Something Precious Quotes

The first truth about mortals is that none of us wants to die, but all of us are going to. It's in the name – mortals – the dying ones. If you don't understand that bit, you won't understand the rest of it. Here you are, some 5-hundred years old and you haven't yet figured out something that a 3 year old human is starting to understand. You see, as soon as we can even think, our brains are wrapping themselves around that One Truth, that one offensive, undeniable, irrevocable Truth. The rest of our existence grows up in the shadow of a dead leaning tree, which will at one point in the not unimaginable future fall and crush all that has grown up beneath it…



…Rescue them for what? Why from dying! Does that mean they won't die? No, it just means they won't die today. At best, we're talking about delaying the inevitable death sentence laid on our friends. Now how does this particular truth strike you, Mister Immortal…?



…And why? Why not merely stand now and fall sooner rather than later? Because there is something precious and sacred about rearguard action. It's an active retreat that's been repeated valiantly and ceaselessly from the beginning of mortal time. It just seems wrong to give up. It seems invalid and invalorous. More importantly, it's indecent to simply lie down and be overrun…



…Instead we rage against it and sing our defiance through bloodied teeth. Somehow, in our pointless battle, we find moment ~ J. Robert King

When we love somebody, whether it be a friend, a parent, a child, whether it be conjugal love or neighborly love, the beloved person always stands before us as something precious and noble in himself. ~ Dietrich Von Hildebrand

Secrets. Funny how, when you're about to be given something precious, something you've wanted for a long time, you suddenly feel nervous over taking it.
Everyone wants more than anything to be allowed into someone else's most secret self. Everyone wants to allow someone into their most secret self. Everyone feels so alone inside that their deepest wish is for someone to know their secret being, because then they are alone no longer. Don't we all long for this? Yet when it's offered it's frightening, because you might not live up to the desires of the one who bestows the gift. And frightening because you know that accepting such a gift means you'll want-perhaps be expected- to offer a similar gift in return. Which means giving your *self* away. And what's more frightening than that? ~ Aidan Chambers

To be strong is to understand weakness. To be weak is to have fears. To have fears is to have something precious to you. To have something precious to you is to be strong. ~ Tablo

If it isn't something precious, it doesn't serve as a price!" "But if it means I'm throwing away the most precious thing I have ... what's the good of it? ~ CLAMP

I was watching the first raindrops falling down on the porous ground. Each drop disappeared eagerly into the sand without any hesitations. The Earth, in turn, embraced it warmly like it has gotten back something precious that once belonged to it. I, somehow, thought that this particular image suited more our story than anything else ~ Ismaaciil C. Ubax

When you find something precious, you have to hold on to it with all your might and never let it go, whatever else you may lose. After all, there are lots of people who die without ever finding something that's really precious to them. ~ Novala Takemoto

Höderer: You don't love men, Hugo. You love only principles.
Hugo: Men? Why should I love them? Do they love me?
Höderer: Then why did you come to us? If you don't love men, you can't fight for them.
Hugo: I joined the party because its cause is just, and I shall leave it when that cause ceases to be just. As for men, it's not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.
Höderer: And I, I love them for what they are. With all their filth and and all their vices. I love their voices and their warm grasping hands, and their skin, the nudest skin of all, and their uneasy glances, and the desperate struggle each has to pursue against anguish and against death. For me, one man more or less in the world is something that counts. It's something precious. You, I know you now, you are a destroyer. You detest men because you detest yourself. Your purity resembles death. The revolution you dream of is not ours. You don't want to change the world, you want to blow it up. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

When you lost something precious, the memories of it became a tormenting reminder of what you could never have again. ~ Gena Showalter

Everyone has in him something precious that is in no one else. ~ Martin Buber

Creativity has three layers; the ultimate is the mystic: he lives in a climate of creativity. The poet, once in a while, brings some treasures from the beyond; the scientist, also very rarely, but whenever he can visit the ultimate he brings something precious to the world. But one thing is certain - mystic, scientist or poet, whatsoever comes into this world comes from the beyond. To bring the beyond is creativity. To bring the beyond into the known is creativity. To help God to be manifested in some form is creativity. ~ Rajneesh

Poetry feels like a country I visit without a passport, where I look around furtively, grab hold of something precious, and try to smuggle it back across the border. Any poem I get written down feels like contraband to me. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Blake could own me, he could hold something deep in me, but I knew I'd captured something precious in him too. Something he'd never given anyone else. ~ Meredith Wild

