Jonathan Carroll Quotes

Loving's not the question - living is. Love builds the house, but then you got to furnish it.

Old people are often impatient, but for what?

How does these things happen? How do we go mad in small ways and calmly work the madness into our everyday little exercises...?
Little by little...

If I don't feel like writing today or for a few days, I don't. And I don't think about it. It is not an obligation-it is the greatest privilege.

The trouble with wars is that they all look alike to people who aren't involved. Only the skin color of the dead is different.

I forgive nothing. If you stole my orange crayon in the fifth grade, you're still on my hit list, buddy.

I would have given him everything. I would have pulled down planets to make our life work.

Women are always complaining about men's fascination with breasts. But what if men were absolutely indifferent to breasts? What would women do then with these things that serve one function once or twice in a lifetime, and the rest of the time are just in the way?

The Wilmington, Delaware, television station that bills itself as The Family Minded Station is Channel 69.

Not responding is a response.

You have to walk carefully in the beginning of love; the running across fields into your lover's arms can only come later when you're sure they won't laugh if you trip.

Everything will haunt you, all the storms will find you, everything will remind you she's gone.

If you are a success in life, there are places you must go and pay to be humiliated. It is an unwritten law that human beings must be tormented throughout their lives in one way or another. If you are fortunate enough to have risen to a social level where no one does it to you for free, then you must pay for the service.

Some people are more forgiving when they understand a situation, while others become even more furious once they see the whole picture.

Guilt's a whore. It goes with anybody, but it's not good in bed. You're not dying, but this thing you've got with the girl is no different than my situation. We could both use up whole days feeling guilty 'bout what we didn't do in life, but why spend a day in bed with someone who doesn't give you any pleasure?

We're often wrong at predicting who or what will transform us. Encountering certain people, books, music, places, or ideas ... at just the right time can immediately make our lives happier, richer, more beautiful, resonant, or meaningful. When it happens, we feel a kind of instant love for them, both deep and abiding. Now and then it can be something as trifling as a children's book, a returned telephone call, or a night at a seaside bar in Mykonos.

I had always liked blind dates. If nothing else, it was an interesting way of discovering what people thought of you.

Only the guilty and the lovers really fear. The first because of what they are, the second for what they might lose.

Lying is too much trouble. You have to make sure to taste each word before letting it off your tongue. I hate that. It's hard enough making people understand without lying.

At eight you're dead serious about what the world owes you: Civilization starts in your own room and moves out from there.

Look around you. Watch how people function and interact with one another. You'll see this is going on everywhere all the time. People devour each other in the name of love, or family or country. But that's an excuse; they're just hungry and want to be fed. Read their faces, the newspapers, read what it says on their T-shirts! 'I think you're mistaking me for someone who gives a shit.' 'My parents went to London but all they brought me back was this lousy T-shirt.' 'So many women, so little time.' 'Whoever dies with the most toys, wins.' They're supposed to be funny, witty, and postmodern, Miranda. But the truth is they're only stating a fact: Me. I come first. Get out of my way.

Learn to wait; invariably either things will change or your heart will.

Salzburg ... is a mountain town with a rushing river running right through the center, everything in the rain various shades of green and brown.

I'd say I'm living, but I'm not alive without you

Great sleep dreams seduce and sometimes torture. The best ones can almost break our heart when we awaken from them and find ourselves back ... here.

If you are very lucky, you're allowed to be in certain places during just the right season of your life: by the sea for the summer when you're seven or eight and full of the absolute need to swim until dark and exhaustion close their hands together, cupping you in between.

Everything you want in life has teeth.

There's almost always a point in a book where something happens that triggers the rest of the plot.

Listening to him, I realized how lucky I was not to have had a wonderful childhood. Those who do, or those who peak in their early years, have only that remembered joy or strength to tide them over the rest of their lives. Nothing could ever be as good as that time; for them nothing ever is.

When I was in college, I was the editor of the literary magazine and insisted neither the editors nor the writers be specifically identified-only our student numbers appeared on the title page. I love that idea and still do.

