c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Westward on the high-hilled plainsWhere for me the world began, Still, I think, in newer veinsFrets the changeless blood of man....There, when hueless is the westAnd the darkness hushes wide,Where the lad lies down to restStands the troubled dream beside.There, on thoughts that once were mine,Day looks down the eastern steep,And the youth at morning shineMakes the vow he will not keep.
— A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad
He was good looking, "sort of distinguished when he wants to be", had a line, and was properly inconstant. In fact, he summed up all the romance that her age and environment led her to desire
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
The grass is full of ghosts tonight.' 'The whole campus is alive with them.' They paused by Little and watched the moon rise, to make silver of the slate roof of Dodd and blue the rustling trees. 'You know,' whispered Tom, 'what we feel now is the sense of all the gorgeous youth that has rioted through here in two hundred years.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
I was sent to a school with bosses for teachers- no Twain, only cane; check your dick you harry, no Dickens either, No Tom Sawyers no David Copperfields only Webster, master it for grammar, the Wren with a dash of Martini-Drink deep.
— Aporva Kala, Life... Love... Kumbh...
What was youth at best? A green, an unripe time, a time of shallow moods, and sickly thoughts.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
To help our youth abide by the principles involved in temple marriage, we must help them to understand that temple marriage is more than just a place where the ceremony occurs; it is a whole orientation to life and marriage and home. It is a culmination of building attitudes toward the Church, chastity, and about our personal relationship with God--and many other things. "Thus, simply preaching temple marriage is not enough. Our family home evenings, seminaries, institutes, and auxiliaries must build toward this goal, not by exhortation alone but by showing that the beliefs and attitudes involved in temple marriage are those which can bring the kind of life here and in eternity that most humans really want for themselves" (The Teachings of Harold B. Lee, p. 244).
— Harold B. Lee, The Teachings of Harold B. Lee
People get bitten. But I won't.' I found myself saying, 'You will, you will. These snakes don't know you find death inconceivable. They don't know you're young and strong and you think death applies to everyone but you. They will bite you and you will die.
— Don DeLillo, White Noise
In youth, the greatest success is to see the world from the eyes of the aged people and to feel exactly how they feel.
— Mehmet Murat ildan
We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow
— William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2
Who was it who said something about the Indians being argumentative, good soul, let him come to Haridwar and meet this bunch. Good for him too, if he adapts with age; for if after fifty you don't live the aspirations of the young, go away. Who needs spectacle snails salivating on the Soma of youth?
— Aporva Kala
A need for many candles may arise in every nation’s history to light up the darkness in the country. Most of the time, the youth is the very candles themselves!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
We'll squeeze every second that we can from our lives, because we're young, and we have plenty of years to grow. We'll grow until we're braver. We'll grow until our bones ache and our skin wrinkles and our hair goes white, and until our hearts decide, at last, that it's time to stop.
— Lauren DeStefano, Sever
So often, the discarded love of youth is desperately yearned for in maturity.
— Wayne Gerard Trotman
The Three of them were beautiful, in the way all girls of that age are beautiful. It can't be helped, that sort of beauty, nor can it be conserved; it's a freshness, a plumpness of the cells, that's unearned and temporary, and that nothing can replicate. None of them was satisfied with it, however; already they were making attempts to alter themselves into some impossible, imaginary mould, plucking and pencilling away at their faces. I didn't blame them, having done the same once myself.
— Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
Beauty is only to be admired, only to be loved - to be harvested carefully and then flung at a chosen lover like a gift of roses. It seems to me, so far as I can judge clearly at all, that my beauty would be used like that...
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned
The fruit of youth or of the grape, the transitory magic of the brief passage from darkness to darkness - the old illusion that truth and beauty were in some way entwined.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned
The languor of Youth - how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost!
— Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder
One of the few things my father says when he's had a few that I agree with is that kids don't have much balls in this generation. Some of them are trying to start the revolution by bombing U.S. government washrooms, but none of them are throwing Molotov cocktails at the Pentagon.
— Stephen King, Rage
It was a strange business and it made a sad and curious impression on me; everything that had belonged to me in these earlier years of my life left me, was alien and lost to me. I suddenly saw how sad and artificial my life had been during this period, for the loves, friends, habits and pleasures of these years were discarded like badly fitting clothes. I parted from them without pain and all that remained was to wonder that I could have endured them so long.
— Hermann Hesse, Gertrude
To love and be loved, that is the miracle of youth
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
I damned myself for my earlier romanticism. That Croaker who had come north, so thoroughly bemused by the mysterious Lady, was another man. A stripling, filled with the foolish ignorances of youth. Yeah. Sometimes you lie to yourself just to keep going.
— Glen Cook, The Black Company
She blinked, sat up, and saw Chris in the bathroom doorway. He'd just gotten out the shower. His hair was damp, and he was dressed only in his briefs. The sight of his thin, boyish body - all ribs and elbows and knees - pulled at her heart, for he looked so innocent and vulnerable. He was so small adn fragile that she wondered how she could ever protect him, and renewed fear rose in her.
