Saturday, October 4, 2008

The Basics

Okay, so I've got a LOT of fav quotes, but let's start with the basics...:
"High school wasn't a trial by fire or some ordeal that had to be survived. It was all a big joke. You just had to provide the laugh track."-Midnighters, Scott Westerfeld

"Not everything made you stronger. It was possible to survive, yet still be crippled for your trouble. Sometimes it was okay to run away, to skip the test, to chicken out. Or at least to get some help. "-Midnighters, Scott Westerfeld

"It's amazing how quickly nature consumes human places after we turn our backs on them. Life is a hungry thing. "-Peeps, Scott Westerfeld

"People only worry about the uncanny for about a week; that's the end of their attention span. After that, suspicions turn into shtick. "-Peeps, Scott Westerfeld

"Everyone in the world was programmed by the place they were born, hemmed in by their beliefs, but you had to at least try to grow your own brain "-Pretties, Scott Westerfeld

"Sometimes the facts in my head get bored and decide to take a walk in my mouth. Frequently this is a bad thing. "-So Yesterday, Scott Westerfeld

"Freedom has a way of destroying things"-Specials, Scott Westerfeld

"It doesn't take much convincing to make someone believe that they're better than someone else"-Specials, Scott Westerfeld

"I'd watched too many schoolmates graduate into mental institutions, into group homes and jails, and I knew that locking people up was paranormal - against normal, not beside it. Locks didn't cure; they strangled. " The Last Days, Scott Westerfeld

"Money's the same, whoever gives it to you. That was the point of money, after all: crisp and clean or wrinkled or disintegrated into quarters - a dollar was always worth a hundred cents. "-The Last Days, Scott Westerfeld

"I can't imagine anything worse than being required to have fun. "-Uglies, Scott Westerfeld

“Nothing’s more fun than being carried away.”-Stargirl, Jerry Spinelli

“Nobody has the time. The time cannot be owned. Time is free to everyone!” -Stargirl, Jerry Spinelli

“On the contrary, she is one of us. Most decidedly. She is us more than we are us. She is, I think, who we really are. Or were.” -Stargirl, Jerry Spinelli

“She’s anything but. She’s an earthling if there ever was one.” -Stargirl, Jerry Spinelli

“You’ll know her more by your questions than by her answers. Keep looking at her long enough. One day you might see someone you know.” -Stargirl, Jerry Spinelli

“How did this girl come to be? I used to ask myself. Sometimes I thought she should be teaching me. She seems to be in touch with something that the rest of us are missing.” -Jerry Spinelli

“You know, there’s a place we all inhabit, but we don’t much think about it, we’re scarcely conscious of it, and it lasts for less than a minute a day…. It’s in the morning, for most of us. It’s that time, those few seconds when we’re coming out of sleep but we’re not really awake yet. For those few seconds we’re something more primitive than what we are about to become. We have just slept the sleep of our most distant ancestors, and something of them and their world still clings to us. For those few moments we are unformed, uncivilized. We are not the people we know as ourselves, but creatures more in tune with a tree than a keyboard. We are untitled, unnamed, natural, suspended between was and will be, the tadpole before the frog, the worm before the butterfly. We are, for a few brief moments, anything and everything we could be. And then… and then–ah–we open our eyes and the days is before us, and–we become ourselves.” -Stargirl, Jerry Spinelli

“We were once so fresh, a dazzling snowfield. Let’s promise to each other that if we ever meet again we will never plow and push our new-fallen snow. We will not become slush. We will stay like this field and melt away together only in the sun’s good time.” -Love Stargirl, Jerry Spinelli

"Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain."-Harry Potter, JKRowling

"If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals."-Harry Potter, JKRowling

"Curiosity is not a sin.... But we should exercise caution with our curiosity... yes, indeed."-Harry Potter, JKRowling

"Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it."-Harry Potter, JKRowling

"It is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well."-Harry Potter, JKRowling

"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"-Harry Potter, JKRowling

"People would rather be wrong than be different."-Henry Jacobsen

"When all think alike, then no one is thinking."-Walter Lippman

"Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity."
-Eric Hoffer

"Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary."-Sir Cecil Beaton

"They will say you are on the wrong road, if it is your own."-Antonio Porchia

"If we are not ashamed to think it, we should not be ashamed to say it."-Marcus T. Cicero

"Every society honors its live conformists, and its dead troublemakers." ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

"Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity." ~Christopher Morley

"You don't get harmony when everybody sings the same note." ~Doug FloydSpokesman

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." ~Dr. Seuss

"Not all those who wander are lost." ~J.R.R. Tolkien

"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life." ~Winston Churchill

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." ~Mark Twain

"It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation." ~Herman Melville

"If you don't control your mind, someone else will." ~John Allston

"Be open-minded, but not so open-minded that your brains fall out." ~Stephen A. Kallis, Jr.

"I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education." ~Wilson Mizner

"When I was four years old they tried to test my IQ, they showed me this picture of three oranges and a pear. They asked me which one is different and does not belong, they taught me different was wrong." ~Ani Difranco

"Only dead fish swim with the stream." ~Malcolm Muggeridge

"If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing." ~Anatole France

"Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are." ~Quentin Crisp

"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal." ~Albert Camus

"The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone." ~Henrik Ibsen

"Public opinion... requires us to think other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits." ~Walter Bagehot, Biographical Studies, 1907

"And who can doubt that it will lead to the worst disorders when minds created free by God are compelled to submit slavishly to an outside will? When we are told to deny our senses and subject them to the will of others?" ~Galileo Galilei

"I believe in rules. Sure I do. If there weren't any rules, how could you break them?" ~Leo Durocher

"I try not to break the rules, but merely to test their elasticity." ~Bill Veeck

"To be a genuine individualist requires a great deal of strength and courage. It is never easy to chart new territory, to cross new frontiers, or to introduce subtle shadings to an established color." ~Toller Cranston

"You laugh at me because I am different; I laugh because you are all the same." ~Daniel Knode

"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well." ~Foe Ancis

"Until you've lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was." ~Margaret Mitchell

"2Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will."-Romans 12:2

“Music and silence combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music.”-Marcel Marceau

"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."-Mark Twain

"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it."-Sam Levenson

"The Willow that bends is stronger than the Oak that resists."-Chinese Proverb

"Knowledge is as dead as dry leaves unless your willing to accept it."-Kevin Crossly Holland, The Arthur Trilogy

"With great power comes great responsibility."-Uncle Ben, Spiderman


Okay, so I'm sorry if that was a LOT of quotes, but remember that more will come....

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Whoa...that's a lot of quotes. But you forgot my favorite:"All that glitters is not hovery."-Shay, Uglies, Scott Westerfeld. Hey, in Some Thoughts you said you hated Quotation Marks, but here they're like the theme! Get back 2 me. My aim screen name is westerfeldian101.

Anonymous said...

PS- Im amira-la from westerblog.