She poured out Swann's tea, inquired "Lemon or cream?" and, on his answering "Cream, please," said to him with a laugh: "A cloud!" And as he pronounced it excellent, "You see, I know just how you like it." This tea had indeed seemed to Swann, just as it seemed to her; something precious, and love has such a need to find some justification for itself, some guarantee of duration, in pleasures which without it would have no existence and must cease with its passing. ~ Marcel Proust

Radu and Mehmed had both given her something she could not give herself, had seen her in a way no one else had and no one else ever would. They looked at her, ugly Lada, vicious Lada, and saw something precious. And she looked at them and saw Radu, her brother, her blood, her responsibility, and Mehmed, her equal, the only man great enough to be worthy of her love. ~ Kiersten White

Not everything has the ability to break you and if something does then it was something precious to you. ~ Shweta Tale

I always thought that what Rajima did with those cast-off peels was a metaphor for how she dealt with her arranged marriage. She transformed those peels, with palm sugar for sweetness and tamarind for tang, into something precious. ~ Padma Lakshmi

I'm sorry, babe. I'm sorry I hurt you. I was stupid. I fucked up. I thought I was doing you a favor by keeping things light. I thought I was helping you when I left. But now, I see ... it was the biggest mistake of my life. You gave me something precious, you gave yourself to me, and I threw it away. I'm not makin' that mistake again, babe. Never again. ~ E.M. Abel

People talk about their heart being torn in two, but I always thought it was a metaphor, no more. But it really feels like that, like something precious at the core of me is being ripped into halves, neither of them complete. ~ Claudia Gray

Only sometimes when we pick and choose among the rules we discover later that we have set aside something precious in the process. ~ Helen Simonson

It wasn't until the drive home, while Ian gazed out the passenger window, that I remembered the old woman had described us as two young people in love. Was this what it was like to be in love? To know that you had something precious and live in constant terror it'd be taken away? ~ Megan Erickson

Never again mistrust me. Don't turn your anger unfairly towards me. Trust isn't something I bestow easily. It's something precious. You have it or you don't. Like faith, like love. It's blind. It has to be. If I trust, if I love, I'll always believe you; no matter the circumstances. ~ Cristiane Serruya

He cannot do anything deliberate now. The strain of his whole weight on his outstretched arms hurts too much. The pain fills him up, displaces thought, as much for him as it has for everyone else who has ever been stuck to one of these horrible contrivances, or for anyone else who dies in pain from any of the world's grim arsenal of possibilities. And yet he goes on taking in. It is not what he does, it is what he is. He is all open door: to sorrow, suffering, guilt, despair, horror, everything that cannot be escaped, and he does not even try to escape it, he turns to meet it, and claims it all as his own. This is mine now, he is saying; and he embraces it with all that is left in him, each dark act, each dripping memory, as if it were something precious, as if it were itself the loved child tottering homeward on the road. But there is so much of it. So many injured children; so many locked rooms; so much lonely anger; so many bombs in public places; so much vicious zeal; so many bored teenagers at roadblocks; so many drunk girls at parties someone thought they could have a little fun with; so many jokes that go too far; so much ruining greed; so much sick ingenuity; so much burned skin. The world he claims, claims him. It burns and stings, it splinters and gouges, it locks him round and drags him down…

All day long, the next day, the city is quiet. The air above the city lacks the usual thousand little trails of smoke from cookfires. Hymns rise from the temple. Fa ~ Francis Spufford

You, it's about bedroom eyes. Fuckin' great hair. Long legs. A tight, sweet pussy that gets so fuckin' wet, swear to Christ, every time I have it, don't know whether to bury my face or my dick in it. Your perfume on my sheets. The way you look at me when I tuck you in bed, like I gave you diamonds, something precious, something you wanna keep safe, something you want forever. Woman like you could get diamonds just crookin' her finger, so a woman like you shouldn't find a man tuckin' you in bed precious. But you do. It's also about you tellin' me you won't take it there with me but, I kiss you, you ignite. Some men like a game. Others like a challenge." His smile got wider. "You found a man who likes a challenge. ~ Kristen Ashley

I have no personal stake in these people, Jean-Claude, but they are people. Good, bad, or indifferent, they are alive, and no one has the right to just arbitrarily snuff them out."
"So it is the sanctity of life you cling to?"
I nodded. "That and the fact that every human being is special. Every death is a loss of something precious and irreplaceable. ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

