25 Excerpts

1.“Don't think you're on the right road just because it’s a well-beaten path. “
-Author Unknown

2."Beauty is power the same way money is power the same way a gun is power. We’re all such products.” -Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)

3."Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them."
- Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)

4.“I allowed myself to become a peculiar, unlovable ghoul because first my mother left me, to be raised primarily by the public school system and secondarily by my father, who hated me. Then my father left me, to start another, I assume better, family abroad. But I didn’t mind because I had love, a beautiful new wife, a beautiful new home. And then my wife left me and I decided that I no longer wanted to be left. I made a freak out of myself, Joanne, to keep everyone away.” -Lisa Jewell (Roommates Wanted)

5.“If you don't control your mind, someone else will.” - John Allston


6.“Toby was glad not to be a teenager in the twenty-first century- it all seemed so stifling, so conformist. Young girls all looked the same to Toby these days. They all had the same strip of stomach showing between the same jersey top and low-slung jeans, their belly buttons all studded with the same flashy gems. They all wore their long hair in the same side-parted style, their lips sticky with the same glossy gel, their complexions the same shade of Balearic brown all year round.” -Lisa Jewell (Roommates Wanted)


7."Here is the story of Tom and Betsy Rath, a young couple with everything going for them: three healthy children, a nice home, a steady income. They have every reason to be happy, but for some reason they are not. Like so many young men of the day, Tom finds himself caught up in the corporate rat race - what he encounters there propels him on a voyage of self-discovery that will turn his world inside out.” –Sloan Wilson (The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit)

8."Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally ‘bright,’ did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn't it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. “ -Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)

9."She didn't choose this role / But she'll play it and make it sincere” –Panic At the Disco (Time to Dance)

10.“You are a good man, but misguided. These people do not appreciate you or your generosity. They are holding you back. My greatest fear for you, Toby, is that you will end up like me, alone, misunderstood, unappreciated, and I fear this could happen all too easily.”
-Lisa Jewell (Roommates Wanted)

11.“You don't get harmony when everybody sings the same note.”
-Doug Floyd

12.“One who walks in another's tracks leaves no footprints.”
-Proverb

13.“When I was four years old they tried to test my IQ, they showed me this picture of three oranges and a pear. They asked me which one is different and does not belong; they taught me different was wrong.”
-Ani Difranco

14.“What we call human nature in actuality is human habit.”
-Jewel Kilcher (Pieces Of You)

15.“Just because something is tradition doesn't make it right.”
-Anthony J. D'Angelo (The College Blue Book)

16.“And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps.”
-H.L. Mencken

17.“Common experience shows how much rarer is moral courage than physical bravery. A thousand men will march to the mouth of the cannon where one man will dare espouse an unpopular cause.”
-Clarence Darrow (Resist Not Evil)

18."We all believe that we are a certain kind of person, but we never know until we do something that proves otherwise, or until we die."
- Chuck Klosterman (Downtown Owl)

19."In and of itself, nothing really matters. What matters is that nothing is ever in and of itself.”
- Chuck Klosterman (Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs)


20.“Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I’ve ever known.” .
- Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)


21.“Old Man Warner snorted. ‘Pack of crazy fools,’ he said. ‘Listening to the young folks, nothing's good enough for them. Next thing you know, they'll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live hat way for a while. Used to be a saying about 'Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.' First thing you know, we'd all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There's always been a lottery,’”
- Shirley Jackson (The Lottery)


22."No question now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
- George Orwell (Animal Farm)


23.
They say the poet is unique,
At others he won't stoop to peek
To learn just how his pen must tweak
His words before he dares to speak.
Yet, would the poet still create
If his audience cast no bait
To catch the one who thinks he's great
And thus to seal his sorry fate?
No, his lines would soon abate I
f too long he had to wait
Every time he took a pause
For a round of due applause.
And, would the Muse still amuse
If he was not duly used
To take a big, tasty bite Of the critics' sweet delight?
Surely, no verses would emit
If the pundits threw a fit
Just because they did not get
Rhyme and rhythm that doth fit.
-mckee (Matching to the Beat To a Different Drum )


24.Sometimes we search for the impossible, often we hate what is found.
Sometimes we long for the truth, but when spoken it has an unpleasant sound.
Most people want to be someone, and some people don’t care either way.
Some people hate their emotions, and most are hurt by what others say.
All that I want is some meaning; I have no need for either fortune or fame.
I see my peers all around me, and from the looks of it they all are the same.
Same smell, same hair same, clothes; same wants and needs.
Same walk, same talk, color.
No variety to be found. Same phone, same purse, same ambitions.
Hundreds of minds linked as one.
No wrong, no right, no black, no white; nothing to separate them at all.
They are one in thinking, they are one in breathing.
They are one in hearing, they are one in seeing.
They are one in feeling; they are one in their fears.
They are one in their joy; they are one when the tears fall.
They are one in their pleasure; they are one in their pain.
They are one in their losses, they are in their gains.
They are one in their conscience; they are one in the same…
-Odd One (One)

25.
You've got a great car,
Yeah, what's wrong with it today?
I used to have one too, Maybe I'll come and have a look.
I really love your hairdo,Yeah,
I'm glad you like mine too,
See what lookin' pretty cool will get ya.
- The Dandy Warhols (Bohemian Like You)