Nothing,” I said. “I’m just…” I couldn’t finish the sentence, didn’t know how to. “I’m just very, very fond of you.
Hi, I’m at the Speedway at Eighty-sixth and Ditch, and I need an ambulance. The great love of my life has a malfunctioning G-tube.
Augustus Waters was sitting on the front step as we pulled into the driveway. He was holding a bouquet of bright orange tulips just beginning to bloom.
The problem, of course, is that there's no way of knowing that your last good day is your Last Good Day. At the time, it's just another good day.
what we want is to be noticed by the universe, to have the universe give a shit what happens to us- not the collective idea of sentient life but each of us as individuals.
The whole thing was the precise opposite of what I figured it would be: slow and patient and quiet and neither particularly painful nor particularly ecstatic
And yet still I worried. I like being a person. I wanted to keep at it. Worry is yet another side effect of dying.
My parents were my two best friends. My third best friend was an author who did not know I existed.
No matter how hard you kick, no matter how high you get, you can't go all the way around.
... and it occurred to me that the voracious ambition of humans never sated by dreams coming true, because there is always the thought that everything might be done better and again.
Witness also that when we talk about literature, we do so in the present tense. When we speak of the dead, we are not so kind.
The champagne had been donated by one of Gus's doctors - Gus being the kind of person who inspires doctors to give their best bottles of champagne to children.
I said 'I'm sorry, sir, but we don't speak Swedish.' 'Well, of course you don't. Neither do I. Who the hell speaks Swedish?
You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world...but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices.
Thank you for letting me hijack your wish', I said. 'Thank you for wearing that dress which is like whoa," he said.
If people scrutinize their own faults as they do the faults of others,Mankind will be freed of all evil.
If you think everything is someone else's fault, you'd be wrong. If you think everything is your fault, you're also wrong. Assigning blame can keep you stuck in the problem. Move on to solutions.
I reached a point where I didn't think I was that great. I'm not being humble. I was looking at things and thinking: 'You're not really good in that'. I think I was becoming boring as well as bored. It was nobody's fault except mine - probably - and ...
In a funny way, when things went wrong in my life - and it is my fault that they went wrong, it is not anyone else's fault - and all the glittering outside things were taken away, I was left with the things of most value.
It's not my fault that there is this gap between rich and poor, it is the fault of governments. I want a different world. One where I don't wake up thinking I'm so lucky to be able to feed my daughter.
It wounds a man less to confess that he has failed in any pursuit through idleness, neglect, the love of pleasure, etc., etc., which are his own faults, than through incapacity and unfitness, which are the faults of his nature.