He could lose himself in the copper warmth of her eyes. Except, no, this wasn't losing himself. This was finding something precious. ~ Melissa Tagg

Couldn't I try...Naturally, it wouldn't be a question of a tune...But couldn't I in another medium?...It would have to be a book: I don't know how to do anything else. But not a history book: history talks about what has existed - an existent can never justify the existence of another existent. My mistake was to try to resuscitate Monsieur de Rollebon. Another kind of book. I don't quite know which kind - but you would have to guess, behind the printed words, behind the pages, something which didn't exist, which was above existence. The sort of story, for example, which could never happen, an adventure. It would have to be beautiful and hard as steel and make people ashamed of their existence.

I am going, I feel irresolute. I dare not make a decision. If I were sure that I had talent...but I have never, never written anything of that sort; historical articles, yes - if you could call them that. A book. A novel. And there would be people who would read this novel and who would say: 'It was Antoine Roquentin who wrote it, he was a red-headed fellow who hung about in cafés', and they would think that about my life as I think about the life of the Negress: as about something precious and almost legendary. A book. Naturally, at first it would only be a tedious, tiring job, it wouldn't prevent me from existing or from feeling that I exist. But a time would have to come when the book would be written, would be behind me, and I think that a little of its light would fall o ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

When you find that special someone, you don't let go. You jump in. You fight for him. Love doesn'thappen when you want it to happen. It happens when it was meant to be. Your paths crossed when you least expected it, That's the beauty of love. ~ M. Clarke

No, we don't walk away. But when we're holding on to something precious, we run. We run and run, fast as we can, and we don't stop running until we are out from under the shadow. ~ Neil Cross

If you are wasting time and energy trying to be as much like everyone else as you can, you are throwing away something precious: your individuality. When you embrace your difference, your DNA, your look or heritage or religion or your unusual name, that's when you start to shine. ~ Bethenny Frankel

Niniane gave the Vampyre a lopsided smile then looked at her hands. She couldn't possibly tell Carling that she thought the Vampyre was something precious and horrific, an enigmatic tragedy like the ruins of a historic battlefield. ~ Thea Harrison

Dad was worried, I could tell. This was not a surprise. He was the kind of dad who loved you so much he hurt when you hurt, and when you lost something precious he lost it right with you. On ~ Kristen Ashley

When you're young, working in a warehouse or selling hot dogs, you look at work - at acting - as something precious. It gets you out of the stink. ~ Mickey Rourke

Well, then, say you're staying." Derry blinked against the moist gleam in his eyes. "Did I not just say it's where you belong, you great damn fool - " He choked off the sentence as he smothered Ez in a fierce hug and kissed his cheek. Ezra hugged him back and wheezed out an agreement to stay put. I couldn't help marveling at the sight; it was something rare in my own time, fearless physical affection between guys. In trying to label each other and the whole world, we'd lost something precious. ~ Tamara Allen

Food isn't like anything else. It's something precious. It's not a commodity. ~ Alice Waters

There is something precious in our being mysteries to ourselves, in our being unable ever to see through even the person who is closest to our heart and to reckon with him as though he were a logical proposition or a problem in accounting. ~ Rudolf Bultmann

With hard men intimacy is a thing of shame- and something precious. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Oh Moon, sweet, sweet Moon, I want to be naked on you. I want to be like a flower growing on your surface, unique and mysterious, at home in the wonder of you, as if my naked body would be something growing out of your soil, something precious, a lovely gift on your landscape. ~ James Lusarde

Sacrifice by its strictest definition takes something precious in exchange for the appeasement of a higher power. And abiding devotion to a cause that cannot be satisfied with a simple promise. Because an oath no matter how solemn asks nothing in return. While true sacrifice demands unspeakable loss. ~ Emily Thorne

My family was something precious, like jewelry, like a necklace you never take off. ~ Indira Ganesan

What made something precious? Losing it and finding it. ~ Celeste Ng

The correspondence testifies to the frailty of human longings, to the process of how something precious can turn fatal, a reality become illusion. We are reminded that love should be cherished when it comes your way, because no matter in what form it arrives, carrying no matter what baggage in its fragile beautiful hands, you should welcome it and protect it from the harshness of this world. ~ Karina Szczurek

