They Said That Quotes & Sayings

Which he said was the big lie they all bought that made doctors and standard therapy such a waste of time for people like us
they thought that diagnosis was the same as cure. That if you knew why, it would stop. Which is bullshit. You only stop if you stop. — David Foster Wallace

to." In an attempt to stop gipsies setting up camps on the Green Belt, ministers have already announced plans to force travellers to prove that they are actually "travelling". The new measures say that travellers have to prove they have a "nomadic" lifestyle to qualify for help in the planning system. Experts said that this — Anonymous

The attachment to parental figures I am trying to describe here is an attachment to parents who have inflicted injury on their children. It is an attachment that prevents us from helping ourselves. The unfulfilled natural needs of the child are later transferred to therapists, partners, or our own children. We cannot believe that those needs were really ignored, or possibly even trampled on by our parents in such a way that we were forced to repress them. We hope that the other people we relate to will finally give us what we have been looking for, understand, support, and respect us, and relieve us of the difficult decisions life brings with it. As these expectations are fostered by the denial of childhood reality, we cannot give them up. As I said earlier, they cannot be relinquished by an act of will. But they will disappear in time if we are determined to face up to our own truth. This is not easy. It is almost always painful. But it is possible. In — Alice Miller

The Robin and the Sparrow"
Said the robin to the sparrow,
"I should really like to know,
Why these anxious human beings
Rush about and worry so."
Said the sparrow to the robin,
"Friend I think that it must be,
That they have no Heavenly Father,
Such as cares for you and me. — Elizabeth Cheney

Max had said two things to Jean during their good-byes. First, that one had to gaze upon the dead, cremate them and bury their ashes--and then begin to tell their story. "Remain silent about the dead, and they'll never leave you in peace. — Nina George

It is a mistake," he said, " to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort. We know that well enough from our experience in the environmental crisis of the twentieth century. Once it was well known that cigarettes increased the incidence of lung cancer, the obvious remedy was to stop smoking, but the desired remedy was a cigarette that did not cause cancer. When it became clear that the internal-combustion engine was polluting the atmosphere dangerously, the obvious remedy was to abandon such engines, and the desired remedy was to develop non-polluting engines. — Isaac Asimov

Eddis looked around as if recalling a question that had nagged at her for several hours. "Where's Eugenides?" she asked.
For a moment the Attolian queen was immobile, her smile gone as if it had never been. The horse under her threw up its head as if the bit had twitched against its delicate mouth.
"Locked in a room," Attolia said flatly. "In Ephrata."
The smile faded from Eddis' face.
"I ordered the other prisoners released," Attolia explained. "I forgot that I had him locked up separately. I doubt my sensechal will have released him without my specific instruction to do so."
"You forgot?" Eddis asked.
"I forgot," Attolia said firmly, daring Eddis to contradict her.
"You will marry him?" Eddis asked, hesitant again.
"I said I would," snapped Attolia, and turned her horse away. Eddis followed. When they joined their officers, Attolia gave brisk orders and then rode on, heading back toward Ephrata without waiting for Eddis. — Megan Whalen Turner

It was Tottenham at home. I thought: 'Please don't go on about Tottenham, we all know what Tottenham are about. They are nice and tidy but we'll f****** do them.' Alex came in and said: 'Lads, it's only Tottenham.' And that was it! Brilliant! — Roy Keane

When the bureaucratic details were handled, they broke up. Del, Shrake, and Jenkins followed him back to his office, where they talked some more about the surveillance aspects. A tech would put a tracking bug on Carver's vehicle, and Del would try to get one on Dannon's, if he could do it without being seen. "The big question is: Is he gonna talk, or is he gonna stonewall, or is he gonna shoot, or is he gonna run?" Jenkins said. "That's four questions," Shrake said. "It irritates me that you can't count. — John Sandford

We've been told by the people on the other side who don't like the campus sexual assault movement that these are all "he-said, she-said" cases. Quite rightly, they say campus procedures are often very flawed, the investigation methods are not that good, and we aren't sure what we can trust. [Opponents say that] it seems like a lot to call somebody a rapist if they haven't gone to a criminal trial. — Michele Landis Dauber

Dictionopolis is the place where all the words in the world come from. They're grown right here in our orchards."
"I didn't know that words grew on trees," said Milo timidly.
"Where did you think they grew?" shouted the earl irritably. A small crowd began to gather to see the little boy who didn't know that letters grew on trees.
"I didn't know they grew at all," admitted Milo even more timidly. Several people shook their heads sadly.
"Well, money doesn't grow on trees, does it?" demanded the count.
"I've heard not," said Milo.
"Then something must. Why not words?" exclaimed the undersecretary triumphantly. The crowd cheered his display of logic and continued about its business. — Norton Juster

I hadn't seen any novel make the statement that entering the workforce was like entering the grave. That from then on, nothing happens and you have to pretend to be interested in your work. And, furthermore, that some people have a sex life and others don't just because some are more attractive than others. I wanted to acknowledge that if people don't have a sex life, it's not for some moral reason, it's just because they're ugly. Once you've said it,
it sounds obvious, but I wanted to say it. — Michel Houellebecq

Look, I've been doing this a long time. If I'm honest with you, then yes. The Families could have done both. The car thing is absolutely their style, like you said."

