Josh Canan > Josh's Quotes

“Frankly, Olan couldn't hit a bull in the ass with a ping pong paddle.”
― Kyle Keyes, Worm Holes

“I wanted solitude, but a treasure like that didn't exist in the city. I only found silence in Central Park, still littered with people of course, but the only place that held moments of calm. I breathed in that wonderful silence as my pace finally slowed, and nature delighted my senses.”
― Lee Matthew Goldberg, Slow Down

“Toni's Talk: When you invest in yourself, you have instant credibility with your biggest critic...you! As soon as you let doubt creep in---you lose that investment. Make a daily commitment to assess your worth with positive affirmations and watch your investment grow.”
― C.Toni Graham

“Nonie chewed on her bottom lip for a moment. She'd told Fezzo so much already yet there wasn't a speck of incredulity in his eyes. His expression was serious, and she had his full attention. "I'm not quite sure about what to do with Helen, the ghost that followed me home.”
― Deborah Leblanc, Toe to Toe

“From Zachary Blake? Not a chance in hell. All his cases are high-profile. And these days, he’s got a Midas touch. Every case he touches turns to gold. Blake is on a personal crusade for civil justice and safety—truth, justice, and the American way, don’t you know? Guns are an excellent target issue for someone like him.”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal High

“It’s pretty confusing.”
“Good. Be confused. Confusion is where inspiration comes from.”
― Robyn Mundell, Brainwalker

“Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

“Have you ever found your heart's desire and then lost it? I had seen myself, a portrait of myself as a reader. My childhood: days home sick from school reading Nancy Drew, forbidden books read secretively late at night. Teenage years reading -trying to read- books I'd heard were important, Naked Lunch, and The Fountainhead, Ulysses and Women in Love... It was as though I had dreamt the perfect lover, who vanished as I woke, leaving me pining and surly.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, The Night Bookmobile

“No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“Words', he said, 'is oh such a twitch-tickling problem to me all my life. So you must simply try to be patient and stop squibbling. As I am telling you before, I know exactly what words I am wanting to say, but somehow or other they is always getting squiff-squiddled around.”
― Roald Dahl, The BFG

“You can't expose a lie without first shattering the will to believe it. That is why leading people to truth is so much more effective than merely telling them.”
― Neal Shusterman, The Toll

“Оркестр - это отображение человеческого общества, потому что здесь, как и там, те, кто безоговорочно выполняют самую дерьмовую работу, сверху донизу презираются всеми остальными.”
― Patrick Süskind, El contrabajo

“They now have sensed him coming The forest and the wood-wind Father mountain makes him welcome with his song. They have no fear of Little Tree They know his heart is kindness And they sing, ‘Little tree is not alone.’ Even”
― Forrest Carter, The Education of Little Tree

“President Truman had a little sign on his desk. I’ve always admired its philosophy. It read: THE BUCK STOPS HERE. I’ve envied certain people, too, the great majority of my colleagues whose sole mission in life is to attain the goal of mediocrity. They sail into a safe harbor, button up and conveniently and quietly sort their paper clips, avoiding responsibility and decisions. I can’t explain, Nicole, why I was singled out and am unable to avoid conflict, but I can’t run or plug my ears or close my eyes or turn my back. I often envy those who can.”
― Leon Uris, Topaz

“The pen is mightier than the sword... an considerably easier to write with. - Marty Feldman”
― Tom Sechrist

“Literature is painting, architecture, and music.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin

“But even if a person were ignorant of such things, the sight of a moving train held aloft above the great gorge at Niagara by so delicate a contrivance was, in the 1860’s, nothing short of miraculous. The bridge seemed to defy the most fundamental laws of nature. Something so slight just naturally ought to give way beneath anything so heavy. That it did not seemed pure magic.”
― David McCullough, The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge

“Be you writer or reader, it is very pleasant to run away in a book.”
― Jean Craighead George, My Side of the Mountain

“He believed that the words “I can’t afford it” shut down your brain. It didn’t have to think anymore. “How can I afford it?” opened up the brain and forced it to think and search for answers.
But most importantly, he felt the words, “I can’t afford it,” were
a lie. And the human spirit knows it. “ The human spirit is very, very powerful,” he would say. “It knows it can do anything.” By having a lazy mind that says, “I can’t afford it,” a war breaks out inside you. Your spirit is angry, and your lazy mind must defend its lie. The spirit is screaming, “Come on. Let’s go to the gym and work out.” And the lazy mind says, “But I’m tired. I worked really hard today.” Or the human spirit says, “I’m sick and tired of being poor. Let’s get out there and get rich.” To which the lazy mind says, “Rich people are greedy. Besides it’s too much bother. It’s not safe. I might lose money. I’m working hard enough as it is. I’ve got too much to do at work anyway. Look at what I have to do tonight. My boss wants it finished by morning.”
― Robert T. Kiyosaki, Rich Dad, Poor Dad

“Struck by the ugliness of the German women on the streets and in restaurants and cafés. As a race they are certainly the least attractive in Europe. They have no ankles. They walk badly. They dress worse than English women used to. Off to Danzig tonight.”
― William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-41

“But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as this— we can perceive that events are brought about not by insulated interpositions of Divine power, exerted in each particular case, but by the establishment of general laws."—Whewell: "Bridgewater Treatise".”
― Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species

“It is she who has a hold on him. Doesn't she see how much he needs her? She has nothing to be afraid of, her conscience is clear. It is he who should be ashamed, and terrified of her giving him away. But that is just what she will never do. To do this she does not have the necessary ruthlessness--Komarovsky's chief asset in dealing with subordinates and weaklings. This is precisely the difference between them. And it is this that makes the whole of life so terrifying. Does it crush you by thunder and lightning? No, by oblique glances and whispered calumny. It is all treachery and ambiguity. Any single thread is as fragile as a cobweb, but just try to pull yourself out of the net, you only become more entangled. And the strong are dominated by the weak and ignoble.”
― Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

“Allow me to congratulate you on your very astute powers of observation.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Tale of Despereaux

“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

“...for it is the small temptations which undermine integrity unless we watch and pray and never think them too trivial to be resisted.”
― Louisa May Alcott

“When a great genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."

[Thoughts on Various Subjects]”
― Jonathan Swift , Abolishing Christianity and Other Essays

“Supposing it true that contrary to appearances these horrors when perpetrated by Nature, promote good ends, still as no one believes that good ends would be promoted by our following the example, the course of Nature cannot be a proper model for us to imitate. Either it is right that we should kill because nature kills ; torture because nature tortures ; ruin and devastate because nature does the like; or we ought not to consider at all what nature does, but what it is good to do. If there is such a thing as a reductio ad absurdum, this surely amounts to one. If it is a sufficient reason for doing one thing, that nature does it, why not another thing? If not all things, why anything?”
― John Stuart Mill, Three Essays on Religion: Nature, the Utility of Religion, Theism

“in a novel, people's hearts break, and they die, and that is the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin

“I'll tell you what justice is. Justice is a knee in the gut from the floor on the chin at night sneaky with a knife brought up down on the magazine of a battleship sandbagged underhanded in the dark without a word of warning”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22