— Dean Koontz, Lightning
Youth is a terrible thing: it is a stage trod by children in buskins and fancy costumes mouthing speeches they've memorized and fanatically believe but only half understand
— Milan Kundera, The Joke
Whenever a young thing wants to be free minus serious thought, she gets pregnant and then gets married. Voilà!
— Rita Mae Brown, Six of One
So now we are young still but a better sort of young.
— Penelope Lively, How It All Began
Tyler rolls out of bed, sniffs the armpits of yesterday's T-shirt, tosses it aside, gets another out of the drawer. His dad sometimes asks him why he sets his alarm so early -- it's summer vacation, after all -- and Tyler can't seem to make him understand that every day is important, especially those filled with warmth and sunlight and no particular responsibilities. It's as if there's some little voice deep inside him, warning him not to waste a minute, not a single one, because time is short.
— Stephen King, Black House
such wanton, wild, and usual slips/ As are companions noted and most known/ To youth and liberty.
— William Shakespeare
...I always thought youth were idealists - now, I'm not so sure - I'm more idealistic now then at 17...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
The dreams of youth. So noble. So good. And heavy dreamsthey were- made frail only by their own weight.
— James Michael Pratt, The Lighthouse Keeper
People beleived that the most devastating part of a war are the corpses with their guts out in the open, the puddles of blood, and all that you can capture at first glance. But sometimes the horror is off to the side, in the lost look on the face of a woman who's just been raped, as she limps away alone within the ruins, trying to keep her head down. Gerda and Capa were not aware of this yet. They were too young. And that was their first conflict. They still believed war had its romantic side.
— Susana Fortes
If one keeps on adapting, their contribution will be limited. Theycan only imitate but never create.
— Ravindra Shukla, A Maverick Heart: Between Love and Life
Not pretty exactly, but gleaming with the loveliness of youth.
— Juliet Blackwell, Secondhand Spirits
The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is just a little bit extra.
— Kent Healy, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Extraordinary Teens: Personal Stories and Advice from Today's Most Inspiring Youth
May the magic within you shine through!
— Penny Ross
There are two powers in this world which cannot be matched. Beauty and Youth. Buy the beauty and imprison the youth. Give the best models, actress, and girls from town and nail them. I do not care how much it costs.
— Ravindra Shukla, A Maverick Heart: Between Love and Life
Lust is the best of all the deadly sins.
— Colleen Hoover, Hopeless
Now that lilacs are in bloomShe has a bowl of lilacs in her roomAnd twists one in her fingers while she talks."Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not knowWhat life is, you who hold it in your hands"; (slowly twisting the lilac stalks)"You let it flow from you, you let it flow,And youth is cruel, and has no remorseAnd smiles at situations which it cannot see."I smile, of course,And go on drinking tea.
— T.S. Eliot, Prufrock and Other Observations
While one is young is the time to investigate, to experiment with everything. The school should help its young people to discover their vocations and responsibilities, and not merely cram their minds with facts and technical knowledge; it should be the soil in which they can grow without fear, happily and integrally.
— Jiddu Krishnamurti, Education and the Significance of Life
‎She was not a little girl heart-broken about him; she was a grown woman smiling at it all, but they were wet smiles.
— J.M. Barrie
The sun, like a golden knife, was steadily paring away the edge of the shade beside the walls.The streets were enclosed between old, whitewashed walls. Everywhere were peace and stillness, as though all the elements were obeying the sacred law of calm and silence imposed by the blazing heat. It seemed as though mystery was everywhere and my lungs hardly dared to inhale the air.
— Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl
O youth! The strenght of it, the faith of it, the imagination of it! (...) I think of her with pleasure, with affection, with regret - as you would think of some one dead you have loved. I shall never forget her.... Pass the bottle.
— Joseph Conrad, Youth
Oh, those warm days of stumbling words; blinded eyes, embracing in sweet slow dances and sipping courage from a bottle for sneaking kisses.
— Kellie Elmore, Magic in the Backyard
She was dry, dry inside like a ten-thousand-year-old tomb, with the last of her life barely dampening the dirt underneath.
— Kat Rosenfield, Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone
Each night when she prepared for bed she smeared her face with some new unguent which she hoped illogically would give back the glow and freshness to her vanishing beauty.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned
What Douglas had once seen as the attractive over-confidence of youth, now looked more like unyielding selfishness.
— Len Deighton
Have you come over time to think that you know more now than you did when you were young, know less now than when young, know now there is so much more to know than you knew there was to know when young that it is moot whether you think you knew more then than now or less, or do you now know that you never knew anything at all and never will and only the bluster of youth persuaded you that you did or would?
— Padgett Powell, The Interrogative Mood
Yeah, I am crazy. Ok. May be I am. But I prefer to be crazy than being a dummy.
— Ravindra Shukla, A Maverick Heart: Between Love and Life
Beauty lies in one’s heart and sex lies in one mind. It all depends on where your belief lies.