All those years were now seeming like a betrayal of what she really was. While her body, her needs, her emotions–all of herself–had been turning like a sunflower after one man, all that time she had been holding in her hands something else, the something precious, offering it in vain to her husband, to her children, to everyone she knew–but it had never been taken, had not been noticed. But this thing she had offered, without knowing she was doing it, which had been ignored by herself and by everyone else, was what was real in her." (page 140) ~ Doris Lessing

Each day he lugged
a hunk of something precious
over to his boredom
and once or twice a week
when he was granted
the tiny grace of distance
he perceived that he laboured
as his fathers did
on someone else's pyramid
Thoughts of rebellion
Thoughts of injustice
New Year's resolutions
The seduction of a woman
All these he engraved
numbly letter by letter
Walther PPK-S
Serial No. 115142
stolen from one slave by another ~ Leonard Cohen

When we lost something precious, and we'd looked and looked and still couldn't find it, then we didn't have to be completely heartbroken. We still had that last bit of comfort, thinking one day, when we grow up, and we were free to travel around the counry, we would always go and find it in Norfolk ... And that's why years and years later, that day Tommy and I found another copy of that lost tape of mine in a town on the Norfolk coast, we didn't just think it pretty funny; we both felt deep down some tug, some old wish to believe again in something that was once close to our hearts. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

You build a wall to keep something unwanted out ... or to hold something precious in. ~ Jodi Picoult

Grady knew no one she thought less attractive than Mink, or more preposterous than Winifred: yet together and around them they made a clear, lovely, light: it was as if, out of their ordinary stone, their massive unshaped selves, something precious had been set free, a figure musical and pure: she could not but pay it homage. ~ Truman Capote

So this was it, she thought. So many times she'd wondered. True sacrifice was the surrender of one sacred thing in favor of keeping another. No matter how prudent or cautious one was, in the end something precious was lost. Whether the claim was in the name of family or duty or honor or truth, it exacted a terrible price. To her dismay, she did not feel the pride or pleasure that Bledig had claimed when he spoke of the sacrifices he had made for her and their children. For Alwen, sacrifice brought grief and guilt, and an unbearable sense of uncertainty. ~ Roberta Trahan

Among austere men intimacy involves shame
and is something precious. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

So one moment you have lost something precious, and then, in the very next moment, you find your mind is resting in a deep state of peace. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

In the rational light of day, he could tell himself that it was better this way, for both of them. The past was the past, nothing but memories buried, and the pain of losing something precious was but brief. Most of the time he could make himself believe it, but sometimes in the night, with no company but his own echoing thoughts, the past would sneak up on him. ~ Kyra Dune

No ... No ... We don't walk away but when we're holding on to something precious we run. We run away. We run as fast as we can. ~ The Doctor

I learned that sometimes you must be willing to lose something precious to you in order to escape and to endure - that no matter how unthinkable it might seem to make such sacrifice, all the same it must be done so that you may persist. ~ Galen Beckett

Jesus said, "Do not throw your pearls to pigs" (Matt. 7:6). By this we don't think he was calling some people pigs. He was saying, "Look - be careful that you do not give something precious to someone who, at best, cannot recognize its beauty, or at worst, will trample on it." Consider your feminine heart and beauty your treasure, your pearls. ~ John Eldredge

He touched her as though she were something precious and cared for. That was where the terrible power lay - not in his strength, not in some dark bespellment. His power existed because he could make her believe things she had cast away. Things that had cast her away.
Things beyond reaching.
If he could make her believe, she would be lost. She would never survive. The fear inside her head overwhelmed her. ~ Helen Kirkman

Gratitude is something you show in relation to others. ~ Dalai Lama

Something magical happened when I turned 25 - I looked in the mirror and was like, 'You might not get carded for an R-rated movie anymore.' Like I didn't have a little stick figure anymore. ~ Kristen Bell

It's perfectly clear to me that religion is a myth. It's something we have invented to explain the inexplicable. My religion and the spiritual side of my life come from a sense of connection to the humankind and nature on this planet and in the universe. I am in overwhelming awe of it all: It is so fantastic, so complex, so beyond comprehension. What does it all mean
if it has any meaning at all? But how can it all exist if it doesn't have some kind of meaning? I think anyone who suggests that they have the answer is motivated by the need to invent answers, because we have no such answers. ~ Hugh Hefner