These days the couple coexisted uneasily in an edgy state where both knew a separation was inevitable and imminent but neither was brave enough to say so. They were in the almost-terminal stage where trivial things the partner does are keenly noticed and continuously resented; how they wipe the kitchen counters after a meal, the messy state of the bathroom after their shower, the toilet seat up, the toilet seat down. Things routinely ignored before, much less cared about, now glimmered like they were Day-Glo purple, or stunk like milk gone bad.

People are always waiting to be discovered.

How easily we ignore or forget the small kindnesses and considerations in life which are really the only everyday magic we witness on a regular basis. Just think- to make happiness out of nothing more than a few kind words or a generous gesture.

The questions are the danger.
Leave them alone and they sleep.
Ask them, awake them, and more than you
know will begin to rise.

Don't ever try to be normal because it's the first symptom of a terminal disease. As soon as you feel the need to be normal coming on, get the antidote.
...
Just make sure you're living your life; don't let normal pretend to be you.

Far more disturbing than any spook house at an amusement park is a ride through the old hometown if you've been away for years.

At a Boston signing, someone from the audience asked why I was so obsessed with furniture in my books. The question rattled around in my head. I had no idea that I was obsessed with furniture.

I find you write with one person in mind. Usually for me that one person is my wife, because she's my most severe critic and understands best what I'm trying to do.

Your boyfriend had a dream about potatoes and you're asking me to interpret it? I'm just old. Being old doesn't mean you know more; it means you ate enough fiber.

A monster is not a monster if it doesn't scare you.

One of the most terrible losses man endures in his lifetime is not even noticed by most people, much less mourned. Which is astonishing, because what we lose is in many ways one of the essential qualities that sets us apart from other creatures. I'm talking about the loss of the sense of wonder that is such an integral part of our world when we are children. However, as we grow older, that sense of wonder shrinks from cosmic to microscopic by the time we are adults. Kids say "Wow!" all the time. Opening their mouths fully, their eyes light up with genuine awe and glee. The word emanates not so much from a voice box as from an astonished soul that has once again been shown that the world is full of amazing unexpected things.
When was the last time you let fly a loud, truly heartfelt "WOW?"
NOt recently I bet. Because generally speaking wonder belongs to kids, with the rare exception of falling madly in love with another person, which invariably leads to a rebirth of wonder. As adults, we are not supposed to say or feel Wow, or wonder, or even true surprise because those things make us sound goofy, ingenuous, and childlike. How can you run the world if you are in constant awe of it?...
The human heart has a long memory though and remembers what it was like to live through days where it was constantly surprised and delighted by the world around it.

One of the joys of being a dog is that they have no concept of the word "future." Everything is right now, and if right now happens to be a warm floor and a full stomach, then life is good.

Krakow is one of my favorite places on earth. It is a medieval city full of young people. A wonderful, striking combination.

The angel said, I like black-and-white films more than color because they're more artificial. You have to work harder to overcome your disbelief. It's sort of like prayer.

Even the handsomest men do not have the same momentary effect on the world as a truly beautiful woman does.

In Poland, my audience is all women between 18 and 30. At U.S. conventions, you have the fantasy and science fiction crowd. At Harvard you have an entirely different audience. It's so schizophrenic.

For an adult, eating alone at McDonald's is admitting a kind of defeat.

Its easy to lose sight of what you want when you think you want everything.

I've noticed most people are at their best during the day, in the light. Night fascinates you with its mystery and potential, but it's ominous too because things are easily hidden or lost in the dark, especially control. Most species I've encountered are powerless there. No matter where that dark is - inside or out - you are all at its mercy. It's harder to lose things and easier to find them, including yourself, in the light.

No one has ever been able to successfully map the coast of sorrow. It is not because of the jagged reefs, the treacherous fogs and shoals. Or because it's prone to ferocious storms and deadly tides that can eat a ship as easily as it can a man in the water.
No one has ever been able to map the coast of sorrow because so much of it is invisible.

