“I realize now that people are not thinking about you and me or caring what is said about us. They are thinking about themselves-before breakfast, after breakfast, and right on until ten minutes past midnight. They would be a thousand times more concerned about a slight headache of their own than they would about the news of your death or mine.”
Thoughtful feeling
Thoughtful Quotes — page 27 of 303
“The very purpose of religion is to control yourself, not to criticize others. Rather, we must criticize ourselves. How much am I doing about my anger? About my attachment, about my hatred, about my pride, my jealousy? These are the things which we must check in daily life.”
“One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child's name and how old he or she is.”
“Remember everything is right until it's wrong. You'll know when it's wrong.”
“If I had interesting things to say, I would have been a speechwriter. I think it gets to musicians' heads a lot of the time. Just because people like your records doesn't mean what you have to say is going to be interesting.”
“Whatever talents I possess may suddenly diminish or suddenly increase. I can with ease become an ordinary fool. I may be one now. But it doesn't do to upset one's own vanity.”
“That's always been my philosophy: I try to just be as straightforward as possible, and then I don't really have to question what I said or regret anything.”
“I think a lot, but I don't say much.”
“If we change the stories we live by, quite possibly we change our lives”
“There's a difference between writing for a living and writing for life. If you write for a living, you make enormous compromises.... If you write for life, you'll work hard; you'll do what's honest, not what pays”
“All we see of someone at any moment is a snapshot of their life, there in riches or poverty, in joy or despair. Snapshots don't show the million decisions that led to that moment.”
“Beauty is only a look. It has nothing to do with what I'm like inside.”
“I'm just the librarian. I can only give you the books. I can't give you the answers.”
“What makes a person is the ability to look at themselves and deal with their own lives.”
“Follow your feelings. If it feels right, move forward. If it doesn't feel right, don't do it.”
“The novelist must look on humanity without partiality or prejudice. His sympathy, like that of the historian, must be unbounded, and untainted by sect or party.”
“The most important thing is to actually think about what you do. To become aware and actually think about the effect of what you do on the environment and on society. That's key, and that underlies everything else.”
“Charm, in most men and nearly all women, is a decoration.”
“Practice restraint over the following: appetite, first, as well as sleep, lust, and anger.”
“The beginning of every government starts with the education of our youth.”