat back, try afresh, retreat again. Nothing changes in my life and yet nothing is the same.
That did not help, Ed knew as the words hung between them and he had that all-too-familiar sensation of wanting to claw them from the air and stuff them back in his mouth.
We were all in small pieces that didn't fit together, too many countries, too many scars, too many secrets inside us.
How do you make a stranger so intimate when they could easily destroy you? — Tracy Chevalier

Time was a dazzling lie, a magician worth a bird in his hat. The truth, I felt certain, was that everything happened at once. How old was I? I was every age at the same time. All the days of our lives were today. — Ramona Ausubel

She would not say of any one in the world that they were this or were that. She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, far out to the sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day. Not that she thought herself clever, or much out of the ordinary. How she had got through life on the few twigs of knowledge Fraulein Daniels gave them she could not think. She knew nothing; no language, no history; she scarcely read a book now, except memoirs in bed; and yet to her it was absolutely absorbing; all this; the cabs passing; and she would not say of Peter, she would not say of herself, I am this, I am that. — Virginia Woolf

He saw clearly how plain and simple - how narrow, even - it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one's existence. He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome. — Kenneth Grahame

Do you really like studying?"
Mattia nodded.
"Why?"
"It's the only thing I know how to do," he said shortly. He wanted to tell her that he liked studying because you can do it alone, because all the things you study are already dead, cold, and chewed over. He wanted to tell her that the pages of the schoolbooks were all the same temperature, that they left you time to choose, that they never hurt you and you couldn't hurt them either. But he said nothing. — Paolo Giordano

Easy come, easy go,
That's just how you live, oh,
Take, take, take it all,
But you never give.
Should've known you was trouble
From the first kiss,
Had your eyes wide open.
Why were they open?
Gave you all I had and you tossed it in the trash,
You tossed it in the trash, you did.
To give me all your love is all I ever asked, 'cause
What you don't understand is
I'd catch a grenade for ya
Throw my hand on a blade for ya
I'd jump in front of a train for ya
You know I'd do anything for ya
Oh, oh, I would go through all of this pain,
Take a bullet straight through my brain!
Yes, I would die for ya, baby,
But you won't do the same. — Bruno Mars

My friends, if there is one gift in my omniscience, it's the knowledge I have of just how much good is out there. When I'm disappointed in my children near and far who hurt others, I am reminded of the many souls who do not hurt others. I see a smack across the face in one part of the planet at the same time as I see a thousand hugs and kisses somewhere else. Love is everywhere. And if all the forces of good were stacked up against all the forces of evil, it would be a most unfair fight. Good would always win. My dears, good will always win. — Sean Patrick Brennan

So I have absolutely no privacy anymore? None? Because the four of you had to check scores with each other?" His frustration was clear.
"You know, for someone concerned with honesty, you ought to be grateful."
He stopped and stared. "I beg your pardon?"
"Everything is out in the open now. We all have a pretty good idea of where we stand, and I, for one, am thankful."
He rolled his eyes. "Thankful?" "If you had told me that Celeste and I were at about the same point with you physically, I would never have tried to come on to you like I did last night. Do you know how humiliated I was?" He scoffed and started pacing again. "Please, America, you've said and done so many foolish things, I'm surprised you can even be embarrassed anymore. — Kiera Cass

He had looked at Jude, then, and had felt that same sensation he sometimes did when he thought, really thought of Jude and what his life had been: a sadness, he might have called it, but it wasn't a pitying sadness; it was a larger sadness, one that seemed to encompass all the poor striving people, the billions he didn't know, all living their lives, a sadness that mingled with a wonder and awe at how hard humans everywhere tried to live, even when their days were so very difficult, even when their circumstances were so wretched. Life is so sad, he would think in those moments. It's so sad, and yet we all do it. — Hanya Yanagihara

telling him how people had thought the same thing long before he and his brother were born, that it was the hubris of each generation to think this anew, to think that their time was special, that all things would come to an end with them. His father said it was hope that made people feel this, not dread. People talked of the end coming with barely concealed smiles. Their prayer was that when they went, they wouldn't go alone. Their hope was that no one would have the good fortune to come after and live a happy life without them. Thoughts — Hugh Howey