— Ravindra Shukla, A Maverick Heart: Between Love and Life
Orsino: For, boy, however we do praise ourselves,Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,More longing, wavering, sooner lost and won,Than women's are. ...For women are as roses, whose fair flow'rBeing once display'd doth fall that very hour.Viola: And so they are; alas, that they are so!To die, even when they to perfection grow!
— William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Ignoring somebody’s mistakes in life from a powerful position makes you a saint, but the same act (whose intentiondoes not matter), if carried out from a weak position, will make you a coward or helpless.
— Ravindra Shukla
You cannot earn $10 million. Nobody earns millions. You can rob, you can steal, or you can make $10 million in an IPO, but never earn so much. So just forget all this saving and consulting bullshit.
— Ravindra Shukla, A Maverick Heart: Between Love and Life
Here was a place where real things were going on. Here was a scene of vital action. Here was a place where anything might happen. Here was a place where something would certainly happen.
— Winston S. Churchill, My Early Life, 1874-1904
America runs on credit darling. Why do you worry, our credit will take care of this payment. It is not saving or cash in hand that matters. We do not need cash, we just need potential. The system in the US believes in potential. That isthe model of the future. You need not be born rich, but you should be in the league that can make it big.
— Ravindra Shukla, A Maverick Heart: Between Love and Life
Do not ridicule my effort. Everybody likes a comedian’s company. That’s why they give them tips after watching theshow, not their hard earned money for a mutual fund investment. Give him tips, not your heart. I guess youunderstand the difference.
— Ravindra Shukla, A Maverick Heart: Between Love and Life
What about young age? You will be miserable all through your 15 years to reach that goal of $10 million. After 50years, even if you pay a million to get back a week of your time at 35, you will never get that. Your beer will taste very different when you are at 50 from how it tasted at 30.
— Ravindra Shukla, A Maverick Heart: Between Love and Life
Never Give up Dreams
— Mohammad Bahareth, Isay: Universal Technology
Things aren't what they used to be' is the rallying cry of small minds. When men say things used to be better, they invariably mean they were better for them, because they were young, and had all their hopes intact. The world is bound to look a darker place as you slide into the grave.
— Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold
Youth is only being in a way like it might be an animal. No, it is not just like being an animal so much as being like one of these malenky toys you viddy being sold in the streets, like little chellovecks made out of tin and with a spring inside and then a winding handle on the outside and you wind it up grrr grrr grrr and off it itties, like walking, O my brothers. But it itties in a straight line and bangs straight into things bang bang and it cannot help what it is doing. Being young is like being like one of these malenky machines.
— Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
I feel sad for him. Sad for the boy bound to the killer. I am sad for the youth betrayed by their leaders for symbols and flags and war and power.
— Susan Abulhawa, Mornings in Jenin
I didn’t know then that young girls were a sort of poison, infectious to the man of age; and that men of age justly take woman of age to cure themselves of the diseases of youth.
— Roman Payne
Only LEFT and RIGHT hand can hold each other and walk together...Only RIGHTs are enough to say bye.Nobody is perfect in the world, if you Love the perfection of his/her imperfections then LOVE exists.
— Anuj Tiwari, Journey Of Two Hearts! -will be cherished forever
The wide world was changing, and she wanted a different place in it.Not just wanted, but felt she deserved. If the world didn't owe her a living, as her mother repeatedly warned her, it owed her a break. She had a strong sense that a better, more exciting, more rewarding life than that which had been the lot of her parents and grandparents was hers by right. In this she was guilty of nothing more serious than the arrogance of youth, from which every generation suffers and by which it distinguishes itself from the preceding one.
— James Robertson, And the Land Lay Still
It seemed unreasonable, unfair, that a woman so young and beautiful should be so exhausted. Of course, it was neither unreasonable nor unfair. Exhaustion pays no mind to age and beauty. Like rain and earthquakes and hail and floods.
— Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance
You know what I miss the most about my youth? My gullibility. It's nice believing in everything and everyone. It makes you feel secure, but be strong and depend more on yourself and you'll be ready for disappointments. That's the best advice I can offer you.
— V.C. Andrews, Heart Song
The thought came to me that perhaps it is the loving that counts, not the being loved in return - that perhaps true loving can never know anything but happiness.
— Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
I don't think my mum ever understood my love of Doctor Who. Surely her strongest memory would have been me, standing at the top of the stairs, crying about how the "jelly men" were going to get me? Sorry, Mum, for those sleepless nights, but it was with good reason they called it Terror of the Zygons.
— Steve Berry, Behind the Sofa: Celebrity Memories of Doctor Who
My message for all my readers is: Don't believe in those who claim that youth is a passing disease you just have to get rid of. Don't believe, that maturity is a goal and an asset to go after. Nothing will ever be ready, that is what makes life interesting. Read!