Luc frowned. "But you don't think they did it."

David shook his head. "No. Because you're alive. The Families wouldn't screw up twice." He left, closing the door behind him.

"If that was supposed to make me feel better," Curtis said, "it needed way more puppies. Or something from the chocolate family. — Nathan Burgoine

Let's look for dragons, I said to Pooh.
Yes, let's, said Pooh to Me.
We crossed the river and found a few
Yes, those are dragons all right, said Pooh.
As soon as I saw their beaks I knew.
That's what they are, said Pooh, said he.
That's what they are, said Pooh. — A.A. Milne

What most people want in a leader is something that's very difficult to find: we want someone who listens ... The secret, Reagan's secret, is to listen, to value what you hear, and then to make a decision even if it contradicts the very people you are listening to. Reagan impressed his advisers, his adversaries, and his voters by actively listening. People want to be sure you hear what they said - they're less focused on whether or not you do what they said. — Seth Godin

Why do the X-Men need another girl telepath?" she asked. "This one has purple hair." "It's all so sexist." Park's eyes got wide. Well, sort of wide. Sometimes she wondered if the shape of his eyes affected how he saw things. That was probably the most racist question of all time. "The X-Men aren't sexist," he said, shaking his head. "They're a metaphor for acceptance; they've sworn to protect a world that hates and fears them." "Yeah," she said, "but - " "There's no but," he said, laughing. "But," Eleanor insisted, "the girls are all so stereotypically girly and passive. Half of them just think really hard. Like that's their superpower, thinking. And Shadowcat's power is even worse - she disappears. — Rainbow Rowell

In justice to human society it may perhaps be said of almost all the polities and civil institutions in the world, however imperfect, that they have been founded in and carried on with very considerable wisdom. — Ezra Stiles

And the fact is that what Cortez said actually has the ring of truth. Not that kind of girl. But neither was Peter Zell that kind of guy. Nobody is the kind of person they used to be. — Ben H. Winters

I missed you."
There was a pause. Then Tariq turned to her with a half-grinning, half-grimacing look of distaste. "What's the matter with you?"
How many times had she, Hasina, and Giti said those same three words to each other, Laila wondered, said it without hesitation, after only two or three days of not seeing each other? I missed you, Hasina. Oh, I missed you too. In Tariq's grimace, Laila learned that boys differed from girls in this regard. They didn't make a show of friendship. They felt no urge, no need, for this sort of talk. Laila imagined it had been this way for her brothers too. Boys, Laila came to see, treated friendship the way they treated the sun: its existence undisputed; its radiance best enjoyed, not beheld directly.
"I was trying to annoy you," she said.
He gave her a sidelong glance. "It worked."
But she thought his grimace softened. And she thought that maybe the sunburn on his cheeks deepened momentarily. — Khaled Hosseini

Hyacinth, who wept before sleep, had wept that night; he had wept too - had wept in joy and pain, and in joy at his pain. When tears were done and their heads rested on one pillow, she had said that no man had ever wept with her before. Two floors below them, their reflected images knelt in the fishpond at Thelxiepeia's feet, subsistent but invisible. There she would weep for him longer than they lived. He lowered his naked body into a rising pool, warm and scarcely less romantic. Ermine — Gene Wolfe

I found myself with a wife and kids, and some of my friends weren't around as much. They weren't calling as much, and I didn't quite know what it was. Someone said, "Yeah, I recently lost one of my closest friends. He got his finger stuck in a wedding ring." And I thought, "Oh, that's what's happening! We're all going off and making our own families." — Scott Foley

Don't look so worried. I've sailed the seven seas, and I've never had an unsuccessful adventure yet!"
"Really? You've sailed all seven seas?" asked Darwin admiringly.
"Every last one!"
"What are the seven seas? I've always wondered."
"Aaarrr. Well, let's see ... " said the Pirate Captain, scratching his craggy forehead. "There's the North Sea. And that other one, the one near Mozambique. And ... what's that one in Hyde Park?"
"The Serpentine?"
"That's the one. How many's that then? Three. Um. There's the sea with all the rocks in it ... I think they call it Sea Number Four. Then that would leave ... uh ... Grumpy and Sneezy ... "
Darwin was starting to look a little less impressed.
"Would you look at that big seagull!" said the Pirate Captain, quickly ducking into a beach hut. — Gideon Defoe

