All My Puny Sorrows Quotes

Yolandi, the central character in the book "All My Puny Sorrows" says that "the core of the argument for it [assisted suicide] is maximizing individual autonomy and minimizing human suffering" (p. 222). ~ Miriam Toews

Nic loves Elf's odd requests, each one is like a holiday for him ... and he's not a Mennonite, which is important
in a man
for Elf. Mennonite men have wasted too much of her time already, trying to harvest her soul and shackle her to shame. ~ Miriam Toews

The fox speaks with the hurricane and says, "I need to travel far and fast. Can you take me?" The hurricane regards the puny fox with its huge, calm eye and asks, "What can you do for me?" "Why, I will let you whisper your dreams to me." "But I must kill whatever I carry. You are a living thing and do not wish to die." "If you do not kill me, I will listen to your inmost self, and tell all the animals, that they may feel sympathy for you." "What do I care for sympathy? I am all-powerful." "Yes, but someday, your winds will die, and my kits will tell this tale even when you are gone, of the time great-great-great-grandfather fox was carried by the winds and lived and learned their secrets." "But then they will not be afraid of me, and what good am I if I do not inspire fear?" "Oh, no living thing could ever be so strong they would not fear you. I give you something more. I give you a voice throughout time that is more than a wordless bellow of rage. ~ Greg Bear

The Liars believe in no afterlife, no God. We see the universe as it is, Father Damien, and these naked truths are cruel ones. We who believe in life, and treasure it, will die. Afterward there will be nothing, eternal emptiness, blackness, nonexistence. In our living there has been no purpose, no poetry, no meaning. Nor do our deaths possess these qualities. When we are gone, the universe will not long remember us, and shortly it will be as if we had never lived at all. Our worlds and our universe will not long outlive us. Ultimately entropy will consume all, and our puny efforts cannot stay that awful end. It will be gone. It has never been. It has never mattered. The universe itself is doomed, transient, uncaring. [...] The truths, the great truths - and most of the lesser ones as well - they are unbearable for most men. We find our shield in faith. Your faith, my faith, any faith. It doesn't matter, as long as we believe, really and truly believe, in whatever lie we cling to. [...] We know truth for the cruel instrument it is. Beauty is infinitely preferable to truth. We invent beauty. Faiths, political movements, high ideals, belief in love and fellowship. All of them are lies. [...] Our lies are not perfect, of course. The truths are too big. But perhaps someday we will find one great lie that all humanity can use. Until then, a thousand small lies will do.
(from Way of Cross and Dragon) ~ George R.R. Martin

My dreams were always small and puny. All I ever needed was a little house with a little picket fence by the sea. Little did I know that I would live in Malacanang Palace for 20 years and visit all the major palaces of mankind. And then also meet ordinary citizens and the leaders of superpowers. ~ Imelda Marcos

I had another reason for seeking Him, for trying to espy His face, a professional one. God and literature are conflated in my mind. Why this is, I'm not sure. Perhaps because great books seem heavensent. Perhaps because I know that each nove is a puny but very valiant attempt at godlike behavior. Perhaps because there is no difference between the finest poetry and most transcendent mysticism. Perhaps because writers like Thomas Merton, who are able to enter the realm of the spirit and come away with fine, lucid prose. Perhaps because of more secular writers, like John Steinbeck, whose every passage, it seems to me, peals with religiousity and faith. It once occured to me that literature - all art really - is either talking to people about God, or talking to God about people. ~ Paul Quarrington

And why can't I have an ignore button like my phone? As I hit it, his calls disappear from the screen and the ringing stops. But the tingles are still at my fingertips, as if he sent them through the phone to grab me. Shoving it in my purse-the pockets on skinny jeans must just be for show 'cause nothing else is fitting in there-I smile at Mark.
Ah, Mark. The blue-eyed, blond-haired, all-American quarterback. Who knew he had a crush on me all these years? Not Emma McIntosh, that's for dang sure. And not Chloe. Which is weird, because Chloe was a collector of this kind of information. Maybe it's not true. Maybe Mark's only interested in me because Galen was-who wouldn't want to date the girl who dated the hottest guy in school? But that's just fine with me. Mark is...well, Mark isn't as fantabulous as I always imagined he would be.
Still, he's good-looking, a star quarterback, and he's not trying to hook me up with his brother. So why am I not excited?
The question must be all over my face because Mark's got his eyebrow raised. Not in a judgmental arch, more like an arch of expectation. If he's waiting for an explanation, his puny human lungs can't hold their breath long enough for an answer.
Aside from not being his business, I can't exactly explain the details of my relationship with Galen-fake or otherwise. The truth is, I don't know where we can go from here. He ripped holes in my pride like buckshot. And did I mention he broke my heart?
He's not ~ Anna Banks

