Janice > Janice 's Quotes

“Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
― Mark Twain

“Fearlessness in those without power is maddening to those who have it.”
― Tobias Wolff, This Boy's Life

“A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition.”
― Henry Miller, The Books in My Life

“When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age.In middle age I was assured greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Four hoarse blasts of a ships's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping. The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage. In other words, once a bum always a bum. I fear this disease incurable. I set this matter down not to instruct others but to inform myself....A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we not take a trip; a trip takes us.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Talent must be a fanatical mistress. She's beautiful; when you're with her, people watch you, they notice. But she bangs on your door at odd hours, and she disappears for long stretches, and she has no patience for the rest of your existence; your wife, your children, your friends. She is the most thrilling evening of your week, but some day she will leave you for good. One night, after she's been gone for years, you will see her on the arm of a younger man, and she will pretend not to recognize you.”
― David Benioff, City of Thieves

“I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”
― Charles Bukowski

“I'd rather be a freak than a clone.”
― Joanne Harris

“What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

“That cat doesn't have a lick of sense,' I said, sighing.

Well, honey, he's not right in the head,' Dad said, flipping his cigarette into the front yard.

I glared at him. 'And just what do you mean by that?'

Dad counted on his fingers. 'He's cross-eyed; he jumps out of trees after birds and then doesn't land on his feet; he sleeps with his head smashed up against the wall, and the tip of his tail is crooked.'

Oh yeah? Well, how about this: he once got locked in a basement by evil Petey Scroggs in the middle of January and survived on snow and little frozen mice. When I'm cold at night he sleeps right on my face. Of that whole litter of kittens he came out of he's the only one left. One of his brothers didn't even have a butthole.'

I stand corrected. PeeDink is a survivor.”
― Haven Kimmel, A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small In Mooreland, Indiana

“I couldn't for the life of me figure out how long a person had to live, or how good she had to be, to get her hands on some treasure.”
― Haven Kimmel, She Got Up Off the Couch: And Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana

“A religion contradicting science and a science contradicting religion are equally false.”
― P.D. Ouspensky

“If you go home with somebody, and they don't have books, don't fuck 'em!”
― John Waters

“All the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal. ... But with each passing year, and with each whimsical purchase, our libraries become more and more able to articulate who we are, whether we read the books or not.”
― Nick Hornby, The Polysyllabic Spree

“Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries.”
― Anne Herbert

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go...”
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
― Albert Einstein

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“Things usually work out in the end."
"What if they don't?"
"That just means you haven't come to the end yet.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“You'll see it when you believe it.”
― Wayne W. Dyer

“A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.”
― Albert Einstein

“The difference between genius and stupidity is: genius has its limits.”
― Alexandre Dumas-fils

“WHEN I WAS LITTLE, I was so girlie and ambitious, I was practically a drag queen. I wanted to be everything at once: a prima ballerina, an actress, a model, a famous artist, a nurse, an Ice Capades dancer, and Batgirl. I spent inordinate amounts of time waltzing around our living room with a doily on my head, imagining in great detail my promenade down the runway as the new Miss America, during which time I would also happen to receive a Nobel Prize for coloring.”
― Susan Jane Gilman

“So I didn't adopt Homer because he was cute and little and sweet, or because he was helpless and needed me. I adopted him because when you think you see something so fundamentally worthwhile in someone else, you don't look for the reasons - like bad timing or a negative bank balance - that might keep it out of your life. You commit to being strong enough to build your life around it, no matter what. In doing so, you begin to become the thing you admire.”
― Gwen Cooper, Homer's Odyssey

“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.”
― Corrie Ten Boom, Clippings from My Notebook

“I mused for a few moments on the question of which was worse, to lead a life so boring that you are easily enchanted, or a life so full of stimulus that you are easily bored.”
― Bill Bryson, Lost Continent: Travels In Small-Town America

“Isn´t it strange how wealth is always wasted on the rich?”
― Bill Bryson, Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe

“At the foot of the mountain, the park ended and suddenly all was squalor again. I was once more struck by this strange compartmentalization that goes on in America -- a belief that no commercial activities must be allowed inside the park, but permitting unrestrained development outside, even though the landscape there may be just as outstanding. America has never quite grasped that you can live in a place without making it ugly, that beauty doesn't have to be confined behind fences, as if a national park were a sort of zoo for nature.”
― Bill Bryson, Lost Continent: Travels In Small-Town America