What's happened now, in this new era of settlements and nonprosecutions, is that the state has formally surrendered to its own excuses. It has decided just to punt from the start and take the money, which doesn't become really wrong until it turns around the next day and decides to double down on the less-defended, flooring it all the way to trial against a welfare mom or some joker who sold a brick of dope in the projects. Repeat the same process a few million times, and that's how the jails in America get the population they have. Even if every single person they sent to jail were guilty, the system would still be an epic fail - it's the jurisprudential version of Pravda, where the facts in the paper might have all been true on any given day, but the lie was all in what was not said. — Matt Taibbi

But to be a parent is to live in the past-present-future all at once. It is to hug your children and be intensely aware of how much smaller they felt last year ... even as you wonder how much bigger they will feel the next. It is to be a time-shifter, to marvel at the budding of their intellect, their verbal dexterity, their sense of humor ... at the same time rewinding and fast-forwarding ... to when they were younger, to when they'll be older. It is to experience longing for the here and now, which I know sounds flaky - sort of like complaining about being homesick when you're already home - but can happen, trust me, when you live in multiple time zones all at once. — Youngme Moon

Yet, for my part, I was never usually squeamish; I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary. I am glad to have drunk water so long, for the same reason that I prefer the natural sky to an opium-eater's heaven. I would fain keep sober always; and there are infinite degrees of drunkenness. I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea! Ah, how low I fail when I am tempted by them! Even music may be intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy England and America. Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes? — Henry David Thoreau

If it were possible for any nation to fathom another people's bitter experience through a book, how much easier its future fate would become and how many calamities and mistakes it could avoid. But it is very difficult. There always is this fallacious belief: 'It would not be the same here; here such things are impossible.'

Alas, all the evil of the twentieth century is possible everywhere on earth. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Borrowing other people's culture and adopting other people's way of life does destroy nation's self-respect which is the greatest asset a true citizen can enjoy more than food and clothes, more than all amenities and more than military glory. You can adopt a system of government and a way of life, but can you adopt the past history, travail and tradition out of which that system of government and a way of life were evolved? Can we adopt King Charles, King John, Magna Carta and civil wars and Cromwell as our own? They can always say "We evolved a system and a way of life", but we must always sing in refrain, "We borrowed them". Adopting a culture is not the same as adopting the use of a gadget. It is like tying other peoples' mangoes to your tree, while plucking and throwing away your own. How absurd! — Manasa Rao

There is a line somewhere in Wozzeck that translates out to, roughly, 'The world is awful.' Yes, I said to myself as I shot across the Bay Bridge not giving a fuck how fast I drove, that sums it up. That is high art: 'The world is awful.' That says it all. This is what we pay composers and painters and the great writers to do: tell us this; from figuring this out, they earn a living. What a masterful, incisive insight. What penetrating intelligence. A rat in a drain ditch could tell you the same thing, were it able to talk. If rats could talk, I'd do anything they said. — Philip K. Dick

But I'm afraid it can't be done."
"Certainly not; it can't be done," repeated the Humbug.
"Why not?" asked Milo.
"Why not indeed?" exclaimed the bug, who seemed equally at home on either side of an argument.
"Much too difficult," replied the king.
"Of course," emphasized the bug, "much too difficult."
"You could if you really wanted to," insisted Milo.
"By all means, if you really wanted to, you could," the Humbug agreed.
"How?" asked Azaz, glaring at the bug.
"How?" inquired Milo, looking the same way.
"A simple task," began the Humbug, suddenly wishing he were somewhere else, "for a brave lad with a stout heart, a steadfast dog, and a serviceable small automobile. — Norton Juster

I always prayed the same way at night: "Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Please bless my mother, father, sister, everyone in the word, and me. And please make my father quit drinking."
As a child growing up in a family battling alcoholism, this is what I know: Something bad is coming; it always does. I can't ask for help; I'm too ashamed. I can't talk about our secrets; no one understands. I can't trust anyone; they always leave.
Questions bounced off my self-constructed wall of values
a barricade I'd made from the fears I'd pushed into my darkness.
How could Ryan, a professional baseball player, really resist all those women? How could I really trust Jerry, my childhood friend? I'd barely awakened to sex and already boys were the seventh wonder of the world. Did anyone really trust another person? I needed proof. That proof hadn't revealed itself ... yet. — Pamela Taeuffer

I'm not skilled enough to explain properly how we feel. Not only me, but I'm sure Tony and Tim and Pop feel the same way. Last year was a tough one for all of us. We felt like we had the trophy, that we were touching it, and it slipped away. We all felt guilty. We got to this spot, and we didn't let it go. — Manu Ginobili

... the worshipers here are not likely to kill one another, they all offer the same sacrifice, and how the fat spits and the carcasses sizzle as God in the sublime heavens inhales the odors of all this carnage with satisfaction. Jesus pressed his lamb to his breast, unable to fathom why God could not be appeased with a cup of milk poured over His altar, that sap of life which passes from one being to another, or with a handful of wheat, the basic substance of immortal bread. Soon he will have to part with the old man's generous gift, his for such a short time, the poor little lamb will not live to see the sun set this day, it is time to mount the stairs of the Temple, to deliver it to the knife and sacrificial fire, as if it were no longer worthy of existence or being punished ... — Jose Saramago

Vegetables cooked for salads should always be on the crisp side, like those trays of zucchini and slender green beans and cauliflowerets in every trattoria in Venice, in the days when the Italians could eat correctly. You used to choose the things you wanted: there were tiny potatoes in their skins, remember, and artichokes boiled in olive oil, as big as your thumb, and much tenderer ... and then the waiter would throw them all into an ugly white bowl and splash a little oil and vinegar over them, and you would have a salad as fresh and tonic to your several senses as La Primavera. It can still be done, although never in the same typhoidic and enraptured air. You can still find little fresh vegetables, and still know how to cook them until they are not quite done, and chill them, and eat them in a bowl. — Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

And above all, what a strange attitude that actually is, when we no longer find Christian service worthwhile if the denarius of salvation may be obtained even without it! It seems as if we want to be rewarded, not just with our own salvation, but most especially with other people's damnation - just like the workers hired in the first hour. That is very human, but the Lord's parable is particularly meant to make us quite aware of how profoundly un-Christian it is at the same time. Anyone who looks on the loss of salvation for others as the condition, as it were, on which he serves Christ will in the end only be able to turn away grumbling, because THAT kind of reward is contrary to the loving-kindness of God.
-What It Means To Be A Christian — Pope Benedict XVI

The differences were plain enough, and yet I saw that they were as nothing compared with what we had in common. As I lay in bed at night, the sky outside my window reflecting the city's dim glow, I thought about Abuelita's fierce loyalty to blood. But what really binds people as family? The way they shore themselves up with stories; the way siblings can feud bitterly but still come through for each other; how an untimely death, a child gone before a parent, shakes the very foundations; how the weaker ones, the ones with invisible wounds, are sheltered; how a constant din is medicine against loneliness; and how celebrating the same occasions year after year steels us to the changes they herald. And always food at the center of it all. — Sonia Sotomayor

The food surpluses produced by peasants, coupled with new transportation technology, eventually enabled more and more people to cram together first into large villages, then into towns, and finally into cities, all of them joined together by new kingdoms and commercial networks. Yet in order to take advantage of these new opportunities, food surpluses and improved transportation were not enough. The mere fact that one can feed a thousand people in the same town or a million people in the same kingdom does not guarantee that they can agree how to divide the land and water, how to settle disputes and conflicts, and how to act in times of drought or war. And if no agreement can be reached, strife spreads, even if the storehouses are bulging. It was not food shortages that caused most of history's wars and revolutions. The — Yuval Noah Harari

They were children and that's how children are - neither she nor the boy had been in the wrong, and that gave her a sense of relief, made her feel better; she hadn't betrayed the first opportunity that life had presented her with. We all do the same thing: it's part of the initiation of every human being in search of his or her other half; these things happen — Paulo Coelho