You should love something while you have it, love it fully and without reservation, even if you know you'll lose it someday. We lose everything. If you're trying to avoid loss, there's no point in taking another breath, or letting your heart beat one more time. It all ends." His fingers curl around mine. "That's all life is. Breathing in, breathing out. The space between two breaths. ~ Leah Raeder

The theme of the collection this time is MONSTER. It's not about the typical Monster you find in sci-fi and video games. The expression of the Monsters I have made has a much deeper meaning. The craziness of humanity, the fear we all have, the feeling of going beyond common sense, the absence of ordinariness, expressed by something extremely big, by something that could be ugly or beautiful. In other words, I wanted to question the established standards of beauty. ~ Rei Kawakubo

What I'm hoping for is something that goes much, much further than the conservative enablers of dog-eat-dog capitalism putting on a puppet show of cleaning house. But that's probably not going to happen just yet ... ~ Charles Stross

If something is free, you're not the customer; you're the product. ~ Bruce Schneier

Under this law (Controlled Substances Act) a bureaucrat-usually not elected-decides whether or not a substance is dangerous and how dangerous that substance is. There's no more messing around with legislatures, presidents, or other bothersome formalities. When MDMA (ecstasy) was made illegal in 1986, no elected official voted on that. It was done "in house." People are now in jail because they did something that an administrator declared was wrong. ~ Peter McWilliams

If you don't do something differently, you'll ultimately be where you are now, only later. ~ Todd Duncan

One thing you'll learn as you get older, Simon, is that when people tell you something unpleasant about themselves, it's usually true. ~ Cassandra Clare

I pretty much drink a cup of coffee, write in my journal for a while, and then sit at a computer in my office and torture the keys. My one saving grace as a writer is that, if I'm having trouble with the novel I'm writing, I write something else, a poem or a short story. I try to avoid writer's block by always writing something. ~ Jess Walter

The most precious resource for businesspeople is not their time. It's their energy. Manage it well. ~ Robin Sharma

I could have picked up a stomach bug or eaten something which didn't agree with me." Wyatt's gaze dropped to my belly and then moved back up to my face to meet mine. "You didn't catch anything except my baby." I ~ Fiona Davenport

My commitment falters. "It comes out. Twenty-one washes." That's not what I intended to say. The plan was to put my hand on my hip and say, "It's my hair. I can do what I want with it." That's what brave, angsty teenagers say after they do something rebellious. But I'm pretty sure those teenagers didn't ever have to answer to someone like my mother. I'm also sure I'm neither brave nor angsty. ~ Kasie West

I got jury duty ... and I didn't want to go, so my friend said, "You should write something really really racist on the form when you return it. Like, you should put 'I hate chinks'." And I said, "I'm not going to put that on there just to get out of jury duty. I don't want people to think that about me." So instead I wrote, "I love chinks." And who doesn't? ~ Sarah Silverman

President Lyndon Johnson was very, very unpredictable. We never knew for sure what he is going to do next, and he preferred to have it that way; if he could do something as a complete surprise, that was his preference. ~ Clint Hill

I have now established myself in a most enviable manner. Those who require something of me must seek me out - I remain apart. I work for no one unless he is a high-ranking personality or a friend. ~ Francisco Goya

That something smelled delicious!' I screamed. ~ David Foster Wallace

I don't need to be ancient to be worth something. ~ Aimee Carter

When I find myself in a dreaded reading slump, nothing boosts me out of it faster than revisiting an old favorite. Old books, like old friends, are good for the soul. But they're not just comfort reads. No, a good book is exciting to return to, because even though I've been there before, the landscape is always changing. I notice something new each time I read a great book. As Italo Calvino wrote, "A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say." Great books keep surprising me with new things. ~ Anne Bogel

An epiphany enables you to sense creation not as something completed, but as constantly becoming, evolving, ascending. This transports you from a place where there is nothing new to a place where there is nothing old, where everything renews itself, where heaven and earth rejoice as at the moment of creation. ~ Abraham Isaac Kook

I do my podcast on Mondays for a specific reason. A lot of people go to work and don't like their jobs. If you give people something to laugh about, it's good. ~ Bill Burr

I'd love to do something on 'Mad Men' and 'Boardwalk Empire.' I really like period stuff. ~ Jeremy Allen White