Sometimes happiness is like the sound of a plane overhead. You look up to see it but the plane's not there. No matter where you look you can't find it on the sky, although the sound is still there and growing louder. You get a little frantic searching. At the same time you're thinking, this is stupid. But you keep looking and if you do finally see it, you feel absolved. Most of my life I'd been looking for happiness in the wrong parts of the sky.

Part of life is a quest to find that one essential person who will understand our story. But we choose wrongly so often. Over the ensuing years that person we thought understood us best ends up regarding us with pity, indifference, or active dislike.
Those who truly care can be divided into two categories: those who understand us, and those who forgive our worst sins. Rarely do we find someone capable of both.

Tell your mother the Law of Stolen Flight.'
'Only flame, and things with wings. All the rest suffer stings.

I firmly believe in small gestures: pay for their coffee, hold the door for strangers, over tip, smile or try to be kind even when you don't feel like it, pay compliments, chase the kid's runaway ball down the sidewalk and throw it back to him, try to be larger than you are - particularly when it's difficult. People do notice, people appreciate. I appreciate it when it's done to (for) me. Small gestures can be an effort, or actually go against our grain ("I'm not a big one for paying compliments ... "), but the irony is that almost every time you make them, you feel better about yourself. For a moment life suddenly feels lighter, a bit more Gene Kelly dancing in the rain.

Most men, no matter how well or badly dressed, carry overstuffed, beat up wallets that should have been replaced years ago. Why is that? Every time I see a guy take out a wallet anywhere, it looks like a piece of old melted chocolate cake-with strings.

Old age arrives like the first days of fall. One afternoon you look up, or smell something in the air, and know instinctively things have changed. I suppose the same thing is true about our own death. Suddenly it's near enough that we can smell it

Real love is always chaotic. You lose control; you lose perspective. You lose the ability to protect yourself. The greater the love, the greater the chaos. It's a given and that's the secret.

Fear pounds on the door to our heart demanding to be let in. Joy is modest and often comes into our lives like a shy person entering a room; it can take a while to even notice it's there.

One of the reasons why I liked living in Manhattan was that the city would share your mood the moment you walked out the door. If you were in a hurry, everything else was too, even the pigeons. You shared the same speed and sense of urgency to get wherever you were going.
When you had time to kill, it was happy to give you things to look at and do that easily took up whole days. I didn't agree with people who said Manhattan was a cold, indifferent town. Sure it was gruff, but it was also playful and sometimes very funny.

BUYING A PAIR OF shoes is one of the most optimistic acts I know, next to falling in love. I like nothing better than to see an old man wearing a brand new pair of brogues or cap-toed oxfords, preferably jaunty orange-brown, unscuffed, heels unworn. We want to be here tomorrow, but buying new shoes, like falling in love, says I plan on being here tomorrow.

I've never seen myself as a fantasy writer - ever.

The Viennese wash everything. Where else in the world does the government hire public servants to wash public telephone booths and the glass over traffic lights? Every time I see someone doing these things, I smile like a child.

The world can be divided between people who can get a waiter's attention and those who can't.

One of the saddest realities is that we never know when our lives are at their peak. Only after it is over and we have some kind of perspective do we realize how good we had it a day, a month, five years ago.

A short story is a sprint, a novel is a marathon. Sprinters have seconds to get from here to there and then they are finished. Marathoners have to carefully pace themselves so that they don't run out of energy (or in the case of the novelist
ideas) because they have so far to run. To mix the metaphor, writing a short story is like having a short intense affair, whereas writing a novel is like a long rich marriage.

Death doesn't make you sad- it makes you empty. That's what's so bad about it. All of your charms and beliefs and funny habits fall fast through a big black hole, and suddenly you know they're gone because just as suddenly, there's nothing left at all inside.

Everyone coming out of a perfume store is smelling the back of their hand.

Very often I'll find out at the end of a book what I put in at the beginning. A sort of process of elimination and discovery in one.