— Tuula Kallioniemi
Due to some dim but irresistible notion of the way things are, it is simply not possible, out of order, not apprpriate to the situation at hand, if, within the circle of those who are experienced and advanced in years, the young person declaims ethical generalities. Young people will again and again find themselves in a situation that is so irritating, astounding, and incomprehensible to them that their word falls on deaf ears, while the word of an older person is heard and has weight even though its content is no different at all. It will be a sign of maturity or immaturity whether this experience leads them to understand that what is at stake here is not the stubborn self-satisfaction of old age, or the anxious effort to keep youth in their place, but the pereservation or violation of an essential ethical law. Ethical discourse needs authorization, which youth are simply not able to bestow upon themselves, even if they speak out of the purest pathos of their ethical conviction. Ethical discourse does not merely depend on the correct content of what is said, but also on the speaker being authorized to say it. Its validity depends not only on what is said, but also on who says it.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics
In some country patriotism is shown only for cricket. When it comes to responsibilities’ they started blaming their own country, politician, people, and others. And ends up praising the western.
— Vivek Thangaswamy
I just wanted things to be simple. I didn't understand why things had to be so complicated for all the grown ups. And I decided that if growing up meant things got confusing, then I would stay little forever. I would stay simple. But unfortunately everything around me did its best not to be. The world liked to be complex. It liked to twist, to distort. To bleed you dry of whatever feeling you could muster while still letting you hold on to your sanity so that you could experience heartache at its prime. I didn't know how cold the world could be when I was eleven. If I would have known...maybe I would have packed a sweater.
— A.L. Collins, Twined
He seems, in manner and rank, above the class of young men who take that turn; but I remember hearing them say, that the little theatre at Fairport was to open with the performance of a young gentleman, being his first appearance on any stage.—If this should be thee, Lovel!—Lovel? yes, Lovel or Belville are just the names which youngsters are apt to assume on such occasions—on my life, I am sorry for the lad.
— Walter Scott, The Antiquary
For, if after fifty you don't live the aspirations of the young, go away. Who needs needs spectacled snails, salivating on the Soma of youth.
— Aporva Kala, Life... Love... Kumbh...
The city centre was still crawling with Christmas shoppers looking to add to their already burgeoning piles of gifts. To Scott they were like ants at a picnic, teeming from store to store, trailing oversized carrier bags and infants behind them as they went. Scott felt alien in this environment; pulling up his hood he hurried through the crowds, dodging pushchairs, lit cigarettes and charity collection tins.
— R.D. Ronald, The Elephant Tree
Scarlet, before you go through this, I want to remind you of September 7th, 1988. It was the first time that I saw you. You were reading Less Than Zero, and you were wearing a Guns 'n' Roses t-shirt. I'd never seen anything so perfect. I remember thinking that I had to have you or I'd die... then you whispered that you loved me at the homecoming dance, and I felt so peaceful... and safe... because I knew that no matter what happened, from that day on, nothing can ever be that bad... because I had you. And then I, uh... I grew up and I lost my way. And I blamed you for my failures. And I know that you think you have to do this today... but I don't want you to. But I guess... if I love you, I should let you move on.
— Mike      O'Donnell
It is vain to try to sacrifice once for all one'syouthful ideals.
— Paul Bourget
Sean was young, vibrant, capable. Life hadn't even begun to digest his hope.
— Marianne de Pierres, Shelf Life: Fantastic Stories Celebrating Bookstores
But look behind you, Mary.' She nodded towards the dais. 'One of the musicians seems to be trying to attract your attention.'It was Peter. He was standing on the dais smiling across at me. My delight at seeing him was such that I could not disguise it - did not try to disguise it.
— Jennifer Paynter, Mary Bennet
In those days, we imagined ourselves as being kept in some kind of holding pen, waiting to be released into our lives. And when the moment came, our lives -- and time itself -- would speed up. How were we to know that our lives had in any case begun, that some advantage had already been gained, some damage already inflicted? Also, that our release would only be into a larger holding pen, whose boundaries would be at first undiscernible.
— Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending
My wisdom is as spurned as chaos. What is my nothingness, compared to the amazement that awaits you?
— Arthur Rimbaud
The achievement of maturity, psychologically speaking, might be said to be the realization and acceptance that we simply cannot live independently from the world, and so we must live within it, with whatever compromises that might entail.
— Paul Murray, Skippy Dies
Youth is like having a big plate of candy. Sentimentalists think they want to be in the pure, simple state they were in before they ate the candy. They don't. They just want the fun of eating it all over again. The matron doesn't want to repeat her girlhood, she wants to repeat her honeymoon. I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
the much-sought prize of eternal youthIs just arrested growth.
— Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology
No worse fate can befall a young man or woman than becoming prematurely entrenched in prudence and negation.
— Knut Hamsun
It's like the day you realize dolls are dolls. I pick up my old self and I see it's silly. A toy I've played with too often. It's a little sad, like an old golliwog at the bottom of the cupboard. Innocent and used-up and proud and silly.
— John Fowles, The Collector
Why are we asked to make the most important decisions of our lives when we are so young, and so prone to mistakes?
