Instruction Manual Quotes & Sayings

In any ten step instruction manual and every book of doctrines, there is complex advice that serves the very simple function of helping the lonely person find some similarity with the world around him.
He connects and, suddenly, there is a burst of joy, a ray of hope. He believes that it was those steps or that book, specifically, that brought him happiness, when really he has simply been triggered into his natural state. — Vironika Tugaleva

Let me say that whoever invented wanting, whoever came up with desire, whoever had the first one and let us all catch it like a hot-pink plague, I would like to tell that person that it wasn't fair of him or her to unleash such a thing upon the world without leaving us a warranty or at the very least an instruction manual about how to manage, how to live with, how to understand this thing that can happen in a person against her will, by which I mean desire and the need it gnaws in us and the shadow it leaves when it's gone. — Catherine Lacey

Failure is an instruction manual written in scar tissue. — Chuck Wendig

Girls are complicated. The instruction manual that comes with girls is 800 pages, with chapters 14, 19, 26 and 32 missing, and it's badly translated, hard to figure out. — Hugh Laurie

The act of true reading is in its very essence democratic. Consider the nature of what happens when we read a book - and I mean, of course, a work of literature, not an instruction manual or a textbook - in private, unsupervised, un-spied-on, alone. It isn't like a lecture: it's like a conversation. There's a back-and-forthness about it. The book proposes, the reader questions, the book responds, the reader considers. We bring our own preconceptions and expectations, our own intellectual qualities, and our limitations, too, our own previous experiences of reading, our own temperament, our own hopes and fears, our own personality to the encounter. — Philip Pullman

Chronically awkward people can feel like everyone else received a secret instruction manual at birth titled "How to be Socially Competent." For the awkward person, this dreamy manual would provide easy-to-understand, step-by-step instructions on how to gracefully navigate social life, avoid embarrassing faux pas, and rid oneself of the persistent anxiety that comes with being awkward. — Ty Tashiro

Life doesn't come with an instruction manual. — Scott Westerfeld

Where's your instruction manual?" I asked him. "What's the baby
customer-service number? — Lisa Kleypas

But we lost so much in the Prettytime - all the foundations were gone. So we're stuck making it up as we go along!"
Tally laughed. "So what else is new, Frizz? Life doesn't come with an instruction manual. So don't tell me that humanity being logic-missing is my fault. — Scott Westerfeld

The lower bunks, both of us longing to be pinned. "You kids think you invented sex," my mother was fond of saying. But hadn't we? With no instruction manual or federally enforced training period, didn't we all come away feeling we'd discovered something unspeakably modern? — David Sedaris

I imported the first Mac into England in 1984; you know, the beige box. I imported what I think were the first four that came into England. I never opened the instruction manual. That was the best thing about it. — James Dyson

Aristotle wrote the 'Poetics' 2,400 years ago. It's really an instruction manual for aspiring filmmakers. It's as valid today as it was then. — Nicholas Jarecki

No one ever gave me an instruction manual on how to be an openly gay man. — Jameson Currier

A home cook who relies too much on a recipe is sort of like a pilot who reads the plane's instruction manual while flying. — Alton Brown

We're hardly idiots, Linzi. I think we can manage without an instruction manual." - Trissk from Hunter's Edge (After the Fall series) — Gayla Drummond

There's not an instruction manual on how to deal with success, so you just have to rely on having great friends and a good team. — Bryan Adams

Men are always complaining about how difficult it is to understand women but I think it is the other way round. Men clan up and do not express what they feel. Then they suddenly stop all communication with you and vanish. All you can do is wait. I wish men came with instruction manual. — Preeti Shenoy

If there were a Jessica Chase instruction manual, it would be written backwards in Arabic Pig Latin and twelve thousand pages long with random pages missing. — Olivia Cunning

The central paradox of the machines that have made our lives so much brighter, quicker, longer and healthier is that they cannot teach us how to make the best use of them; the information revolution came without an instruction manual. — Pico Iyer

The last thing this world needs is another self-help or feel-good faith book, seven simple steps to whatever. Just the thought makes my stomach turn. The truth is that life is far too complex to be put in a box, labeled, and have the appropriate manual attached. I wonder, have these people who seem to have all the answers ever really experienced hardship or grief, true joy, or adventure? Have they ever really lived? For those of us who venture outside the cookie cutter lives that many settle for, a superficial, plastic faith with the corresponding instruction booklet will do nothing. When we take the brave step from the comfortable mainstream into the unknown, we quickly discover that we are all just travelers on a journey trying to find our way. — Erik Mirandette