Sam Harris made that great analogy. He said, 'If someone was talking into their hair dryer and claiming that they were speaking to God, they would call Bellevue. But, take away the hair dryer, it's just praying.' — Bill Maher

My dear boy," said Lord Henry, smiling, "anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there. That is the reason why people who live out of town are so absolutely uncivilized. Civilization is not, by any means, an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which men can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt. Country people have no opportunity of being either, so they stagnate. — Oscar Wilde

I don't mind crack," I said. "I like crack as much as the next man. But it's not doing a thing for my nerves, and I already have a splitting headache - I say, I don't suppose those heroin dealers carry Anadin or acetaminophen or anything like that, do they?" "I think they just have heroin, Charlie. — Paul Murray

As Mary said that, Lyra felt something strange happen to her body. She found a stirring at the roots of her hair: she found herself breathing faster. She had never been on a roller-coaster, or anything like one, but if she had, she would have recognised the sensations in her breast: they were exciting and frightening at the same time, and she had not the slightest idea why. The sensation continued, and deepened, and changed, as more parts of her body found themselves affected too. She felt as if she had been handed the key to a great house she hadn't known was there, a house that was somehow inside her, and as she turned the key, deep in the darkness of the building she felt other doors opening too, and lights coming on. She sat trembling, hugging her knees, hardly daring to breathe, as Mary went on... — Philip Pullman

Yeah, things are better for blacks and women and gays, but it was the blacks and women and gays that did it, not fuck-ups like this bunch. Whites and straights came along to give help, all right, after the blacks said 'enough' and got their heads busted, and it's the same for the gays and the women. The whites and straights, they control things, and they could have changed it anytime. — Joe R. Lansdale

Good dog,' she said, stoking his head. 'Good sweet dog.' That was one of the great things about dogs. They always loved you no matter what was going on. — R.L. Stine

Your eyes shine," he said. "How do they do that?"
"Blood," she said. — Aimee Bender

was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips. Mother Wolf lay with her big gray nose dropped across her four tumbling, squealing cubs, and the moon shone into the mouth of the cave where they all lived. "Augrh!" said Father Wolf. "It is time to hunt again." He was going to spring down hill when a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed the threshold and whined: "Good luck go with you, O Chief of the Wolves. And good luck and strong white teeth go with noble children that they may never forget the hungry in this world." It was the jackal - Tabaqui, the Dish-licker - and the wolves of India — Rudyard Kipling

Eeyore", said Owl, "Christopher Robin is giving a party."
"Very interesting," said Eeyore. "I suppose they will be sending me down the odd bits which got trodden on. Kind and Thoughtful. Not at all, don't mention it."
"There is an Invitation for you."
"What's that like?"
"An Invitation!"
"Yes, I heard you. Who dropped it?"
"This isn't something to eat, it's asking you to the party. To-morrow."
Eeyore shook his head slowly.
"You mean Piglet. The little fellow with the exited ears. That's Piglet. I'll tell him."
"No, no!" said Owl, getting quite fussy. "It's you!"
"Are you sure?"
"Of course I'm sure. Christopher Robin said 'All of them! Tell all of them'"
"All of them, except Eeyore?"
"All of them," said Owl sulkily.
"Ah!" said Eeyore. "A mistake, no doubt, but still, I shall come. Only don't blame me when it rains. — A.A. Milne

Oi," Wayne said, hustling up beside him. "A good plan that one was, eh?"
"It was the same plan you always have," Wax said. "The one where I get to be the decoy."
"Ain't my fault people like to shoot at you, mate," Wayne said as they reached the coach. "You should be happy; you're usin' your talents, like me granners always said a man should do."
"I'd rather not have 'shootability' be my talent."
"Well, you gotta use what you have," Wayne said, leaning against the side of the carriage as Cob the coachman opened the door for Wax. "Same reason I always have bits of rat in my stew. — Brandon Sanderson

Sometimes home is where the heart is, Eddie thought randomly. I believe that. Old Bobby Frost said home's the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. Unfortunately, it's also the place where, once you're in there, they don't ever want to let you out. — Stephen King

I want to," I said. "I choose to work with people where they are and help them get where they want to go. That's my mission. — Louis Tice

A panda walks into a tea room and ordered a salad and ate it. Then it pulled out a pistol, shot the man in the next table dead, and walked out. Everyone rushed after it, shouting "Stop! Stop! Why did you do that?" "Becuase I am a panda," said the panda. "That's what pandas do. If you don't believe me, look in the dictionary." So they looked in the dictionary and sure enough they found Panda: Racoon-like animal of Asia. Eats shoots and leaves. — Ursula K. Le Guin

It was always like that. They never said sorry. They just threw down their still-loaded weapons, ready for next time. — Liane Moriarty

No matter how much Theo achieves and acquires and out-dazzles everyone else, she never seems content. She's taught you that people who shine more lavishly that everyone else seem to be penalized by discontent, as if they're being punished for craving a brighter life. I've been knocked down so many times I can't remember the number plates, she said once. — Nikki Gemmell

I told Seven the Bartender that true love is felonious.