Oh my, I've just discovered what science shows us about our humble but spectacular place in the universe, and I have to say: it is thrilling and mind-boggling beyond all imaginings! It makes the Bible so puny and uninspired, and certainly less poetic, by comparison. I'm terribly sorry. I sincerely misunderstood so much. I almost wish there were a God so I could be punished for all the suffering I have obliviously caused in the world. But since there will be no cosmic punishment for me, I will spend what time I have left working in a family planning clinic in Latin America. Good day. ~ Julia Sweeney

Get off your horse, Jack."
"Why don't you just ride outta here, missy, and I'll forget this ever happened."
Willow's voice trembled with fury. "Get off your horse," she repeated. "Slow and easy."
Still grinning his contempt, he did as he asked.
"That's good. Now, real slow like, take your gunbelt off and toss it my way."
"Like hell!" A shot rang out and nicked a chunk of leather from his boot. Cursing, he unbuckled his gun and tossed it at her mare's feet.
"Now,strip them britches off, underwear, too," she ordered.
"You little shi-" Bang! Jack's hat whizzed off his head. He dropped his pants in a puddle over his boots, trying his best to shelter his privates from her view.
"My,my,Jack." Willow laughed humorlessly. "Is that puny thing you're trying to hide the same thing you were threatening me with?"
If looks could kill, Willow would have been dead and buried ten times over, then and there.
"Take them confounded boots off so's you can get your pants clear off," she ordered in mock exasperation.
He wheeled around, gaining a modicum of privacy while he complied.
"You're puny all over, Jack. You got the boniest bee-hind I ever did see. You sure you ain't picked up a worm somewheres?"
"You're gonna pay for this,you little slut!"
"Shut your filthy mouth and pick them pants off the ground and toss 'em over here at my horse's feet. Then you can put your boots back on."
He gave the pants a toss, put his boots ~ Charlotte McPherren

It was not simply that I frenziedly desired what I could not have. That was but a blunt and unrefined kind of suffering. I was condemned to be with her even in her very rejection of me. And how long and how slow and how long-drawn-out that rejection would be. Still temptation would follow where she was. Endlessly she would give herself to others taking me with her. Like an obscene puny familiar I would sit in the corners of bedrooms where she kissed and loved. She would make consort with my foes, she would adore those that mocked me, she would drink contempt for me from alien lips. And all the time my very soul would travel with her, invisible and crying soundlessly with pain. ~ Iris Murdoch

I'm going to fight my way out, I'm going to take all my equipment and all my wounded and as many dead as I can. If we can't get out this way, this Division will never fight as a unit again. ~ Oliver P. Smith

I wonder what the most intelligent thing ever said was that started with the word 'dude.' 'Dude, these are isotopes.' 'Dude, we removed your kidney. You're gonna be fine.' 'Dude, I am so stoked to win this Nobel Prize. I just wanna thank Kevin, and Turtle, and all my homies.' ~ Demetri Martin

I lean all my weight on the porcelain ledge, I draw my face closer until it touches the mirror. The eyes, nose, and mouth disappear. Nothing is left. Brown wrinkles show on each side of the feverish swelled lips, crevices, mole holes. A silky, white down covers the great slopes of the cheeks, two hairs protrude from the nostrils: it is a geological embossed map. And, in spite of everything, this lunar world is familiar to me. I cannot say I recognize the details. But the whole thing gives me an impression of something seen before which stupefies me: I slip quietly off to sleep. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

All my wife and I do is fight about sex. The other night, we really had it out. Well, I'll put it this way - I had it out. ~ Rodney Dangerfield

when
he left,
he
packed up
all my
poetry
&
took it
with
him. ~ Amanda Lovelace

All my life, men have told me I wasn't pretty enough - even the men I was dating. And I'd be like, 'Well, why are you with me, then?' It's always been men putting me down just like my dad. To this day when someone says I'm cute, I can't see it. I don't see it no matter what anybody says. ~ Lil' Kim

His presence in my waking world stirred all my senses. Still in slow motion, I kept walking, warmed wherever his eyes touched me. When I finally dropped eye contact, the world caught up with me
or the other way around. ~ Gwen Hayes

At this point he quit, right in the middle of an important and promising piece of work. He now saw his colleagues partly as relentless, obsessive public prosecutors and security chiefs of logic, and partly as opium eaters, addicts of some strange pale drug that filled their world with visions of numbers and abstract relations. "God help me," he thought, "surely I never could have meant to spend all my life as a mathematician? ~ Robert Musil

I am afraid that all the grace that I have got of my comfortable and easy times and happy hours, might almost lie on a penny. But the good that I have received from my sorrows, and pains, and griefs, is altogether incalculable ... Affliction is the best bit of furniture in my house. It is the best book in a minister's library. ~ Charles Spurgeon