— Samuel Park, This Burns My Heart
In a moment, when I throw myself down among the absinthe plants to bring their scent into my body, I shall know, appearances to the contrary, that I am fulfilling a truth which is the sun's and which will also be my death's. In a sense, it is indeed my life that I am staking here, a life that tastes of warm stone, that is full of the signs of the sea and the rising song of the crickets. The breeze is cool and the sky blue. I love this life with abandon and wish to speak of it boldly: it makes me proud of my human condition. Yet people have often told me: there's nothing to be proud of. Yes, there is: this sun, this sea, my heart leaping with youth, the salt taste of my body and this vast landscape in which tenderness and glory merge in blue and yellow. It is to conquer this that I need my strength and my resources. Everything here leaves me intact, I surrender nothing of myself, and don no mask: learning patiently and arduously how to live is enough for me, well worth all their arts of living.
— Albert Camus
Positively, the delinquent behavior seems to speak clearly enough. It asks for what we can’t give, but it is in this direction we must go. It asks for manly opportunities to work, make a little money, and have self-esteem; to have some space to bang around in, that is not always somebody’s property; to have better schools to open for them horizons of interest; to have more and better sex without fear or shame; to share somehow in the symbolic goods (like the cars) that are made so much of; to have a community and a country to be loyal to; to claim attention and have a voice. These are not outlandish demands. Certainly they cannot be satisfied directly in our present system; they are baffling. That is why the problem is baffling, and the final recourse is to a curfew, to ordinances against carrying knives, to threatening the parents, to reformatories with newfangled names, and to 1,100 more police on the street.
— Paul Goodman, Growing Up Absurd
Just as a cooling pot gives off heat, so all through youth and adolescence we give off calories of virtue. That's what's called ingenuousness.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
My thought is that the average adjusted boy is, if anything, more humanly wasted than the disaffected. So let us go on to discuss his stupidity, his lack of patriotism, his sexual confusion, and his lack of faith.
— Paul Goodman, Growing Up Absurd
When my dad was young he shot marbles. When I was young I played Marble Madness on my Nintendo Entertainment System.
— Kevin James Breaux
The challenge to which these two groups responded was the interdependence of human kind, North and South, Rich and Pool, Industrialised and Rural, in the aftermath of the Second World War. To the United World College group it called for the establishment of a new kind of school where young people of all nations and backgrounds could live and learn together at the most formative period of their adolescence and so form those ties of friendship and understanding that would last them through their lives
— Prince Charles HRH the Prince of Wales
Early youth is a baffling time. The present moment is nice but it does not last. Living in it is like waiting in a junction town for the morning limited; the junction may be interesting but some day you will have to leave it and you do not know where the limited will take you. Sooner or later you must move down an unknown road that leads beyond the range of the imagination, and the only certainty is that the trip has to be made. In this respect early youth is exactly like old age; it is a time of waiting before a big trip to an unknown destination. The chief difference is that youth waits for the morning limited and age waits for the night train.
— Bruce Catton, Waiting for the Morning Train
She is too absorbed in the difficulties of being seventeen to want to hear the confusions of forty-four.
— Barbara Kingsolver, Homeland and Other Stories
Because when the night gets here, I’ll be the youngest I’ll ever be again, so I will laugh and celebrate relative youth.
— Darnell Lamont Walker
I had no idea how free we were. That's how free I was.
— Brendan Cowell, How It Feels
Revolution and youth are closely allied. What can a revolution promise to adults? To some it brings disgrace, to others favor. But even that favor is questionable, for it affects only the worse half of life, and in addition to advantages it also entails uncertainty, exhausting activity and upheaval of settled habits.Youth is substantially better off: it is not burdened by guilt, and the revolution can accept young people in toto. The uncertainty of revolutionary times is an advantage for youth, because it is the world of the fathers that is challenged. How exciting to enter into the age of maturity over the shattered ramparts of the adult world!
— Milan Kundera
When one was full of energy and enthusiasm the world was an apple, the future was way beyond the horizon and only the present was pertinent.
— Jeff Tikari
This is the Supernova," he said. "Any time he gets worked up, his body bursts into white-hot light that disintegrates anything around him. That's how I felt when I was growing up. Everything I had inside of me, I just wanted to turn loose. Felt like my heart had a nuclear reactor melting down inside of it. That's how you feel when you're young and you want everything.
— Drew Magary, The Postmortal
Who has a right to tell me I have no gift, no talent, no passion ...' he murmured. 'Why do people say those things to you when youre young? Doesn't seem fair, does it?''No, darling, it's not fair,'she said. 'But the mystery is why you listen.
