Mitch Doebke > Mitch's Quotes

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
― Robert Frost

“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.”
― Oscar Wilde

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”
― John Lennon

“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Here is a lesson in creative writing.

First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.

And I realize some of you may be having trouble deciding whether I am kidding or not. So from now on I will tell you when I'm kidding.

For instance, join the National Guard or the Marines and teach democracy. I'm kidding.

We are about to be attacked by Al Qaeda. Wave flags if you have them. That always seems to scare them away. I'm kidding.

If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“Where do I get my ideas from? You might as well have asked that of Beethoven. He was goofing around in Germany like everybody else, and all of a sudden this stuff came gushing out of him. It was music. I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana, and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out. It was disgust with civilization.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Americans... are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be. It must have something to do with the vanished frontier.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors.”
― J. Michael Straczynski, Babylon 5: The Scripts of J. Michael Straczynski, Vol. 2

“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
― William Shakespeare, The Tempest

“The fact is that we have no way of knowing if the person who we think we are is at the core of our being. Are you a decent girl with the potential to someday become an evil monster, or are you an evil monster that thinks it's a decent girl?"

"Wouldn't I know which one I was?"

"Good God, no. The lies we tell other people are nothing to the lies we tell ourselves.”
― Derek Landy, Death Bringer

“Ah," she cried, "you look so cool."

Their eyes met, and they stared together at each other, alone in space. With an effort she glanced down at the table.

You always look so cool," she repeated.

She had told him that she loved him, and Tom Buchanan saw.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“If you want to really hurt you parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., A Man Without a Country

“Many people need desperately to receive this message: 'I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake

“Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“How did it get so late so soon?”
― Dr. Seuss

“A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.”
― Elbert Hubbard

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“I have seen the best of you, and the worst of you, and I choose both.”
― Sarah Kay

“There are no safe choices. Only other choices.”
― Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty

“Just keep asking yourself: What would Jesus not do?”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“Never say no when you really want to say yes.”
― Jenny Han, Always and Forever, Lara Jean

“Honestly, if you're given the choice between Armageddon or tea, you don't say 'what kind of tea?”
― Neil Gaiman

“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

“The trouble is if you don’t spend your life yourself, other people spend it for you.”
― Peter Shaffer, Five Finger Exercise

“People tend to complicate their own lives, as if living weren't already complicated enough.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Don’t let others tell you what you can’t do. Don't let the limitations of others limit your vision. If you can remove your self-doubt and believe in yourself, you can achieve what you never thought possible.”
― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

“I go to seek a Great Perhaps.”
― François Rabelais

“Don't feel bad, I'm usually about to die.”
― Rick Riordan, The Battle of the Labyrinth