Latest Quotes

“I believe our sorrow can make us a better country. I believe our righteous anger can be transformed into more justice and more peace. Weeping may endure for a night but I’m convinced joy comes in the morning.”

— Barack Obama, Read President Obama's Speech From the Dallas Memorial Service

“I’d had an old Brian Eno song running through my head (‘In New Delhi / And Hong Kong / They all know that it won’t be long …’), I now had to sing it to myself each trip up or down the stairs.”

— Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“An especially loud New Order song comes from the open windows at McCullough, ‘Your Silent Face.’ Sean liked this song, so did Mitchell in fact. Gerald says, ‘Jesus, I really hate this song.’ I kiss him once more. It turns out to be the last song of the party. It fades out, nothing replaces it.”

— Bret Easton Ellis, The Rules of Attraction

“When all this takes place, more than 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, we cannot simply turn away and dismiss those in peaceful protest as troublemakers or paranoid. We can’t simply dismiss it as a symptom of political correctness or reverse racism. To have your experience denied l…”

— Barack Obama, Read President Obama's Speech From the Dallas Memorial Service

“Time is something which defies spring and winter, birth and decay, the good and the bad, indifferently.”

— Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Do you remember when we studied what Plato calls telestic madness? Bakcheia? Dionysiac frenzy?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, rather impatiently. It was just like Henry to bring up something like this right now. ‘Well, we decided to try to have one.’ For a moment I thought I hadn’t understood him. ‘What?’ I said.…”

— Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Morning light can make the most vulgar things tolerable.”

— Donna Tartt, Henry Winter, The Secret History

“When Zarathustra was thirty years old he left his home and the lake of his home and went into the mountains.”

— Robert Pippin, Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy)

“Any religious ritual is arbitrary unless one is able to see past it to a deeper meaning.”

— Donna Tartt, Henry Winter, The Secret History

“It’s funny, but thinking back on it now, I realize that this particular point in time, as I stood there blinking in the deserted hall, was the one point at which I might have chosen to do something very different from what I actually did. But of course I didn’t see this crucial moment then for what…”

— Donna Tartt, Richard Papen, The Secret History

“One’s thought patterns become different, he said, when forced into the confines of a rigid and unfamiliar tongue. Certain common ideas become inexpressible; other, previously undreamt-of ones spring to life, finding miraculous new articulation. By necessity, I suppose, it is difficult for me to expl…”

— Donna Tartt, Richard Papen, The Secret History

“The most efficient fiction of Nazi propaganda was the story of a Jewish world conspiracy.”

— Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“New york city, you're so pretty All your faces, going places.”

— Mason Jennings, New York City

“Things that I buy and things that I think Haven't made this a better place to be Drugs that I try and drinks that I drink Haven't made this a better place to be It's still just a room with the drums in the middle A couch along the wall that works as my bed I still have a phone that rings all day I s…”

— Mason Jennings, Nothing

“I get so annoyed when I hear "cool" young women say 'I'm not a feminist.' I mean, do they know what battles were fought? Every freedom we have today, we have because of feminists.”

— Arundhati Roy, I Get So Annoyed When 'Cool' Young Women Say They Are Not Feminists

“If we keep our heroes at a safe distance, they cannot disappoint us with the banal business of being people. But part of growing up is accepting that everybody is people.”

— Aishwarya Subramanyam, I Get So Annoyed When 'Cool' Young Women Say They Are Not Feminists: Arundhati Roy

“When a writer doesn't write it doesn't mean they don't have time, for they can write anywhere and anytime, on tissues or on phone Notes, emblazon words on a passing cloud. No, it can only mean one thing: they can't handle their own thoughts, can't face their own realities, and so they refuse to let…”

— Rachel Jean Matela, via Facebook

“His absence was so much more real than I thought it would be.”

— Anonymous, Humans of New York

“They thought that children should be seen and not heard. In their world, you're not supposed to have feelings or opinions until you turn eighteen.”

— Anonymous, Humans of New York

“I was looking for love and he seemed like love.”

— Anonymous, Humans of New York