Bleakness Quotes

• I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he's made of sugar.

  George Saunders

  Birthday, Drama, Rain

  "George Saunders's Wild Ride". Interview with Deborah Treisman, www.newyorker.com. December 12, 2010.

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• You know, my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression. There comes a time, my friends, when people get tired of being plunged across the abyss of humiliation, where they experience the bleakness of nagging despair. There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Inspiring, Tired, July

  Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech at MIA Mass Meeting at Holt Street Baptist Church, kinginstitute.stanford.edu. December 5, 1955.

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• Everything's complicated, even those things that seem flat in their bleakness or sadness.

  Nick Hornby

  Sad, Complicated, Flats

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• You know, my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Tired, Iron, Feet

  Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech at MIA Mass Meeting at Holt Street Baptist Church, kinginstitute.stanford.edu. December 5, 1955.

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• The church and the whorehouse arrived in the Far West simultaneously. And each would have been horrified to think it was a different facet of the same thing. But surely they were both intended to accomplish the same thing: the singing, the devotion, the poetry of the churches took a man out of his bleakness for a time, and so did the brothels.

  John Steinbeck

  Men, Thinking, Singing

  John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.190, Penguin

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• The bleakness of what faces us is difficult to swallow. As long as we engage in happy platitudes and a false kind of vision of the possible, it may empower you over the short term, but it is eventually, because of the reality in front of us, going to lead to despair and cynicism and apathy. It's better to swallow hard the bitter pill of what we're up against.

  Chris Hedges

  Reality, Long, Empowering

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. July 14, 2011.

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• Courage to me means ploughing through that dull gray mist that comes down on life-not only overriding people and circumstances but overriding the bleakness of living. A sort of insistence on the value of life and the worth of transient things...My courage is faith-faith in the eternal resilience of me-that joy'll come back, and hope and spontaneity. And I feel that till it does, I've got to keep my lips shut and my chin high, and my eyes wide

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Mean, Eye, People

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• We are children of chaos, and the deep structure of change is decay. At root, there is only corruption, and the unstemmable tide of chaos. Gone is purpose; all that is left is direction. This is the bleakness we have to accept as we peer deeply and dispassionately into the heart of the Universe.

  Peter Atkins

  Children, Heart, Roots

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• under our love making I felt a bleakness that couldnt be dispelled. The sadness was in both of us, and I think we pitied ourselves that night, as if we were other people looking down on the couple who lay together on the bed

  Siri Hustvedt

  Couple, Sadness, Night

  Siri Hustvedt (2004). “What I Loved: A Novel”, p.175, Macmillan

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• And just for a moment I had reached the point of ecstasy that I always wanted to reach, which was the complete step across chronological time into timeless shadows, and wonderment in the bleakness of the mortal realm, and the sensation of death kicking at my heels to move on, wiht a phantom dogging its own heels, and myself hurrying to a plank where all the angels dove off and flew into the holy void of uncreated emptiness, the potent and inconceivable radiancies shining in bright Mind Essence, innumerable lotus-lands falling open in the magic mothswarm of heaven. - Sal Paradise

  Jack Kerouac

  Moving, Fall, Angel

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• The mix in our rooms is so touching: the clutter and the cracks in the wall belie a bleakness or brokenness in our lives; while photos and a few rare objects show our pride, our rare shining moments ... these rooms are future ruins

  Anne Lamott

  Wall, Pride, Shining

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.75, Anchor

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• I'm really impotent against the overwhelming bleakness of the universe and the only thing I can do is my little gift [filmmaking] and do it the best I can, [...] which is cold comfort.

  Woody Allen

  Comfort, Littles, Cold

  "Woody Allen's World: Whatever Works". Interview with Robert E. Lauder, www.commonwealmagazine.org. April 15, 2010.

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• The average cooking in the average hotel for the average Englishman explains to a large extent the English bleakness and taciturnity. Nobody can beam and warble while chewing pressed beef smeared with diabolical mustard. Nobody can exult aloud while ungluing from his teeth a quivering tapioca pudding.

  Karel Capek

  Average, Cooking, Insulting

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