"Not if they're over eighteen," he said, shutting the till of the cash register.

By then the bar itself had become an appendage, a second torso holding up my first. "You take someone's breath away," I stressed. "You rob them of the ability to utter a single word." I tipped the neck of the empty liquor bottle toward him. "You steal a heart."

He wiped up in front of me with a dishrag. "Any judge would toss that case out on its ass."

"You'd be surprised."

Seven spread the rag out on the brass bar to dry. "Sounds like a misdemeanor, if you ask me."

I rested my cheek on the cool, damp wood. "No way," I said. "Once you're in, it's for life. — Jodi Picoult

After all, golf is only a game,' said Millicent. Women say these things without thinking. It does not mean that there is any kink in their character. They simply don't realise what they're saying. — P.G. Wodehouse

We all have stories, just as you do. Ways in which he touched us, helped us, gave us money, sold it to us wholesale. Lots of stories, big and small. They all add up. Over a lifetime it all adds up. That's why we're here, William. We're a a part of him, who he is, just as he is a part of us. You still don't understand, do you?"
I didn't. But as I stared at the man and he stared back at me, in my father's dream I remembered where we'd met before.
"And what did my father do for you?" I asked him, and the old man smiled.
"He made me laugh," he said. — Daniel Wallace

I didn't bring my peremptory tone to bear in regard to what you'd just said about the unnecessariness of sleep but only, only, mind you, because of the fact that I absolutely, simply, purely and without any whatevers have to sleep now, I mean, man, my eyes are closing, they're redhot, sore, tired, beat ... — Jack Kerouac

Always' was a promise! How can you just break the promise?"
"Sometimes people don't always understand the promises they're making when they make them," I said.
Isaac shot me a look. "Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway. Don't you believe in true love?"
I didn't answer. I didn't have an answer.
But I thought that if true love did exist, that was a pretty good definition of it. — John Green

Well, basically there are two sorts of opera," said Nanny, who also had the true witch's ability to be confidently expert on the basis of no experience whatsoever. "There's your heavy opera, where basically people sing foreign and it goes like "Oh oh oh, I am dyin', oh I am dyin', oh oh oh, that's what I'm doin'", and there's your light opera, where they sing in foreign and it basically goes "Beer! Beer! Beer! Beer! I like to drink lots of beer!", although sometimes they drink champagne instead. That's basically all of opera, reely. — Terry Pratchett

It could have been quite worse," he agreed magnanimously.
"And those two guys who felt up your butt while the maintenance dude was working on that hinge were kicked out because they violated the 'must have fondler's consent' rule, or so that pink-haired woman who spoke English said, so at least they won't do that to the next guy trapped in the stocks."
"I will sleep easier knowing that. — Katie MacAlister

I had sent [the magazine] a batch of poems which they turned down flat. I was furious. Floss [my wife] said, 'If I were the editor of that magazine *I* would turn down what *you* sent.' So *she* picked a batch and they accepted them *all*. — William Carlos Williams

Some parents were nervous about how they would portray everything, ... At a picnic the moms put on for the team and coaches, I said that all the reality shows are turning around and showing good things, not bad things. — Dick Butkus

Hope is a terrible thing, she said. Is it? Yes, it keep you living in another place, a place which doesn't exist. For some people it's better than where they are. For many it's a relief. From life, she said. A relief from life? Is that living? Some people don't have a choice. No and that's awful for them. Hope is better than misery, he said. Or despair. Hope belongs in the same box as despair. Hope is not so bad, he said. At least despair has truth to it. — Susan Minot

You're both perfectly all right," she informed them. "And we will get Aurimere back, and our magic back, and our town back, and then we will have everything we need."

"We have some important stuff already," Ash offered tentatively.

Lillian frowned. "What do you mean?"

Jared surrendered himself to the strangeness of this situation, sank back onto the pillows himself with his head near Lillian's hip, and sighed heavily to attract his aunt's attention. "He wants to know you love him more than that stupid house."

"It is a very nice house," Aunt Lillian said, sounding offended. "Your ancestors are buried in the crypt of that house."