— Anne Rice, The Wolf Gift
Oh I could be out, rollicking in the ripeness of my flesh and others’, could be drinking things and eating things and rubbing mine against theirs, speculating about this person or that, waving, indicating hello with a sudden upward jutting of my chin, sitting in the backseat of someone else’s car, bumping up and down the San Francisco hills, south of Market, seeing people attacking their instruments, afterward stopping at a bodega, parking, carrying the bottles in a paper bag, the glass clinking, all our faces bright, glowing under streetlamps, down the sidewalk to this or that apartment party, hi, hi, putting the bottles in the fridge, removing one for now, hating the apartment, checking the view, sitting on the arm of a couch and being told not to, and then waiting for the bathroom, staring idly at that ubiquitous Ansel Adams print, Yosemite, talking to a short-haired girl while waiting in the hallway, talking about teeth, no reason really, the train of thought unclear, asking to see her fillings, no, really, I’ll show you mine first, ha ha, then no, you go ahead, I’ll go after you, then, after using the bathroom she is still there, still in the hallway, she was waiting not just for the bathroom but for me, and so eventually we’ll go home together, her apartment, where she lives alone, in a wide, immaculate railroad type place, newly painted, decorated with her mother, then sleeping in her oversized, oversoft white bed, eating breakfast in her light-filled nook, then maybe to the beach for a few hours with the Sunday paper, then wandering home whenever, never-Fuck. We don't even have a baby-sitter.
— Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
The trouble is," sighed the Doctor, grasping her meaning intuitively, "that youth is given up to illusions. It seems to be a provision of Nature; a decoy to secure mothers for the race. And Nature takes no account of moral consequences, of arbitrary conditions which we create, and which we feel obliged to maintain at any cost.
— Kate Chopin, The Awakening and Selected Stories
Outside of note passing and the occasional tight-lipped kiss after school events, "going together" in seventh grade was pretty meaningless. You couldn't drive, had nowhere to go, and either weren't allowed or couldn't afford to do anything. I was kind of like being an old married couple, except you could control you bowels and stay awake past 8 p.m.
— Eric Nuzum, Giving Up the Ghost: A Story About Friendship, 80s Rock, a Lost Scrap of Paper, and What It Means to Be Haunted
Charity felt crumpled and wrung out after her cry, like a sponge that had gone through a week of dishes. Of course Lady Beddington said things would be better in the morning, after a good night's sleep. Charity found it was a struggle to believe her; but then it was a struggle just keeping her eyes open. By the time the guest room was ready, Charity was sprawled out face-downwards on the sofa, sound asleep, her tears already forgotten. And that's what it means to be young, Lady Beddington thought, smiling.
— Elizabeth Jane Howard, Mr Wrong
In the space between yes and no, there's a lifetime. It's the difference between the path you walk and the one you leave behind; it's the gap between who you thought you could be and who you really are; its the legroom for the lies you'll tell yourself in the future.
— Jodi Picoult, Change of Heart
You have a choice. Live or die. Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. Every time you don't throw yourself down the stairs, that's a choice. Every time you don't crash your car, you re-enlist.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor
There are no safe choices. Only other choices.
— Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty
You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.
— Rabindranath Tagore
To say you have no choice is to relieve yourself of responsibility.
— Patrick Ness, Monsters of Men
He often felt that too many people lived their lives acting and pretending,wearing masks and losing themselves in the process.
— Nicholas Sparks, The Choice
Honestly, if you're given the choice between Armageddon or tea, you don't say 'what kind of tea?
— Neil Gaiman
Staring at the stars was like staring backward in time, since some stars are so far away that their light takes millions of years just to reach us. That we see stars not as they look now, but as they were when dinosaurs roamed the earth. The whole concept just struck me as…amazing somehow.
— Nicholas Sparks, The Choice
The problem, simply put, is that we cannot choose everything simultaneously. So we live in danger of becoming paralyzed by indecision, terrified that every choice might be the wrong choice.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
This I choose to do. If there is a price, this I choose to pay. If it is my death, then I choose to die. Where this takes me, there I choose to go. I choose. This I choose to do.
— Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith
Everythings a choice. Nobody's born good. Nobody's born evil. It's always a choice.
— Tom Hiddleston
What happens if your choice is misguided?' I ask, softly.Miss Moore takes a pear from the bowl and offers us the grapes to devour. 'You must try to correct it.''But what if it’s too late? What if you can’t?'There's a sad sympathy in Miss Moore's catlike eyes as she regards my painting again. She paints the thinnest sliver of shadow along the bottom of the apple, bringing it fully to life.'Then you must find a way to live with it.
— Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty
Because to take away a man's freedom of choice, even his freedom to make the wrong choice, is to manipulate him as though he were a puppet and not a person.
— Madeleine L'Engle
Dalek: I will talk to the Doctor.The Doctor: Oh will you? That's nice. Hello!Dalek: The Dalek strategem nears completion. The fleet is almost ready. You will not intervene.The Doctor: Oh really? Why's that, then?Dalek: We have your associate. You will obey or she will be exterminated. The Doctor: No.Dalek: Explain yourself.The Doctor: I said, "No."Dalek: What is the meaning of this negative?The Doctor: It means, "No."Dalek: But she will be destroyed!The Doctor: No! 'Cause this is what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna rescue her. I'm gonna save Rose Tyler from the middle of the Dalek fleet, and then I'm gonna save the Earth. And then—just to finish off—I'm gonna wipe every last stinking Dalek out of the sky!Dalek: But you have no weapons, no defenses, no plan.The Doctor: Yeah! And doesn't that scare you to death? Rose?Rose: Yes, Doctor?The Doctor: I'm coming to get you.
