Thoughtful Quotes

“I wasn't sure what I'd done to deserve such a wonderful gift, and I wasn't sure if it was insolent, but I thanked God for fallen angels.”
― Jamie McGuire, Providence

“...every time you make a decision to be less than what God wants for you, you're denying yourself some of God's blessings. It's up to you. You can live a life with God's blessings, or just exist with all the consequences of choosing wrong.”
― Terri Blackstock, Last Light

“Three is the number of those who do holy work;

Two is the number of those who do lover's work;

One is the number of those who do perfect evil

Or perfect good.”
― Clive Barker, Abarat

“What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table

“In war, the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich makes slaves of the poor.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Some people avoid thinking deeply in public, only because they are afraid of coming across as suicidal.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“A brain was only capable of what it could conceive, and it couldn't conceive what it had never experienced”
― Graham Greene, Brighton Rock

“Only one who takes over his own life history can see in it the realization of his self. Responsibility to take over one's own biography means to get clear about who one wants to be.”
― Jürgen Habermas

“Some of us were brought into this troubled world primarily or only to increase our fathers’ chances of not being left by our mothers, or vice versa.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Use and Misuse of Children

“Déjà vu. Déjà su. Déjà vécu.
Already seen. Already known. Already lived.”
― V. E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“A premature death does not only rob one of the countless instances where one would have experienced pleasure, it also saves one from the innumerable instances where one would have experienced pain.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Life sometimes reminds us that it is sometimes heartless by giving something or someone we really need to someone who does not need or even want them or it.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The most upsetting thing about Society’s attitude towards disabled people is that many millions of disabled people became disabled while trying to please Society, the very same bitch that secretly regards them as subhuman.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Use and Misuse of Children

“The man was rude, crude, and inappropriate. I was taken with him the moment I walked in the door, and I knew the first moment I saw him that it was going to be raw, it was going to be ugly, and I was going to enjoy every damn minute of it.”
― C.M. Stunich, Losing Me, Finding You

“At that time, I well remember whatever could excite - certain accidents of the weather, for instance, were almost dreaded by me, because they woke the being I was always lulling, and stirred up a craving cry I could not satisfy. One night a thunder-storm broke; a sort of hurricane shook us in our beds: the Catholics rose in panic and prayed to their saints. As for me, the tempest took hold of me with tyranny: I was roughly roused and obliged to live. I got up and dressed myself, and creeping outside the basement close by my bed, sat on its ledge, with my feet on the roof of a lower adjoining building. It was wet, it was wild, it was pitch dark. Within the dormitory they gathered round the night-lamp in consternation, praying loud. I could not go in: too resistless was the delight of staying with the wild hour, black and full of thunder, pealing out such an ode as language never delivered to man - too terribly glorious, the spectacle of clouds, split and pierced by white and blinding bolts.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“I lay in bed and thought about how easy it was to hurt a person. It didn't have to be physical. All you had to do was take a good hard kick at something they cared about.”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door

“Life is a process during which one initially gets less and less dependent, independent, and then more and more dependent.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“I'm going to do something bigger and better,
bigger and better
and bolder, but first,
I'm going to do something
smaller and worse.”
― JonArno Lawson

“Some people will hate you for not loving them.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“What if all I'd ever known was how it had been for the past three years - me being an unwanted outsider in my own family?

I might have turned out like Aphrodite, and I might still be letting my parents control me because I was hoping desperately that I would be good enough, make them proud, so that some day they would really love me.”
― P.C. Cast

“We are loved way more by some of the people who have not contacted us in the last twelve or so months than we are loved by some of those who contact us every twelve or so days … or hours.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The world's a headmaster who works on your faults. I don't mean in a mystical or Jesus way. More how you'll keep tripping over a hidden step, over and over, till you finally understand: Watch out for that step! Everything that's wrong with us, if we're too selfish or too Yessir, Nosir, Three bags full sir or too anything, that's a hidden step. Either you suffer the consequences of not noticing your fault forever or, one day, you do notice it, and fix it. Joke is, once you get it into your brain about that hidden step and think, Hey, life isn't such a shithouse after all again, then BUMP! Down you go, a whole new flight of hidden steps.
There are always more.”
― David Mitchell

“I write, write and write but I can't find words that define what I feel inside.”
― Azereth Skivel

“We are way less likely to love someone just because they love us than we are to hate someone just because they hate us.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Most sane human beings who are over the age of six usually act or react not as per what they genuinely feel or really think but in accordance with the expectations of those around them.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Use and Misuse of Children

“We Japanese, on the other hand, know our egos are nothing. We bend our egos, all of the time, and that is where we differ. That is the fundamental difference, Hatsue. We bend our heads, we bow and are silent, because we understand that by ourselves alone, we are nothing at all, dust in a strong wind, while the 'hakujin' believes his aloneness is everything, his separateness is the foundation of his existence. He seeks and grasps, seeks and grasps for his separateness, while we seek union with the Greater Life--you must see that these are distinct paths we are travelling, Hatsue, the 'hakujin' and we Japanese" (p. 176).”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

“I'm pretty sure I can say that no one in my family ever asked Demetrie what it felt like to be black in Mississippi, working for our white family. It never occurred to us to ask. It was everyday life. It wasn't something people felt compelled to examine.
I have wished, for many years, that I'd been old enough and thoughtful enough to ask Demetrie that question. She died when I was sixteen. I've spent years imagining what her answer would be. And that is why I wrote this book.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“Some people will love my books, some people will hate them, and others will regard them with odd curiosity. Who do I cherish the most of these people? All of them... Because they have given me their time and time is a precious and irreplaceable thing.”
― Ella Dominguez

“The light was leaving
in the west it was blue
The children's laughter sang
and skipping just like the stones they threw
the voices echoed across the way
its getting late

It was just another night
with the sun set
and the moon rise not so far behind
to give us just enough light
to lay down underneath the stars
listen to papas translations
of the stories across the sky
we drew our own constellations”
― Jack Johnson

“For a minute, we're just two people wondering why things are the way they are.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help