YOU KNOW HOW WHEN you're a senior in high school, and you officially know absolutely everything about everything and no one can tell you different, but on the other hand, at the same time, you're dumber than a poorly translated instruction manual for a spoon? — Andrew Smith

When a device as simple as a door has to come with an instruction manual - even a one-word manual - then it is a failure, poorly designed. — Donald A. Norman

Everything from airplanes to kitchen blenders and even chopsticks comes with an instruction manual. Children, despite all their complexity, do not. — Lawrence Kutner

How many people can pick up a book and find an instruction manual for their life? — Michael Lewis

A large part of academic community is unthinkingly self-involved, producing reams of sterile writing - often consuming unbelievable amounts of public funds - and serving as an instruction manual for how to chase away readers and ignore historical insights. — Gotz Aly

I meditate because evolution gave me a big brain, but it didn't come with an instruction manual. I meditate because life is too short and sitting slows it down. I meditate because life is too long and I need an occasional breakI meditate because it's such a relief to spend time ignoring myselfI meditate because I'm building myself a bigger and better perspective, and occasionally I need to add a new window. — Wes Nisker

I knew of no instruction manual for reaching a higher level of humanity and a greater wisdom. But I felt intuitively that laughter was the beginning of wisdom, as is was indispensable for survival. — Ingrid Betancourt

Some readers read a book as if it were an instruction manual, expecting to understand everything first time, but of course when you write, you put into every sentence an overflow of meaning, and you create in every sentence as many resonances and double meanings and ambiguities as you can possibly pack in there, so that people can read it again and get something new each time. — Hilary Mantel

Sticking to the Bible at every turn, like it's an owner's manual or book of instruction, as the way to know God misses what Paul and the rest of the New Testament writers show us again and again: the words on the page of the Bible don't drive the story, Jesus does. Jesus is bigger than the Bible. For — Peter Enns

Despite the third word of the title, this is not an instruction manual that will tell you anything useful about how to be happy. Those books are located in the self-help section two aisles over, and once you've bought one, done everything it says to do, and found yourself miserable anyway, you can always come back here to understand why. — Daniel M. Gilbert

In the aftermath of their visions, Petit and Rice could not have imagined all that would be required of them. Neither Petit's dream of crossing the towers nor Rice's of fighting for justice came with an instruction manual. To accomplish their feats they'd have to overcome fear, test their plans against reality and maintain an unwavering focus on what their visions had revealed to them about their future selves. — Camille Sweeney

I don't suppose there's a Georgina Kincaid Instruction Manual around somewhere to help me avoid these embarrassing blunders in the future."
"We sell them downstairs."
"Oh yeah? Is there a page on how to woo the fair Georgina?"
"Page? Hell, there's a whole chapter."
"Required reading, I'd imagine."
"Definitely. — Richelle Mead

Literature is not an instruction manual. — Charles Baxter

You feel as if everybody has been given an instruction manual on how to be likable, but you didn't get it. And they are all sold out now. And if you are what you eat, then you must have surely spent the last few years of your life eating dog food and cat shit. Because when you look in the mirror, it is all that you see. — Heather O'Neill

Once you get into cosmological shit like this, you got to throw away the instruction manual — Stephen King

Empowered Women 101: Everyone wants to be a princess, but you weren't the first princess in his life. They scrubbed his floors, washed his workout clothes, picked up his dirty socks and dealt with his issues. Always remember that history leaves a pattern of what to expect. A real woman knows that the bible is a motivator, but the real instruction manual is observing the last woman's struggle. — Shannon L. Alder

Kids don't come with an instruction manual. So if you're gonna make mistakes, at least make them your own way. — Steve Schirripa

Why can't relationships come with an instruction manual for unsophisticated adults like me? — Maria Grazia Swan

I refilled the wineglass and took it with me for a nice long bubble bath, where I settled in with Ambrose's guide for low-voltage outdoor lighting.
It wasn't thrilling bubble-bath reading material, but I was impressed by his imagination. You wouldn't know from the writing that he'd never actually seen a low-voltage lighting system in someone's yard, much less installed one himself. His descriptions were clear, colorful, and written with authority. The inscription wasn't bad either: To Natalie, You're a high-voltage system as far as I am concerned. — Lee Goldberg

We don't know what we can achieve because no instruction manual accompanies our birth — Asoka Nimal Jinadasa

A screenplay is really an instruction manual, and it can be interpreted in any number of ways. The casting, the choice of location, the costumes and make-up, the actors' reading of a line or emphasis of a word, the choice of lens and the pace of the cutting - these are all part of the translation. — David Nicholls