People quotes
100.4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside people — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"A lot of people don't know what I do. In the industry they take credit for work because to some degree it makes them feel worthy or greater. I am not a ghostwriter 'cause it is on the CD covers who wrote and did what but people don't care about anything they can't see. The work gets unnoticed and the credibility goes untouched."
"What I have always wanted for myself is much more primitive. It is probably nothing more than the affection of the people with whom I am in contact, and their good opinion of me."
"It is foolish to wish for beauty. Sensible people never either desire it for themselves or care about it in others. If the mind be but well cultivated, and the heart well disposed, no one ever cares for the exterior."
"For too long, and despite what people told me, I had fallen for what the culture said about beauty, youth, features, heights, weights, hair textures, upper arms."
"I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is."
"Left to my own devices, my first inclination is to mess in other people's lives. I secretly believe my whole family, and really the whole world, is my responsibility."
"There are moments when I am writing when I think that if other people knew how I felt right now, they’d burn me at the stake for feeling so good, so full, so much intense pleasure."
"I get thirsty people glasses of water, even if that thirsty person is just me."
"...because when people have seen you at their worst, you don't have to put on the mask as much."
"Some people wanted to get rich or famous, but my friends and I wanted to get real. We wanted to get deep. (Also, I suppose, we wanted to get laid.)"
"I see that children fill the existential hollowness many people feel; that when we have children, we know they will need us, and maybe love us, but we don't have a clue how hard it is going to be."
"I'm one of those religious people who are afraid of everything. I'm instantly worried about everything that could go wrong."
"He told me about his monster. His sounded just like mine without quite so much mascara. When people shine a little light on their monster, we find out how similar most of our monsters are."
"I would seriously rather be in a long line at the DMV than eat with people I don't know."
"The writer is a person who is standing apart, like the cheese in 'The Farmer in the Dell' standing there alone but deciding to take a few notes. You’re outside, but you can see things up close through your binoculars. Your job is to present clearly your viewpoint, your line of vision. Your job is to see people as they really are, and to do this, you have to know who you are in the most compassionate possible sense. Then you can recognize others."
"I hoard books. They are people who do not leave."
"I am not a fan of people who abuse service staff. In fact, I find it intolerable. It’s an unpardonable sin as far as I’m concerned, taking out personal business or some other kind of dissatisfaction on a waiter or busboy."
"Not everyone knows how to be silent or to leave in good time. It happens that even people of good breeding fail to notice that their presence provokes in the weary or preoccupied host a feeling akin to hatred, and that this feeling is tensely concealed and covered up with lies."
"By nature servile, people attempt at first glance to find signs of good breeding in the appearance of those who occupy more exalted stations."
"It is uncomfortable to ask condemned people about their sentences just as it is awkward to ask wealthy people why they need so much money, why they use their wealth so poorly, and why they don't just get rid of it when they recognize that it is the cause of their unhappiness."
