#provoking

There are things in this world that no human being should be able to endure. We should die of heartbreak, but we do not. Instead, we are forced to survive, to bear witness. ↗

— Noah Hawley

#thought-provoking

...I just gave up trying to be a Christian... Let's face it, I ain't got the knack for holiness. Besides, I didn't have the slightest little desire to join the likes of Reverend Pelham at the dinner table for fourteen minutes, much less at the banquet table of Heaven eternally. Eternity is a mighty long time to be stuck with people who judge every word you say and think and condemn most of what you do. It struck me as pretty miserable company. And if Reverend Pelham was the kind of company God preferred to keep, well, I just hoped they'd be happy together. ↗

— Katherine Paterson

#thought-provoking

It isn’t what the book costs. It’s what it will cost you if you don’t read it. ↗

— Jim Rohn

#thought-provoking

Reality is such an elusive concept. ↗

— Laura Gilfillan

#thought-provoking #thought-provoking

Because the man who stood there before us was not our father. He was somebody else, a stranger who had been sent back in our father's place. That's not him, we said to our mother, That's not him, but our mother no longer seemed to hear us..."Did you...she said. "Every day," he replied. Then he got down on his knees and he took us into his arms... ↗

— Julie Otsuka

#thought-provoking #thought-provoking

The stories themselves aren't what moves him now...What moves him are the shadowy people behind the stories, the workers weary from their days, gathering at night in front of a comforting bit of fire...The world then was no less terrifying than it is now, with our nightmares of bombs and disease and technological warfare. Anything held the ability to set of fear...a nail dropped in a the hay, wolves circling at the edge of the woods... ↗

— Lauren Groff

#thought-provoking

And listening to all the things they would do if they had these things, Wang Lung heard only of how much they would eat and sleep, and of what dainties they would eat that they had never tasted,and how they would gamble in this great tea shop and in that, and what pretty women they would buy for their lust, and above all, how none would ever work again, even as they rich man behind the wall never worked. ↗

— Pearl S. Buck

#thought-provoking

Hasn’t stopped us before. And besides, if they wanted to kill us, we’d be dead by now and would be having an entirely different conversation. I wonder if I’d still be mad at you, or if we would talk in words or pictures. Maybe in smells. That would be cool.” -Janco ↗

— Maria V. Snyder

#afterlife-speculation #funny-and-random #funny-but-true #funny-quotes #humor

It was the first time I had ever seen someone die, and it wasn't what I expected...I stood there waiting for something momentous to happen, for someone to say something profound, but there was nothing...I still had the childish notion that since my life was so important, all lives were so important. Since my death would be so cataclysmic, all deaths would be so cataclysmic. ↗

— Michael J. Collins

#death

Have you ever been in a conflict with someone who thought he was wrong. If you are not wrong, then you will be willing to consider how you might be mistaken. ↗

— Arbinger Institute

#thought-provoking