"Sure. Okay. We'll get our lovely creepy house back. When they bury me in that crypt, I want 'Jared, very inbred, deeply uncomfortable about it' on my tombstone. — Sarah Rees Brennan

Gordon Shepherd MD and PhD at Yale School of Medicine, said this: The industry is geared to over-stimulating the senses of the consumer so that they eat more. The goal is to activate the parts of the brain that are susceptible to being conditioned to finding a product desirable and then wanting more of it. — Scott Abel

Our reputations weren't who we really were, they were who people told us we were. Some of us fell into that trap, while others fought their entire lives to break free of them. Jude was no more the bad boy with a dead end future than I was the skanky slut everyone said I was. — Nicole Williams

According to Hugh Fudenberg, MD, the world's leading immunogeneticist and 13th most quoted biologist of our times (nearly 850 papers in peer review journals), if an individual has had five consecutive flu shots between 1970 and 1980 (the years studied) his/her chances of getting Alzheimer's Disease is ten times higher than if they had one, two or no shots. I asked Dr. Fudenberg why this was so and he said it was due to the mercury and aluminum that is in every flu shot (and most childhood shots). The gradual mercury and aluminum buildup in the brain causes cognitive dysfunction. Is that why Alzheimer's is expected to quadruple?219 — James Perloff

A journalist's job is to collect information," Ovid said to Pete.
"Nope," Pete said. "That's what we do. It's not what they do."
Dellarobia was unready to be pushed out of the conversation just like that. "Then what do you think the news people drive their Jeeps all the way out here for?"
"To shore up the prevailing view of their audience and sponsors."
"Pete takes a dim view of his fellow humans," Ovid said. "He prefers insects.
Dellarobia turned her chair halfway around to face Pete, scraping noisily against the cement floor. "You're saying people only tune in to news they know they're going to agree with?"
"Bingo," said Pete. — Barbara Kingsolver

What do you suppose 'Jack and the Beanstalk' is about?" she asked. Conner contemplated a moment and slyly grinned. "Bad beans can cause more than indigestion," he answered, laughing hysterically to himself. Alex pursed her lips to hide a smile. "What do you think the lesson of 'Little Red Riding Hood' is?" she asked him. "Do you think she should have just mailed her grandmother the gift basket?" "Now you're thinking!" he said. "Although, I've always felt sorry for Little Red Riding Hood. It's obvious her parents didn't like her very much." "Why do you say that?" Alex asked, wondering how he could have possibly construed that from the story. "Who sends their young daughter into a dark and wolf-occupied forest carrying freshly baked food and wearing a bright jacket?" Conner asked. "They were practically asking for a wolf to eat her! She must have annoyed the heck out of them!" Alex held back laughter with all her might but, to Conner's delight, she let a quiet chuckle slip. "I — Chris Colfer

I'm really sensitive. And they don't understand that, because my most comfortable feeling is anger. So I'll get angry if you said something to hurt my feelings or you're making me uncomfortable, I'll get angry, and be ready to do something about it. — Curtis Jackson

Sicarius padded toward the exit, his soft black boots silent on the tile floor. He paused in the doorway and glanced at the backs of the two older men.
The emperor emitted a nervous chuckle. "You trained him too well, Hollow. The man bothers me."
"He is loyal."
"I know. You did a good job. I ought to give you Sespian to work with. The boy is disappointing."
"He does seem soft," Hollowcrest said.
"Did you hear that scream? I would've been fascinated by severed heads at that age."
"You're fascinated with them now, Sire."
"True enough."
They shared a laugh and headed for the door. Sicarius slipped away before they noticed him. — Lindsay Buroker

Anything can be an instrument, Chugurh said. Small things. Things you wouldn't even notice. They pass from hand to hand. People don't pay attention. And then one day there's an accounting. And after that nothing is the same. Well, you say. It's just a coin. For instance. Nothing special there. What could that be an instrument of? You see the problem. to separate the act from the the thing. As if the parts of some moment in history might be interchangeable with the parts of some other moment. How could that be? Well, it's just a coin. Yes. That's true. Is it? — Cormac McCarthy

They went to the tree. Daemon dismounted and leaned against the tree, staring in the direction of the house. The stallion jiggled the bit, reminding him he wasn't alone. "I wanted to say good-bye," Daemon said quietly. For the first time, he truly saw the intelligence - and loneliness - in the horse's eyes. After that, he couldn't keep his voice from breaking as he tried to explain why Jaenelle was never going to come to the tree again, why there would be no more rides, no more caresses, no more talks. For a moment, something rippled in his mind. He had the odd sensation he was the one being talked to, explained to, and his words, echoing back, lacerated his heart. To be alone again. To never again see those arms held out in welcome. To never hear that voice say his name. To ... Daemon gasped as Dark Dancer jerked the reins free and raced down the path toward the field. Tears of grief pricked Daemon's eyes. The horse might have a simpler mind, but the heart was just as big. — Anne Bishop

