Nick Hill > Nick's Quotes

“Life is not a PG feel-good movie. Real life often ends badly. Literature tries to document this reality, while showing us it is still possible for us to endure nobly.”
― Matthew Quick, The Silver Linings Playbook

“Life is hard, and children have to be told how hard life can be…So they will be sympathetic to others. So they will understand that some people have it harder than they do and that a trip through this world can be a wildly different experience, depending on what chemicals are raging through one’s mind.”
― Matthew Quick, The Silver Linings Playbook

“When I read the actual story-how Gatsby loves Daisy so much but can't ever be with her no matter how hard he tries-I feel like ripping the book in half and calling up Fitzgerald and telling him his book is all wrong, even though I know Fitzgerald is probably deceased. Especially when Gatsby is shot dead in his swimming pool the first time he goes for a swim all summer, Daisy doesn't even go to his funeral, Nick and Jordan part ways, and Daisy ends up sticking with racist Tom, whose need for sex basically murders an innocent woman, you can tell Fitzgerald never took the time to look up at clouds during sunset, because there's no silver lining at the end of that book, let me tell you.”
― Matthew Quick, The Silver Linings Playbook

“So I’m thinking this is the part of my movie where things appear as if nothing is going to work
out. I have to remind myself that all movie characters go through this sort of dark period before
they find their happy ending.”
― Matthew Quick, The Silver Linings Playbook

“I am so happy. I am so impossibly happy.”
― Matthew Quick, The Silver Linings Playbook

“Why did You give us so many stories about miracles? Why did You
send Your Son down from heaven? Why did You give us movies if life doesn’t ever end well?
What kind of fucking God are You? Do You want me to be miserable for the rest of my life?”
― Matthew Quick, The Silver Linings Playbook

“When they were introduced, he made a witticism, hoping to be liked. She laughed extremely hard, hoping to be liked. Then each drove home alone, staring straight ahead, with the very same twist to their faces.

The man who'd introduced them didn't much like either of them, though he acted as if he did, anxious as he was to preserve good relations at all times. One never knew, after all, now did one now did one now did one.”
― David Foster Wallace, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

“The depressed person was in terrible and unceasing pain, and the impossibility of sharing or articulating this pain was itself a component of the pain and a contributing factor in its essential horror.”
― David Foster Wallace, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

“K--: 'When they say "I am my own person," "I do not need a man," "I am responsible for my own sexuality," they are actually telling you just what they want you to make them forget.”
― David Foster Wallace, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

“No one knows for certain how much impact they have on the lives of other people. Oftentimes, we have no clue. Yet we push it just the same.”
― Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why

“You can't go back to how things were. How you thought they were. All you really have is...now.”
― Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why

“A good story should make you laugh, and a moment later break your heart.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Stranger than Fiction

“That's why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. You can't control life, at least you can control your version.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Stranger than Fiction

“Everything is funnier in retrospect, funnier and prettier and cooler. You can laugh at anything from far enough away.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Stranger than Fiction

“The worst part of writing fiction is the fear of wasting your life behind a keyboard. The idea that, dying, you'll realize you only lived on paper. Your only adventures were make-believe, and while the world fought and kissed, you sat in some dark room masturbating and making money.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Stranger than Fiction

“So this is why I write. Because most times, your life isn’t funny the first time through. Most times, you can hardly stand it.

That’s why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. And writing makes you look back. Because since you can’t control life, at least you can control your version.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Stranger than Fiction

“Just go out there and get your heart broken in, so it'll be ready when you really need it.”
― Brian K. Vaughan, Y: The Last Man - The Deluxe Edition Book Five

“Women will buy products in an attempt to become the impossible goal. Men will buy products in an attempt to mate with the impossible goal.”
― David McRaney, You Are Not So Smart

“Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. ....get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel

“When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.”
― George Saunders

“You have to look at what you have right in front of you, at what it could be, and stop measuring it against what you've lost. I know this to be wise and true, just as I know that pretty much no one can do it.”
― Jonathan Tropper, This is Where I Leave You

“It would be a terrible mistake to go through life thinking that people are the sum total of what you see.”
― Jonathan Tropper, This is Where I Leave You

“You never know when it will be the last time you'll see your father, or kiss your wife, or play with your little brother, but there's always a last time. If you could remember every last time, you'd never stop grieving.”
― Jonathan Tropper, This is Where I Leave You

“You're terrified of being alone. Anything you do now will be motivated by that fear. You have to stop worrying about finding love again. It will come when it comes. Get comfortable with being alone. It will empower you.”
― Jonathan Tropper, This is Where I Leave You

“Childhood feels so permanent, like it's the entire world, and then one day it's over and you're shoveling wet dirt onto your father's coffin, stunned at the impermanence of everything.”
― Jonathan Tropper, This is Where I Leave You

“Everyone always wants to know how you can tell when it's true love, and the answer is this: when the pain doesn't fade and the scars don't heal, and it's too damned late.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass

“Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass

“If clouds are blocking the sun, there will always be a silver lining that reminds me to keep on trying.”
― Matthew Quick, The Silver Linings Playbook

“I don't want to stay in the bad place, where no one believes in silver linings or love or happy endings.”
― Matthew Quick, The Silver Linings Playbook