“The only real difference between racist, sexist people and those who are not is the conscious effort that the latter make to counteract their learned-in-childhood, unconscious prejudices.”— Elaine N. Aron, amazon.com
“It is impossible to say why we love something or someone. We can come up with reasons if we have to, but the important part happens in the dark, beyond our control. We just know when it is there. And when it goes away.”— John Ajvide Lindqvist, amazon.com
“Who can really say how decisions are made, how emotions change, how ideas arise? We talk about inspiration; about a bolt of lightning from a clear sky, but perhaps everything is just as simple and just as infinitely complex as the processes that make a particular leaf fall at a particular moment. Th…”— John Ajvide Lindqvist, amazon.com
“What humans want most of all, is to be right. Even if we're being right about our own doom. If we believe there are monsters around the next corner ready to tear us apart, we would literally prefer to be right about the monsters, than to be shown to be wrong in the eyes of others and made to look fo…”— David Wong, amazon.com
“It's not that the 1948 editors of 'Science Digest' were illogical; it's that logic doesn't work particularly well when applied to the future.”— Chuck Klosterman, amazon.com
“We have no idea what we don't know. Or what we'll eventually learn, or what might be true despite our perpetual inability to comprehend what the truth is. It's impossible to understand the world of today until today has become tomorrow.”— Chuck Klosterman, amazon.com
“We're starting to behave as if we've reached the end of human knowledge. And while that notion is undoubtedly false, the certitude it generates is paralyzing.”— Chuck Klosterman, amazon.com
“There isn't an ongoing cultural debate about the merits of 'Moby Dick'. It's not merely an epic novel, it's a transformative literary innovation that helps define how novels are supposed to be viewed. Any conversation about the cliched topic of the 'Great American Novel' begins with this book. The w…”— Chuck Klosterman, amazon.com
“The moral of the story is: don’t trust people who want to sell you answers. Don’t trust people who tell you they have found Answers. Run away from people who tell you about their transformation. Call their bluff when they tell you they are living in their happily ever after. These things aren’t real…”— Chrissy Stockton, chrissystockton.com
“When you find somebody like, let's say, Ted Bundy, who tortured and killed all those women and sometimes went back and had sex with the dead bodies, I don't think when you look at his upbringing... That behavior was hard-wired. Evil is inside us. The older I get, the less I think there's some sort o…”— Stephen King, rollingstone.com
“I choose to believe in God because it makes things better. You have a meditation point, a source of strength. I don't ask myself, "Well, does God exist or does God not exist?" I choose to believe that God exists, and therefore I can say, "God, I can't do this by myself. Help me not to take a drink t…”— Stephen King, rollingstone.com
“Hemingway sucks, basically. If people like that, terrific. But if I set out to write that way, what would've come out would've been hollow and lifeless because it wasn't me.”— Stephen King, rollingstone.com
“It's built in. That's all. The first movie I ever saw was a horror movie. It was Bambi. When that little deer gets caught in a forest fire, I was terrified, but I was also exhilarated. I can't explain it. My wife and kids drink coffee. But I don't. I like tea. My wife and kids won't touch a pizza wi…”— Stephen King, rollingstone.com
“I’ve never had much patience for academic bullshit. It’s like Dylan says, ‘You give people a lot of knives and forks, they’ve gotta cut something.’ And that was what was going on in that movie.”— Stephen King, rollingstone.com
“If he'd dropped his lifelong belief just because someone came up with an objection, it's not just that you'd be surprised, to a certain degree you'd think Quine was irrational. We all begin our inquiries somewhere, with a large complex of presuppositions and convictions. We should all be open to cha…”— David Shatz, amazon.com
“If you saw somebody trying to resolve a spat with a spouse by putting pen to paper and setting up numbered premises, you'd find it a crazy way to settle things, and maybe would also brand it as a tactic for fleeing the real issues. Only in philosophy does this sort of exactitude win an imprimatur; e…”— David Shatz, amazon.com
“Only a mad person would want to conduct their life with complete, Spock-like logicality. We are possessed not of minds alone, but of hearts, emotions, needs, instincts, and habits; and we inhabit social contexts.”— David Shatz, amazon.com
“In the sphere of religion, proofs for the existence of God don't always sway people into belief (the ontological argument of Anselm is notorious for not converting those who think it is sound); intellectual solutions to the problem of evil, however formidable, often fail to soothe the gut-level feel…”— David Shatz, amazon.com
“When a philosopher publishes an article called 'Why There Are No People' (an actual title!), he invites a joke: Whom does he think he's writing for? Whom will he blame if he gets turned down for tenure?”— David Shatz, amazon.com