Let me tell you something. As we were walking around in the store, Marilyn and I were just really impressed by all the novelties and the different types of little things that you could get for Christmas. And all the people that would help you, they were dressed up in things that said 'I believe in Santa Claus.' And the only thing that I could think is that I believe in George Bush. — Dan Quayle

Pinn's Accoutrements - what's that?" "If anyone else asked that question, O He Who is Terrible and Great, I would have said they were an ignorant fool; in you it is a sign of that disarming simplicity which is the fount of all virtue. Pinn's Accoutrements is the most prestigious supplier of magical artifacts in London. It is situated on Piccadilly. Sholto Pinn is the proprietor. — Anonymous

I was nothing to them.
Just a toy, like Suit said. And they were like a bunch of bratty rich kids who knew that every toy was replaceable. — Skye Callahan

You don't really mean that we got to be frightened all the time of nothing? Life," said Piggy expansively, "is scientific, that's what it is. In a year or two when the war's over they'll be traveling to Mars and back. I know there isn't no beast - not with claws and all that, I mean - but I know there isn't no fear, either. — William Golding

Wasn't that what Jesus said: do what I do? He was here as an example for us to follow. Same with all prophets. Didn't the prophets tell us to be like them? That's what's wrong with Christianity. They make Jesus and the prophets into icons, take them off of earth, and put them in heaven to worship them, so they're no longer accessible. You've taken a reality and made it into a worthless idol. Christians talk about the idolatry of other religions, but when they no longer live principles and just worship the people who taught them, that's exactly what they're doing. — Daniel Suelo

Warren Buffett has said many times that people either get value investing in five minutes or they won't get it in five years. So, there is something in the human brain, that for some of us, makes all the difference in the world right away and the patience it requires is part of the wiring process. — Mohnish Pabrai

I need to give you one last bit of advice in the off chance this rather extraordinary and enviable situation in which you find yourself is actually true- that somehow you've fallen deep down into a Cordova story. I stared back at him. Be the good guy, he said. How do I know I'm the good guy? He pointed at me, nodding. A very wise question. You don't. Most bad guys think they're good. But there are a few signifiers. You'll be miserable. You'll be hated. You'll fumble around in the dark, alone and confused. You'll have little insight as to the true nature of things, not until the very last minute, and only if you have the stamina and the madness to go to the very, very end. But most importantly- and critically- you will act without regard for yourself. You'll be motivated by something that has nothing to do with the ego. You'll do it for justice. For grace. For love. Those large rather heroic qualities only the good have the strength to carry on their shoulders. And you'll listen. — Marisha Pessl

You can see right away,' the old man said, 'that he hates us but hides his hatred under a layer of sycophancy. They all hate us. How could they not? If I were them I'd hate us too. In fact, I'd hate us even without being them. Take it from me, Rachel, if you just look at us you can see that we deserve nothing but hatred and contempt. And maybe a bit of pity. But that pity cannot come from the Arabs. They themselves need all the pity in the world. — Amos Oz

The founding American generations did something that almost no others have ever done. They read the fine print! They taught their children to read bills, laws, court cases, legislative debates, executive decrees, and bureaucratic policies. They read them in schoolrooms and at home ... They said they would consider their children uneducated if they didn't read such things. — Oliver DeMille

I thought you said something about a wolf' I began.
'Yes. That black beast that gnaws at my bones whenever he gets a chance. He loiters in corners and behind doors most of the time, because he's afraid of these.' She indicated the white pills on the table beside her. 'But they don't last forever. It's nearly twelve and they are wearing off. He is sniffing at my neck. By half past he will be digging his teeth and claws in. Until one, when I can take another tablet and he will have to return to his corner. We are always clockwatching, he and I. He pounces five minutes earlier every day. But I cannot take my tablets five minutes early. That stays the same. — Diane Setterfield

Jesus said, If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty. — Gospel Of Thomas

They said it couldn't be done, but sometimes it doesn't work out that way. — Casey Stengel

Great! I hope different police officers are here this time."
"Might be, but we're in the same police jurisdiction. I'm certain from the last time you were here, they probably have a record about you. What was it you said? You were playing some game re-enactment the last time you were injured?"
"Yes. How did your brother come up the idea of a paint-ball game? That's a good one."
"He's played them here before. He would like to bring the game back to our world, but we fight for real. — Terry Spear

How much did he charge you?" he asked, intending to add that amount to her allowance.
"Originally he wanted $1,000 whether he finds news of Robert or not. But I offered to pay him twice his fee if he's successful."
"And if he isn't?"
"Oh, in that case I didn't think it was fair that he receive anything," she said. "I persuaded him I was right."
Ian's shout of laughter was still ringing in the hall when they entered the drawing room to greet the Townsendes. — Judith McNaught

I was talking about no nukes, the farm crisis. People said that wasn't stuff that a state auditor was supposed to be talking about. Maybe they were right. — Paul Wellstone