The woods were deserted that day.
The stones stood still and silent, as though they were waiting for something. At the center of them all, a jagged piece of amber glowed in the growing darkness. Lights fizzed softly around it, turning pink, orange, purple, blue.
No one saw it. No one ever did. Why would they? No one knoew about its magic, not anymore. They had forgotten all about such magic a long, long time ago. About the same time they stopped believing in faries.
How foolish. — Liz Kessler

Just imagine how boring life would be if we were all the same. My idea of a perfect world is one in which we really appreciated each other's differences: Short, tall; Democrat, Republican; black, white; gay, straight-a world in which all of us are equal, but definitely not the same. — Barbra Streisand

I began to suprise Achilles, calling out to these men as we walked through the camp. I was always gratified at how they would raise a hand in return, point to a scar that had healed over well.
After they were gone, Achilles would shake his head. 'I don't know how you remember them all. I swear they look the same to me.'
I would laugh and point them out again. 'That's Sthenelus, Diomedes' charioteer. And that's Podarces, whose brother was the first to die, remember?'
'There are too many of them,' he said. 'It's simpler if they just remember me. — Madeline Miller

Lying in bed, half-covered by the blankets, I would drowsily ask why he had come to my door that night long ago. It had become a ritual for us, as it does for all lovers: where, when, why? remember ... I understand even old people rehearse their private religion of how they first loved, most guarded of secrets. And he would answer, sleep blurring his words, "Because I had to." The question and the answer were always the same. Why? Because I had to. — Margaret George

Why are there such long words in the world, Miss?' enquires Sophie, when the mineralogy lesson is over.
'One long difficult word is the same as a whole sentence full of short easy ones, Sophie,' says Sugar. 'It saves time and paper.' Seeing that the child is unconvinced, she adds, 'If books were written in such a way that every person, no matter how young, could understand everything in them, they would be enormously long books. Would you wish to read a book that was a thousand pages long, Sophie?'
Sophie answers without hesitation.
'I would read a thousand million pages, Miss, if all the words were words I could understand. — Michel Faber

I was thinking about how I had struggled and strained for years, as Karen had, and toward things that were disastrous for me. And maybe that was unavoidable. The pilgrims and the lost often did look the same, as Denys had once told me. And it was possible everyone ended up in the same place no matter which path we took or how often we fell to our knees, undoubtedly wiser for all of it. — Paula McLain

Not surprisingly, the father if market efficiency, Gene Farma, has a very clever way to avoid the pitfalls of hyperbolic discounting. When he's invited to talk or engage in sone business activity, he has a . simple rule for deciding whether to accept: no matter how far in the future it's scheduled, he ask himself whether it's something he would want to do if the event were next week; if the answer is yes, he accepts, otherwise, he politely declines. This simple rule of thumb ensures that he uses the same discount rate across all decision horizons. — Andrew W. Lo

How can I explain to her that I just can't come home? It's too soon, it's too late; I do want to be with Helen every second of the day but at the same time I don't want to be with her at all. I want to have back what I felt at the beginning. I could no more leave her then than leave my arms or legs.
How do you find the beginning, though? There are no roads or signs. You start to doubt it even exists. The hardest thing isn't deciding that I want to go back to when Helen and Gracie and I were us. The most difficult thing is finding the map to get there. — Cath Crowley

Because Ragen is kind hearted and strong at the same time, and I know how rare that kind of man is. Because I never doubted that he loved me, and would come back. But most of all, because the moments I had with him were worth all the ones apart. — Peter V. Brett

Moon, O Moon, how wondrous are you among God's many works! You shine with majesty and brilliance, a thousand times more brightly than the brightest star! You were created on the same day as the sun. You give light just as the sun gives light. But your light, O Moon, is even more important than the light of the sun. The sun is nearly superfluous, for it lights the daytime when we hardly need it. By day, the world is bright and we can already see clearly all that surrounds us. The wonder of your light, O Moon, comes by night when it is dark so that you are a lamp for our feet and a beacon for our eyes. Moon, O Moon, how wondrous you are! — Seymour Rossel

