Share a Quote

[joeyjax]

Share a quote, any quote, that’s especially meaningful (or funny or whatever) to you and (if you choose to share) why.

I’ll go first.

"Tears are words that need to be written."
--Paulo Coelho

Meaningful to me because that’s how I felt after my father-in-law died. I struggled to express what I was feeling until I started putting them to paper. It was actually the first writing I’d done in years and in a strange way sparked my desire to start writing fiction.

 

[Voboy]

"Silence is often the best thing to say."

-Frank Herbert.

So true, in so many contexts. I often lament the fact that his son didn't heed it.

 

[ruddygore]

"We have met the enemy and they is us."

Pogo Possum

 

[Inkhorn]

"We have met the enemy and they is us."

Pogo Possum

"Don't take life so serious, son. It ain't nohow permanent."

Porkypine

 

[ElectricBlue]

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to.

Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.

"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.

Joseph Heller

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

.
“I don’t dream. How can I explain it? I myself am the dream.” — Ayumi Hamasaki
.

 

[gunhilltrain]

“Basically, that's why I wrote; to save my ass, to save my ass from the madhouse, from the streets, from myself.”
― Charles Bukowski

 

[Bramblethorn]

"Everybody here is smart. Distinguish yourself by being kind." - via Emily Bernhardt, original unknown to me.

 

[MichaelGH]

"Everybody here is smart. Distinguish yourself by being kind." - via Emily Bernhardt, original unknown to me.

That one reminds me of a Jeff Bezos speech.

"Sometimes you have to tell the truth so that they'll believe you when you lie later."
- Hate to be conceited but pretty proud for coming up with that.

 

[DarkWhispers2U]

License Plate

As viewed on a license plate while driving to work one morning:

UBU IBME

 

[Zeb_Carter]

The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness...This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector. - Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

 

[UsuallyPresent]

"Enough! .... or too much" - William Blake, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"

"Finite games play within rules. Infinite games play with rules." - James Carse, "Finite and Infinite Games"

 

[TarnishedPenny]

A long one, forgive me, but one very dear to my heart. From Kurt Vonnegut‘s Slaughterhouse-Five.

Billy came slightly unstuck in time, saw the late movie backwards, then forwards again. It was a movie about American bombers in World War II and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this: American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.

The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers , and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans though and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.

When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.​

 

[oggbashan]

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”
― Louis L'Amour

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it's always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins.”
― Neil Gaiman

“I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die.”
― Isaac Asimov

“If you want to be a writer-stop talking about it and sit down and write!”
― Jackie Collins

“To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.”
― Aristotle

“You either have to write or you shouldn't be writing. That's all.”
― Joss Whedon

 

[BelleCanzuto]

We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.
-- Robert Fulgham (though I saw it first via Carolyn Hax)

we spend all of our lives goin' out of our minds
looking back to our birth, forward to our demise
even scientists say, everything is just light
not created, destroyed but eternally bright
-- Live They Stood Up for Love

 

[joeyjax]

A long one, forgive me, but one very dear to my heart. From Kurt Vonnegut‘S Slaughterhouse-Five.

...The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.​

That was truly beautiful, if only we could. Thanks for sharing it. The whole thing was great.

 

[Erlikkhan]

“If you have a story that seems worth telling, and you think you can tell it worthily, then the thing for you to do is to tell it, regardless of whether it has to do with sex, sailors or mounted policemen.”

― Dashiell Hammett

 

[Vitriolhack]

As viewed on a license plate while driving to work one morning:

UBU IBME

Glad so see someone has a sens of humour!

 

[TarnishedPenny]

That was truly beautiful, if only we could. Thanks for sharing it. The whole thing was great.

Yeah. Vonnegut was a genius. But for its length, I'd want that on my tombstone.

 

[Polyacrylate]

"Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand."

Aldous Huxley

 

[TarnishedPenny]

"Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand."

Aldous Huxley

I like that.

 

[RandyD1369]

The society that separates its warriors from its scholars will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools. ~ attributed to Thucydides

 

[TarnishedPenny]

The society that separates its warriors from its scholars will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools. ~ attributed to Thucydides

That reminds me of one by John Gardner:

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.​

 

[Inkhorn]

“I commend my soul to any God that can find it.”

Moist von Lipwig in Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal

 

[Hypoxia]

"The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."
--Dorothy Parker, who also wrote:
"If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to."