Lions should be strong but sweet beasts in a Disney cartoon. But they aren't, so when they act like lions you're angry at them for not being the fantasy animals you imagined. Russian bears don't put on top hats and ride unicycles. Or sleep in bed next to Goldilocks. People force them to do those stupid things in circuses and films and children's books. Sure, some will be more docile or more ferocious than others, but in the end they will always, always be bears. And you should never turn your back on them. You should never even get near them; it's that simple. They're not being dishonest - you are in your perception of them.

Dogs are here to remind us life really is a simple thing. You eat, sleep, take walks, and pee when you must. That's about all there is. They are quick to forgive trespasses and assume strangers will be kind.

Sure, because it's a fairy tale. They're always so tediously moral. Nobody gets away with anything fun and all the interesting people are bad guys.

The only question that nobody ever asks is: What breaks your heart? I think that should be asked of all "artists." ... So, what breaks your heart?

The Angel of Death was nothing special to look at: it had manifested itself today as a plate of someone's finished meal of bacon and eggs. Egg yolk was smeared across the white plate. Inside this smear were scattered bread crumbs.

Night keeps its own sounds to itself because most of them come from the other side of silence.

I feel like a cliche.

Patience never wants Wonder to enter the house: because Wonder is a wretched guest. It uses all of you but is not careful with what is most fragile or irreplaceable. If it breaks you, it shrugs and moves on. Without asking, Wonder often brings along dubious friends: doubt, jealousy, greed. Together they take over; rearrange the furniture in every one of your rooms for their own comfort. They speak odd languages but make no attempt to translate for you. They cook strange meals in your heart that leave odd tastes and smells. When they finally go are you happy or miserable? Patience is always left holding the broom.

Dogs are the kids we've always wanted. They're totally devoted and want to live with you until they die. Not like children who can't wait to take off as soon as they grow up and don't need you anymore.

Coffee on an airplane always smells bad. Whenever it is served, suddenly the whole cabin stinks of it.

My memory loves you ... it asks about you all the time.

I had once thought strength of character was a hardening of oneself; an intricate protection system by which you reconciled yourself to the truths of life and learned to let them not bother you. But all systems of character building go right out the window when you find there aren't anymore truths.. or none you recognize.

I think we love differently every day. Like the guy who said you can't stand in a river at exactly the same place twice. Today I love you differently than yesterday, or will tomorrow.

Animals are on earth to protect mankind. When you gather a bunch of them together like this, you create a safe haven. Nothing can touch you here.

I read less of everything now. With only fond memories of others' work, it will be interesting to give my own journal writing a try now.

It took me less than half a lifetime to realize that regret is one of the few guaranteed certainties. Sooner or later everything is touched by it, despite our naive and senseless hope that just this time we will be spared its cold hand on our heart.

Some people are like blue jeans- the older and more beat up they get, the better they look.

Chaos doesn't do, it undoes.

It's always fun to walk down the street with or behind a really beautiful woman, for no reason other than to see how the world reacts to them.

Reading a book, for me at least, is like traveling in someone else's world. If it's a good book, then you feel comfortable and yet anxious to see what's going to happen to you there, what'll be around the next corner. But if it's a lousy book, then it's like going through Secaucus, New Jersey
it smells and you wish you weren't there, but since you've started the trip, you roll up the windows and breathe through your mouth until you're done.

Dogs are minor angels, and I don't mean that facetiously. They love unconditionally, forgive immediately, are the truest of friends, willing to do anything that makes us happy, etcetera. If we attributed some of those qualities to a person we would say they are special. If they had ALL of them, we would call them angelic. But because it's "only" a dog, we dismiss them as sweet or funny but little more. However when you think about it, what are the things that we most like in another human being? Many times those qualities are seen in our dogs every single day
we're just so used to them that we pay no attention.

Yo can always take back the lost parts of yourself if you can find and recognize them.

The fact that I'm silent doesn't mean I have nothing to say.

I started a short story but it was so dreary that even my pen threw up.