Without a word or hesitation, Pain took the mop from Nick. Suffering moved to pick up glass.
"Wow. Where have you two been all my life?"
Pain quirked and eyebrow as he mopped the floor.
"Walking hand in hand with you. Haven't you noticed? ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

In all my work I like to convey the fact that I like cooks, that it's noble toil and that it is hard. ~ Rocco DiSpirito

All my life, I've always waited for signs. Like with art, like with everything. I've waited for things to fall into place and to feel right, to feel like the universe had given me its permission and its blessing.
But maybe you never really get that, or maybe only some of us do, if we're lucky, if we're born to the right people in the right circumstances at the right time, and even then, maybe not. And the rest of us--the world will tell you over and over you aren't good enough, in as many ways as it knows how. Maybe you have to fight for your place in it no matter what, no matter who you are. ~ Kelly Loy Gilbert

I ought not to have listened to her,' he confided to me one day. 'One never ought to listen to the flowers. One should simply look at them and breathe their fragrance. Mine perfumed all my planet. But I did not know how to take pleasure in all her grace. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

I wish to thank Steinway for its wonderful pianos which I've been privileged to play in all my concerts. There is no piano like it in the world. ~ Evgeny Kissin

It is true that I have known Straussians almost all my life. And the one thing I was taught about them from the earliest age is that they are wrong. ~ Robert Kagan

Resolved to live with all my might while I do live, and as I shall wish I had done ten thousand years hence. ~ Jonathan Edwards

For a very long time I worked and worked and worked, and then I looked up one day and all my friends were married with children. These married-with-children people were still my friends, but they'd become part of a community I wasn't in, a club I didn't belong to. Socially, their lives had completely changed, and they were busy. Their attention had turned to carpools and birthday parties and school tuition, and I was playing catch-up:"Wait, so we don't have game night anymore? You guys, who's free for dinner Saturday? Oh, absolutely no one? ~ Lauren Graham

I have been insane on the subject of moneymaking all my life. ~ Cornelius Vanderbilt

All my life I have been faithful to love. ~ Jaroslav Seifert

I wrote a comedy, which hopefully [Rick director] Curtiss Clayton will bring to the screen, that I thought was the antithesis of all my work. I thought it was light and sunshiny, and Mr. Clayton reminded me that it is the story of a woman kidnapped and forced to do things against her will, which is not what most people think of as light and sunshiny. ~ Daniel Handler

I need you, but I don't want you to fall in love with me."
"What makes you so sure that I will?"
I smiled, but there was no humour. "Because I'm fighting with all my strength to stop falling in love with you. ~ Jason Luke

The first time I saw her - my God - it was like I'd never seen another woman in all my life. It was the way she walked that caught my eye. She moved like water: fluid, determined. Everything else blended together in a blur and all I saw was her. The only solid in all that color. ~ Tarryn Fisher

You don't appreciate a faithful husband when you've got one,' said Tommy.
'All my friends tell me you never know with husbands,' said Tuppance.
'You have the wrong kind of friends,' said Tommy. ~ Agatha Christie

Bob," I asked. "What is all my stuff doing here?" "Oh," Bob said. "That. Well. Bianca got the idea, somewhere, that your stuff might explode if anyone messed around with it." I heard the wryness in my voice, though I didn't feel it. "She did, did she." "I can't imagine how." "I'm doubling your pay. ~ Jim Butcher

All my vocals were recorded at home, which was great for me. You can actually have a studio in a computer program called ProTools. I did half the record with ProTools. ~ David Coverdale

She's been around all my life and I've done nothing; stayed as far from her as I could because I don't like thinking about her pain. But that's chicken shit, because once a thing is known, it can't be unknown. He sits back and folds his hands ~ Chris Crutcher

I have had demanding jobs since I was 18 years old. I have had two sick days in all my working life. ~ Mariella Frostrup

This, children, is Kitty Pryde, who apparently feels the need to make a grand entrance.
I'm sorry. I was busy remembering to put all my clothes on. ~ Joss Whedon

The way of the Lord is the way of happiness. 'Wickedness never was happiness' [Alma 41:10]. Transgression never was happiness. Sin never was happiness. Disobedience never was happiness. The way of happiness is following the way of the Lord. I believe this with all my heart. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

Truth.
It feels cool, like water washing over my sticky-hot body. Cooling a heat that's been burning me up all my life.
Truth, I say inside my head again, just for that feeling. ~ Kathryn Stockett

Glory be!' said the Cabby. 'I'd ha' been a better man all my life if I'd known there were things like this. ~ C.S. Lewis