This is an entry that will consist of quotes I come across that I like. It will be updated whenever I find one that I like. New quotes can be found at the top. (Updated December 2020)
“What hurts is that I’m afraid that among those who laugh and sneer at New York are the descendants of some of the Europeans who learned how to be Americans in New York — mockers who now feel no need to repay or to pass on to others the good their parents and grandparents have received.”
“We do what we can, not what we think we should do or what we want to do.”
“Here, then, was a picture of Claude Shannon, circa 1955: a man — slender, agile, handsome, abstracted — who rarely showed up on time for work; who often played chess or fiddled with amusing machines all day; who frequently went down the halls juggling or pogoing; and who didn’t seem to care, really, what anyone thought of him or of his pursuits. He did what was interesting. He was categorized, still, as a scientist. But it seemed obvious that he had the temperment and sensibility of an artist.”
“Quaternions came from Hamilton . . . and have been an unmixed evil to those who have touched them in any way. Vector is a useless survival . . . and has never been of the slightest use to any creature.”
“Apparently, there was an S.O.B. in the solid-state group after all.”
“Did the hospital specialize in poets and singers, or was it that poets and singers specialized in madness?”
“The brick walls are there for a reason. They’re not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.”
“Just because you’re in the driver’s seat doesn’t mean you have to run people over.”
“. . . it appears that the whole of the conditions which enable a finite machine to make calculations of unlimited extent are fulfilled in the Analytical Engine. . . I have converted the infinity of space, which was required by the conditions of the problem, into the infinity of time”
“All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.”
“I noticed vaguely that I was getting so’s I could see some good in the life around me.”
“Because he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy.”
“Their hearts pound. Eardrums brushed taut by the overpressure ring in pain. The invisible train rushes away close over the rooftop. . . . They sit still as the painted dogs now, silent, oddly unable to touch. Death has come in the pantry door: stands watching them, iron and patient, with a look that says try to tickle me.”
“And she remembered how her mother said, When you’re big, Elizabeth, you’ll know hurt, but it won’t be the kind of hurt you think. It’ll be a hurt that can’t be reached with a curing kiss.”
“I am afraid to change, she said. I want to, and I am afraid. Will I get stout, do you think? All in a moment will I be another person, remembering Elizabeth as an acquaintance who’s dead?
I don’t know, he said, edging his finger into a pleat at the shoulder of her shirtwaist. Perhaps there isn’t any change, ever, in anything. Perhaps unchangeable things only pass.”
“It would be a place to run to, away from pain or sorrow or disappointment or fear, he thought. But I have no such need now. I have none of these things to run from. I must remember this place though. If ever there’s need to lose some plaguing thing, that will be the place to go.”
“Alsing often heard West talk about flying upside down. It seemed to mean taking larger risks, and the ways in which West used the phrase left Alsing in no doubt that flying upside down was supposed to be a desirable activity — the very stuff of a vigorous life.”
“What really annoys me, I mean what really galls me are the cops. Typical fascist pigs. They’re the same cops that killed the students at Kent State, that torture people in Korea and South Africa. Its the same mentality that build the concentration camps. But try and get these stuffed middle-class —-ooooo, it just infuriates me. We would be watching the news and be seeing the cops beating people over the head with their clubs and my mother and father would claim it wasn’t really happening or they were some sort of hippie degenerate commies. That’s the big thing with them. Everybody’s a commie. Talk about freedom and human rights and you’re a commie. All they want to talk about is the sacred right of the stockholder and how the police protect our property. . . She took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a moment, then looked at Harry. You know, if I were to tell them about this they’d say it didn’t happen, that I just made it up. She shook her head, It just amazes me how blind some people can be to the truth. It’s right there in front of them and they don’t see it. It just amazes me.”
“In the same vein, Jean-Paul Sartre, the French philosopher and writer, called genius “the brilliant invention of someone who is looking for a way out.””
“I must have looked blank. “No matter how perfect the thing,” he continued patiently, “the moment it’s created it begins to be destroyed.””
“Sometimes somebody would say in his presence, “Excuse me, I have to take a leak.” This was a way of saying that the speaker intended to drain liquid wastes from his body through a valve in his lower abdomen. And Trout would reply waggishly, “Where I come from, that means you’re about to steal a mirror.””
“One day I was talking to Cora. She prayed for me because she believed I was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.”
“There are about a billion ways a rocket launch can go wrong, and about one way it can go right.”
“The only way it would have become any different is if we had said to ourselves, “But those other people have it better, because they might live fifty years.” But that’s crazy. Why make yourself miserable saying things like, “Why do we have such bad luck? What has God done to us? What have we done to deserve this?” - all of which, if you understand reality and take it completely into your heart, are irrelevant and unsolvable. They are just things that nobody can know. Your situation is just an accident of Life”
“Because once a thing is set to happen, all you can do is hope it won’t. Or will—depending. As long as you live, there’s always something waiting, and even if it’s bad, and you know it’s bad, what can you do? You can’t stop living.”
“Goodness, no. I just love her to death. Well, everybody does. There isn’t anybody like Nancy. Do you know what Mrs. Stringer says?” said Jolene, naming her home-economics teacher. “One day she told the class, ‘Nancy Clutter is always in a hurry, but she always has the time. And that’s one definition of a lady.’”
“And I remember that my mother would say to me when I was in my really low moments she would say, “There’s Ang Lee and he didn’t make his first film until he was in his 30s,” and at the time she said, “You’re much younger than that so you still have plenty of time, and we will support you.”
And that meant so much to me to have my parents’ support. I don’t think I could have continued to push through with the first feature and the many shorts that I did without their support. Because you fall and you fall and you fall, and my parents are so important to me that if they didn’t say that, I might’ve just said, “No, I think I’m causing them too much pain pursuing what I want to pursue.” But because of Ang Lee, my mom could use him as a reference. It gave my whole family the hope that I can one day do the same.”