Google's a strange place. When I met Eric Schmidt, he said, "If you are kind to everybody, then you will make good decisions because people will give you good information, and if you are truthful to everybody, they will be truthful to you." That's what's different about Google. They screw up and make mistakes, but they genuinely mean the good stuff about "don't be evil." — Larry Brilliant

Susan Boggs, a black runaway interviewed in Canada in 1863, said of the religious slave masters: 'Why the man that baptized me had a colored woman tied up in his yard to whip when he got home that very Sunday and her mother ... was in church hearing him preach. He preached, You must obey your masters and be good servants.- That is the greater part of the sermon, when they preach to the colored folks ... ' — Gerry Spence

Sometimes, what people choose to write down on paper is more important than what they say.
Caleb didn't know what Sarah meant. But I knew. I wrote in my journal every night. And when I read what I had written, I could see myself there, clearer than when I looked in the mirror. I could see all of us: Papa, who couldn't always say the things he felt; Caleb, who said everything; and Sarah, who didn't know that she had changed us all. — Patricia MacLachlan

But what we have here is not a nice girl, as generally understood. For one thing, she's not beautiful. There's a certain set to the jaw and arch to the nose that might, with a following wind and in the right light, be called handsome by a good-natured liar. Also, there's a certain glint in her eye generally possessed by those people who have found that they are more intelligent than most people around them but who haven't yet learned that one of the most intelligent things they can do is prevent said people ever finding this out. — Terry Pratchett

On that walk around the building, two sets of cops coming out stopped to tell our guys to hustle us inside so they could head back out on the road. Accidents everywhere. A pileup on
each of two major roads. "Welcome to winter," one said. "When fifty percent of drivers should have their licenses temporarily suspended. — Kelley Armstrong

The Saudis and Emiratis blame all of this on Iran. I think they'd have to grant, that as has been said, that the Houthis are an internally generated movement in Yemen and the Saudis were supposed to be dealing with the Houthis, who started out in essence along their border. So one of the things that we're seeing is a complete failure of Saudi policy toward Yemen over the past 10 years, but the Saudis totally believe that the reason the Houthis are able to succeed militarily is the amount of money, advice, and guns they are receiving from Iran. — Elliott Abrams

They made a shrewd guess that I could give them some useful information, and they were the first to meet me. Some one said they came to arrest me, and - well, let it go at that. — Joshua Slocum

We welcome into our homes the machines that vacuum the thoughts out of our heads and pump in someone else's. John Berger in Ways of Seeing said that television advertisers succeeded by persuading viewers to envy themselves as they would be if they bought the product. These programmes do something similar, by persuading the viewer to envy himself as he would be if his life were that little bit more exciting and melodramatic than it actually is. They can make things seem normal that are not. — Peter Hitchens

That which had made Helmholtz so uncomfortably aware of being himself and all alone was too much ability. What the two men shared was the knowledge that they were individuals. But whereas the physically defective Bernard had suffered all his life from the consciousness of being separate, it was only quite recently that, grown aware of his mental excess, Helmholtz Watson had also become aware of his difference from the people who surrounded him. This Escalator-Squash champion, this indefatigable lover (it was said that he had had six hundred and forty different girls in under four years), this admirable committee man and best mixer had realized quite suddenly that sport, women, communal activities were only, so far as he was concerned, second bests. Really, and at the bottom, he was interested in something else. But in what? In what? — Aldous Huxley

Years later I read a statement that said, "A tot of people have a wishbone, but they don't have a backbone." I thought, That's the truth. Wishing won't get us anything. We have got to dig in and do whatever we have to do to get — Joyce Meyer

And from all these evils they will be delivered, and their life will be blessed as the life of Olympic victors and yet more blessed. How so? The Olympic victor, I said, is deemed happy in receiving a part only of the blessedness which is secured to our citizens, who have won a more glorious victory and have a more complete maintenance at the public cost. For the victory which they have won is the salvation of the whole State; and the crown with which they and their children are crowned is the fulness of all that life needs; they receive rewards from the hands of their country while living, and after death have an honourable burial. Yes, — Plato

Vicky had once told her that she should not be ashamed of her pubic hair. Pubic hair was what men expected to see on women. Vicky said that there was a young prostitute at the Centre who had no pubic hair & many customers were known to shy off her because they thought that she was diseased. So Phyllis was resigned to displaying her pubic hair to all who wanted to see it.[MMT] — Nicholas Chong

Very commonly substances are criminalized because they're associated with what's called the dangerous classes, you know, poor people, or working people ... Actually, the peak of marijuana use was as I said, in the seventies, but that was rich kids, so you don't throw them in jail. And then it got seriously criminalized, you know, you really throw people in jail for it, when it was poor people. — Noam Chomsky

The Population Reference Bureau predicts that the world's total population will double to 7,000,000,000 before the year 2000. I suppose they will all want dignity, I said. — Kurt Vonnegut

I really hope you like this," he says again, and flings open the door.
It's a glass room, a greenhouse, I realize. Within are tulips, hundreds, of all colors. Tulips bloom in the middle of July in Desi's lake house. In their own special room for a very special girl.
"I know tulips are your favorite, but the season is so short," Desi said. "So I fixed that for you. They'll bloom year-round. — Gillian Flynn

You told me once of the plants that lie dormant through the drought, that wait, half-dead, deep in the earth. The plants that wait for the rain. You said they'd wait for years, if they had to; that they'd almost kill themselves before they grew again. But as soon as those first drops of water fall, those plants begin to stretch and spread their roots. They travel up through the soil and sand to reach the surface. There's a chance for them again. — Lucy Christopher

This was puzzling, as the standard textbook of psychiatry at the time stated that incest was extremely rare in the United States, occurring about once in every million women.8 Given that there were then only about one hundred million women living in the United States, I wondered how forty seven, almost half of them, had found their way to my office in the basement of the hospital. Furthermore, the textbook said, "There is little agreement about the role of father-daughter incest as a source of serious subsequent psychopathology." My patients with incest histories were hardly free of "subsequent psychopathology" - they were profoundly depressed, confused, and often engaged in bizarrely self-harmful behaviors, such as cutting themselves with razor blades. The textbook went on to practically endorse incest, explaining that "such incestuous activity diminishes the subject's chance of psychosis and allows for a better adjustment to the external world."9 — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

She promised you'd get to shore in one piece.' Cheap said, 'and I won't make a liar out of her. But if you know what's good for you, you'll forget about that girl. Ask anyone on the coast. Or the Lord God himself. They'll tell you. Lucas Cheap sailed with the Brethren. He makes good ever on his threats. — Donna Thorland

He was not such a special person. He loved to read very much, and also to write. He was a poet, and he exhibited me many of his poems. I remember many of them. They were silly, you could say, and about love. He was always in his room writing those things, and never with people. I used to tell him, What good is all that love doing on paper? I said, Let love write on you for a little. But he was so stubborn. Or perhaps he was only timid. — Jonathan Safran Foer

No one had ever said anything like that to Evie. Her parents always wanted to advise or instruct or command. They were good people, but they needed the world to bend to them, to fit into their order of things. Evie had never really quite fit, and when she tried, she'd just pop back out, like a doll squeezed into a too-small box. — Libba Bray

I'm an actor who they said was wrinkled and balding and everything else when I was in my early 30's. Most of the people who wrote that who thought they were younger than me are now bald and wrinkled. — Jack Nicholson

They said that love was terrifying and tender, wild and sweet, and none of it made any sense.
But now I knew that every mad word was true. — Rosamund Hodge

After that, Marya Morevna understood that she belonged to her secret and it belonged to her. They had struck a bloody bargain between them. Keep me and obey me, the secret said to her, for I am your husband and I can destroy you. — Catherynne M Valente

The theater troubled her. It had a magic of its own, one that didn't belong to her, one that wasn't in her control. It changed the world, and said things were otherwise than they were. And it was worse than that. It was magic that didn't belong to magical people. It was commanded by ordinary people, who didn't know the rules. They altered the world because it sounded better. — Terry Pratchett

examination is over," Harry corked his sample flask feeling that he might not have achieved a good grade but that he had, with luck, avoided a fail. "Only four exams left," said Parvati Patil wearily as they headed back to Gryffindor common room. "Only!" said Hermione snappishly. "I've got Arithmancy and — J.K. Rowling

The firing of nerves in the amygdala, thereby dampening fear. Laughter, then, can help to temper negative emotions. And while all this might seem of purely academic interest, it could prove helpful when your partner breaks his leg at 19,000 feet in a blizzard on a Peruvian mountain. It is not a lack of fear that separates elite performers from the rest of us. They're afraid, too, but they're not overwhelmed by it. They manage fear. They use it to focus on taking correct action. Mike Tyson's trainer, Cus D'Amato, said, Fear is like fire. It can cook for you. It can heat your — Laurence Gonzales

If I waited long enough and said, "Okay, so what you're saying is you liked your life a lot better when you were 30?" everybody would get real quiet and then admit that that wasn't the case, that they really felt like they were sort of growing into themselves in a way. — Anna Quindlen

I was on the set of the first Powers pilot, and an actor of color came up to me and said, "When I was a kid, my friends wouldn't let me play Batman or Superman, because I wasn't their color. But they would let me play Spider-Man. And that's the difference." And I realized I had heard this story a hundred times from different people, but I wasn't there in my head yet. — Brian Michael Bendis