She is not a musical girl nor, intrinsically, a joyful girl; but the music of the four Swedes shook something awake inside her, and when she heard it she felt airborne and strong. ~ Sonya Hartnett

I lost something magical in the process of growing up – my disillusionment. ~ Bauvard

The notion of making the television - the very thing that we allow into our living room and our kid's bedroom - something that's potentially dangerous, to me, is just so incredibly delicious that I can't tell you. ~ Rockne S. O'Bannon

As the pearl ripens in the obscurity of its shell, so ripens in the tomb all the fame that is truly precious. ~ Walter Savage Landor

There is something more than violence that Nasheenians taught me, and that is the awful brutality of speaking absolute truth. I propose that we begin to unmask ourselves. We speak the truth of ourselves. We tell them just how many of us there are. ~ Kameron Hurley

The boys are afraid of Opal, like she was always afraid of her mom. Something about how brief and direct she is. Maybe hypercritical too, like her mom was hypercritical. It's to prepare them for a world made for Native people not to live but to die in, shrink, disappear. She needs to push them harder because it will take more for them to succeed than someone who is not Native. It's because she failed to do anything more than disappear herself. She's no-nonsense with them because she believes life will do its best to get at you. Sneak up from behind and shatter you into tiny unrecognizable pieces. ~ Tommy Orange

Something inside of me won't let me play small ~ Akosua Dardaine Edwards

There were no such stipulations made when we discussed the agreement."
"Nor were they expressly not made. I am making them now. You received what you requested. Or, have you forgotten?" The words sent a shiver down her spine. He was standing behind her, and she could feel the warm kiss of his breath on her bare neck, sending a river of heat through her.
"I have not forgotten." The words came unbidden, and she closed her eyes.
He laid a hand on her arm and, with virtually no pressure, turned her face to him. When he met her eyes, the anger that had been there was gone, replaced by something much more complex. "Neither have I. And not for lack of trying."
Before she could begin to consider the meaning behind his words, he settled his mouth upon hers, robbing her of thought.
"I've tried to forget that kiss... and the carriage ride... and the fencing club... but you seem to have taken up residence... in my memory."
As he spoke between long, drugging kisses that consumed her senses, he guided Callie across the study and into a large chair near the fireplace. Kneeling in front of her, he cupped one cheek in a strong, warm hand, and met her gaze with a searing look. Shaking his head as though he couldn't quite understand what had come over him, he kissed her again, growling low in the back of his throat. Her hands found their way into his thick, dark hair as he caught her bottom lip in his teeth, nibbling and licking at it until she thought she might pe ~ Sarah MacLean

The fundamental aspect of video is not the image, even though you can stand in amazement at what can be done electronically, how images can be manipulated and the really extraordinary creative possibilities. For me the essential basis of video is the movement - something that exists at the moment and changes in the next moment. ~ Bill Viola

The great point in Christianity is the search for an independent content for spiritual life which, according to the insights of its founder, could be elevated, not by the forces of a world external to the soul of man, but by the revelation of a new world within his soul. Islam fully agrees with this insight and supplements it by the further insight that the illumination of the new world thus revealed is not something foreign to the world of matter but permeates it through and through.
Thus the affirmation of spirit sought by Christianity would come not by the renunciation of external forces which are already permeated by the illumination of spirit, but by a proper adjustment of man's relation to these forces in view of the light received from the world within. ~ Muhammad Iqbal

Eventually you will find something to put that energy into and you will be unstoppable. Even now with something you take no joy in, you do your task dutifuly, because it's all you can do. There's something beautiful in that, Collin. ~ Kiera Cass

life is made up of many comings and goings and for everything that we take with us,we must leave something behind ~ Herman Raucher

When you know too much information and you acquire it too easily, you tend to either use it in disagreeable ways, out of vanity, or you tend to be indiscriminate about it. I mean, in the old days, it was tricky, you had to go to various encyclopedias, you had to go to the library, maybe spend a day there, whatever. But in the end, if you found something, it was really exciting. Now you hit a couple of buttons and you get some information. Which, by the way, is almost always presented in that same goddamn mediocre style that characterizes the Internet for me. It is slightly deadening. ~ Norman Mailer

Nobody can teach me who I am. You can describe parts of me, but who I am - and what I need - is something I have to find out myself. ~ Chinua Achebe

People believed him. Everyone believed him. And when everyone believes something about you, it might as well be true. ~ Audrey Bell