Raskolnikov saw in part why Sonia could not bring herself to read to him and the more he saw this, the more roughly
and irritably he insisted on her doing so. He understood only too well how painful it was for her to betray and unveil all
that was her own. He understood that these feelings really were her secret treasure, which she had kept perhaps for
years, perhaps from childhood, while she lived with an unhappy father and distracted step mother crazed by grief, in the midst of starving children and unseemly abuse and reproaches. But at the same time he knew now and knew for
certain that, although it filled her with dread and suffering, yet she had a tormenting desire to read and to read to him that he might hear it, and to read now whatever might come of it! ... He read this in her eyes, he could see it in her intense emotion. She mastered herself, controlled the spasm in her throat and went on reading the eleventh chapter of St.
John. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

what still more shocking outrages were perpetrated upon his mind! with all his noble powers and sublime aspirations, how like a brute was he treated, even by those professing to have the same mind in them that was in Christ Jesus! to what dreadful liabilities was he continually subjected! — Frederick Douglass

My dear fellow citizens: For forty years you have heard from my predecessors on this day different variations of the same theme: how our country flourished, how many millions of tons of steel we produced, how happy we all were, how we trusted our government, and what bright perspectives were unfolding in front of us. I assume you did not propose me for this office so that I, too, would lie to you. — Vaclav Havel

Eventually my mother suffered a complete breakdown, and the court orders were finally signed. They took her to the State Mental Hospital at Kalamazoo. My mother remained in the same hospital at Kalamazoo for about 26 years.
My last visit, when I knew I would never come to see her again-there-was in 1952. I was twenty-seven. My brother Philbert had told me that on his last visit, she had recognized him somewhat. "In spots" he said.
But she didn't recognize me at all.
She stared at me. She didn't know who I was.
Her mind, when I tried to talk, to reach her, was somewhere else. I asked, "Mama, do you know what day it is?"
She said, staring, "All the people have gone."
I can't describe how I felt. The woman who had brought me into the world, and nursed me, and advised me, and chastised me, and loved me, didn't know me.
It was as if I was trying to walk up the side of a hill of feathers."
-Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X — Malcolm X

The things you were talking about. The lights and the flowers. Do they expect those things to make them romantic, not the other way around?"
"Darling, what do you mean?"
"There wasn't a person there who enjoyed it," she said, her voice lifeless, "or who thought or felt anything at all. They moved about, and they said the same dull things they say anywhere. I suppose they thought the lights would make it brilliant."
"Darling, you take everything too seriously. One is not supposed to be intellectual at a ball. One is simply supposed to be gay."
"How? By being stupid? — Ayn Rand

[ ... ] there is one inexorable law of technology, and it is this: when revolutionary inventions become widely accessible, they cease to be accessible. Technology is inherently democratic, because it promises the same services to all; but it works only if the rich are alone using it. When the poor also adopt technology, it stops working. A train used to take two hours to go from A to B; then the motor car arrived, which could cover the same distance in one hour. For this reason cars were very expensive. But as soon as the masses could afford to buy them, the roads became jammed, and the trains started to move faster. Consider how absurd it is for the authorities constantly to urge people to use public transport, in the age of the automobile; but with public transport, by consenting not to belong to the elite, you get where you're going before members of the elite do. — Umberto Eco

All those stories about time travel, they were comforting, and at the same time it bothered me how they always made it seem fun and how everything fit into place, how things could only ever be how they were supposed to be, how the heroes found a way to change the world while still obeying the laws of physics. — Charles Yu

We really wanted to know all the unknowable things about each other and how we were the same and how we were different, if we even were, maybe nobody is. — Miranda July

I mean the things that we have and that we think are so solid - they're like smoke, and time is like the sky that the smoke disappears into. You know how wreath of smoke goes up from a chimney, and seems all thick and black and busy against the sky, as if it were going to do such important things and last forever, and you see it getting thinner and thinner - and then, in such a little while, it isn't there at all; nothing is left but the sky, and the sky keeps on being just the same forever. — Booth Tarkington