— Russell T. Davies
Choices may be unbelievably hard but they're never impossible. To say you have no choice is to release yourself from responsibility and that's not how a person with integrity acts.
— Patrick Ness, Monsters of Men
In the past, humans hesitated when they took lives, even non-human lives. But society had changed, and they no longer felt that way. As humans grew stronger, I think that we became quite arrogant, losing the sorrow of 'we have no other choice.' I think that in the essence of human civilization, we have the desire to become rich without limit, by taking the lives of other creatures.
— Hayao Miyazaki
There seemed to be three choices: to give up trying to love anyone, to stop being selfish, or to learn to love a person while continuing to be selfish.
— Lydia Davis
What is an anarchist? One who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice.
— Ursula K. Le Guin
There is a time in every life when paths are chosen, character is forged. I could have chosen a different path. But I didn’t. I failed myself.
— Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing
If you limit your choice only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.
— Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance
I believe the choice to be excellent begins with aligning your thoughts and words with the intention to require more from yourself.
— Oprah Winfrey
If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for ... but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong.
— Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
I guess in the end, it doesn’t matter what we wanted. What matters is what we chose to do with the things we had.
— Mira Grant, Deadline
You have to choose the best, every day, without compromise...guided by your own virtue and highest ambition
— Philippa Gregory
There's small choice in rotten apples.
— William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew
I was trying so hard to find the single pivotal moment that set my life on its path. The moment that answered the question, 'How did I get here?'But it's never just one moment. It's a series of them. And your life can branch out from each one in a thousand different ways. Maybe there's a version of your life for all the choices you make and all the choices you don't.
— Nicola Yoon, Everything, Everything
Stand at the crossroads if you will, but if you'll not choose, I'll move on without you
— Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart
I’m a monster,” said the shadow of the Marquess suddenly. “Everyone says so.” The Minotaur glanced up at her. “So are we all, dear,” said the Minotaur kindly. “The thing to decide is what kind of monster to be. The kind who builds towns or the kind who breaks them.
— Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There
If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice.
— Neil Peart
F-E-A-R has two meanings: 'Forget Everything And Run' or 'Face Everything And Rise.' The choice is yours.
— Zig Ziglar
Everyone has the abbility to hurt. It's the choice that matters.
— Yvonne Woon, Dead Beautiful
They were two lovely choices. One of them meant giving up every chance of a decent life forever...and the other one scared me out of my mind.
— Frederik Pohl, Gateway
[Research] suggests that what we think of as free will is largely an illusion: much of the time, we are simply operating on automatic pilot, and the way we think and act – and how well we think and act on the spur of the moment – are a lot more susceptible to outside influences than we realize.
— Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
There are things you do sometimes, actions that you take by obeying sudden impulses, without stopping for even a fraction of a second to think, and then you spend the rest of your life either lamenting it or thanking yourself for it. They are rare, unique, and perfect moments.
— Irene Gonzalez Frei
You always have a choice. Don't ever imagine you don't. Whatever you do, it's a decision and you have to accept responsibility for it. That's when honor becomes more than empty words.
— Lynn Flewelling, Stalking Darkness
Choose well. Your choice is brief, and yet endless.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
All I'm saying is that you shouldn't stay with him for the wrong reasons, even if they are noble ones. No one owes it to someone else to be their girlfriend. It's a choice you remake every day.
— Aprilynne Pike, Illusions
My mother's menu consisted of two choices: Take it or leave it.
— Buddy Hackett
You will always define events in a manner which will validate your agreement with reality.
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
It would be easy to become a victim of our circumstances and continue feeling sad, scared or angry; or instead, we could choose to deal with injustice humanely and break the chains of negative thoughts and energies, and not let ourselves sink into it.
— Erin Gruwell, The Freedom Writers Diary
To choose not to choose is still a choice for which you alone are responsible.
— Gary Cox, How to Be an Existentialist: or How to Get Real, Get a Grip and Stop Making Excuses
We scarcely know how much of our pleasure and interest in life comes to us through our eyes until we have to do without them
—  and part of that pleasure is that the eyes can choose where to look. But the ears can't choose where to listen.
Nothing is permanently perfect. But there are perfect moments and the will to choose what will bring about more perfect moments.
— Mary Balogh, Simply Perfect
I dare say it is rather hard to be a rat,” she mused. “Nobody likes you. People jump and run away and scream out: ‘Oh, a horrid rat!’ I shouldn’t like people to scream and jump and say: ‘Oh, a horrid Sara!’ the moment they saw me, and set traps for me, and pretend they were dinner. It’s so different to be a sparrow. But nobody asked this rat if he wanted to be a rat when he was made. Nobody said: ‘Wouldn’t you rather be a sparrow?
— Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess
But I don't care what you think, not about these things anyway. If you don't think they're real or important or you think that we'll all grow out of this nonsense, well, that's not really my business. I can't tell you what's real for you. But in return, you can't say what's real for me either. I get to choose. Not you.
— Patrick Ness, The Rest of Us Just Live Here
I wish sometimes that the gods would either choose better, or make their wishes clearer
— Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Chosen
But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man. A cat has no choice, a bee must make honey. There's no godliness there.
— John Steinbeck, East of Eden
You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice. If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill. I will choose a path thats clear. I will choose Freewill.
— Neil Peart
There comes a moment in every life when the Universe presents you with an opportunity to rise to your potential.	An open door that only requires the heart to walk through, seize it and hang on.The choice is never simple. It’s never easy. It’s not supposed to be. But those who travel this path have always looked back and realizedthat the test was always about the heart. ...The rest is just practice.
— Jaime Buckley, Prelude to a Hero
We do not need to operate according to the idea of a predetermined program for our lives.
— John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
At some point the choice you will face is whether to carry out your duties or live your life
— Cayla Kluver, Legacy
In a moment, everything can change and in a moment, you can change everything.
— Daniel Wallace
Lions are born knowing they are predators. Antelopes understand they are the prey.Humans are one of the few creatures on Earth given the choice.
— Patrick H.T. Doyle
I never gave him a chance to decide if I was worth loving. I'd taken that choice away from him - because I feared what it would be.
— Rebecca Donovan, Out of Breath
She looked out at the other trees, and she realised that her life was one of thousands, any one of which could have been her, she had grown wherever her life had taken her, she had drifted wherever the wind had blown her.
— Dave McKean, Pictures That [Tick]
I certainly supported a woman's right to choose, but to my mind the time to choose was before, not after the fact.
— Ann B. Ross, Miss Julia Throws a Wedding
You would rather face a life without me than to have me choose a life I would not choose for myself.
— John Scalzi, The Sagan Diary
Love is a choice you make from moment to moment.
— Barbara De Angelis
It is an anxious, sometimes a dangerous thing to be a doll. Dolls cannot choose; they can only be chosen; they cannot 'do'; they can only be done by.
— Rumer Godden, The Dolls' House
I'll be damned if I apologize for the choices I've made. They were hard decisions, but I had good reasons for making them.
— Christine Feehan, Oceans of Fire
Now I must live with the consequences of the choice I made. And I will not call it the wrong choice. That would be foolish and pointless. That choice led me to everything that has happened since, including this very moment, and the choices I make today or tomorrow or next week will lead me to the next and next present moments in my life. It is all a journey, Miss Jewell. I have come to understand that that is what life is all about-a journey and the courage and energy always to take the next step and the next without judgement about what was right and what was wrong.
— Mary Balogh, Simply Love
A person's looking for a simple truth to live by, there it is. CHOICE. To refuse to passively accept what we've been handed by nature or society, but to choose for ourselves. CHOICE. That's the difference between emptiness and substance, between a life actually lived and a wimpy shadow cast on an office wall.
— Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker
I never fell. I don't care what they say. I'm still doing my job, as I see it.
— Neil Gaiman, Murder Mysteries
Our minds are information vacuums. Either we fill them with thoughts of our choosing or someone else will.
— Ray A. Davis
For love to flourish there has to be trust. Promises don’t matter as much aspersonal choice.
— Ann Aguirre, Aftermath
If you keep it," Daneca says, "he'll have his claws in you."Everyone has their claws in me. Everyone.
— Holly Black, Red Glove
One of the greatest feelings in life is the conviction that you have lived the life you wanted to live-with the rough and the smooth, the good and the bad-but yours, shaped by your own choices, and not someone else's.
— Michael Ignatieff
I don't want any funny business, and above all I don't want to be dragged into other people's funny business. If it's to be my head on the block, I want to know that it's doing there, and not that it's some stupid things that other people have done.
— Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone
That's the thing about freewill: Every decision we make is a choice against something as much as it is for something else.
— Rebecca Serle, When You Were Mine
There was a choice to be made, and Lena hadn't made it. The songs never lied. At least, they hadn't yet.
— Kami Garcia, Beautiful Darkness
I was here on earth because I chose to be.
— John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever
With good reason, love's messengers, Eros and Kama, are armed with bows and long-distance arrows. No being, god or mortal, can choose love. Love comes despite ourselves; and then, if we have not already done so, we have the task of becoming our selves so we may welcome love.
— Diane Wolkstein, First Love Stories: From Isis and Osiris to Tristan and Iseult
If I had a choice, if I had understood earlier that the reason my days were all the same was because I wanted them like that, perhaps...
— Paulo Coelho
So is that it? Will I have to live the rest of my life like this? Not doing the right thing? Not saying the right words?""That's your choice. You can't change the past. Ah, but the future. . .you own the future." The Greenman smiled. "So, you tell me. . .what choice do you want to make now?
— Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay