Unapproved Short Quotes & Sayings

This was what Dennis had been doing lately: granting everyone permission to feel the way they were going to feel regardless. It was the books. Dennis's relationship to his own feelings had become tender, curatorial. Dismantling. Entomological. Mave couldn't be like that. She treated her emotional life the way she treated her car: She let it go, let it tough it out. To friends she said things like "I know you're thinking this looks like a '79, but it's really an '87." She finally didn't care to understand all that much about her emotional life; she just went ahead and did it. The point, she thought, was to attend the meager theater of it, quietly, and not stand up in the middle and shout, "Oh, my God, you can see the crew backstage!" There was a point at which the study of something became a frightening and naive thing. — Lorrie Moore

From the very beginning of the movement in the sixteenth century, Anabaptists shared a deep suspicion of the so-called Schriftgelehrten - the university-trained scholars who, they claimed artfully dodged the clear and simple teachings of Jesus by appealing to complex arguments and carefully crafted statements of doctrine. In other words, they confused theological discussions with lived faith. — John D. Roth

Most book things now (with a few exceptions) are just built around nice, safe books written for nice and safe book club readers. These are usually the books you see on display at Barnes and Noble. These Internet writers are like literary terrorists to me. They're training as we speak. They're getting ready to invade. They're building an army. — Scott McClanahan

When we cling to thoughts and memories, we are clinging to what cannot be grasped. When we touch these phantoms and let them go, we may discover a space, a break in the chatter, a glimpse of open sky. This is our birthright - the wisdom with which we were born, the vast unfolding display of primordial richness, primordial openness, primordial wisdom itself. When one thought has ended and another has not yet begun, we can rest in that space. — Pema Chodron

In reading, you sense the divine: the things that are larger and greater and more mysterious than yourself. — Richard Flanagan

Everyone else seemed to be circling their desired careers, not inhabiting them yet. — Meg Wolitzer

War is the father and king of all: some he has made gods, and some men; some slaves and some free. — Heraclitus