Stranger Quotes - Page 31

• You need to understand that truth is stranger than fiction. Listen: people are willing to swallow any old tripe as long as you say it without flinching. They want to be told stuff. And they don't want to doubt you either. It's too hard.

  Craig Silvey

  Long, People, Doubt

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• Something inside me shuts down and I'm too numb to feel anything. It's like watching complete strangers in another Hunger Games. But I do notice they omit the part where I covered her in flowers. Right. Because even that smacks of rebellion.

  Suzanne Collins

  Flower, Games, Down And

  Suzanne Collins (2009). “The Hunger Games”, p.25, Scholastic Inc.

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• [H]ope takes you by the throat like a stranger, it makes your heart leap.

  Hilary Mantel

  Heart, Leap, Throat

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• One of the peculiar ironies of being a human self in the Cosmos: A stranger approaching you in the street will in a second's glance see you whole, size you up, place you in a way in which you cannot and never will, even though you have spent a lifetime with yourself, live in the Century of the Self, and therefore ought to know yourself best of all.

  Walker Percy

  Self, Peculiar, Cosmos

  Walker Percy (2011). “Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book”, p.8, Open Road Media

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• The touch was exactly what the touch of a lover's hand should be: familiar, yet exciting as a whispered promise. I felt an almost irresistible urge to take her hand and place it flat against my chest, near my heart. Maybe I should've done it. I know now that she would've laughed, if I'd done it, and she would've liked me for it. But strangers that we were then, we stood for five long seconds and held the stare, while all the parallel worlds, all the parallel lives that might've been, and never would be, whirled around us.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Heart, Hands, Long

  Gregory David Roberts (2004). “Shantaram: A Novel”, p.24, Macmillan

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• While I'm not an expect in psychology, I'm of the opinion that anyone - even strangers - can sense the urgency of a request, and most people will usually do the right thing.

  Nicholas Sparks

  People, Psychology, Opinion

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• I came to Him because I did not know which way to turn. I remained with Him because there is no other way I wish to turn. I came to Him longing for something I did not have. I remain with Him because I have something I will not trade. I came to Him as a stranger. I remain with Him in the most intimate of friendships. I came to Him unsure about the future. I remain with Him certain about my destiny. I came amid the thunderous cries of a culture that has 330 million deities. I remain with Him knowing that truth cannot be all-inclusive.

  Ravi Zacharias

  Destiny, Knowing, Wish

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• No real lady would let a dress that might have been worn by a stranger touch her skin.

  Cassandra Clare

  Real, Skins, Dresses

  Cassandra Clare (2013). “The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Angel; Clockwork Prince; Clockwork Princess”, p.118, Simon and Schuster

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• There are videos where I would go approaching strangers and sing the songs from 'The Lion King. I would have been about four years, and I came running up to people on the beach, strangers that I chose at random and began to sing, and my family never knew where I was, they were always looking for me, trying to imagine who I was harassing this time .

  Taylor Swift

  Running, Song, Beach

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• Judging the mistakes of strangers is an easy thing to do - and it feels pretty good.

  Haruki Murakami

  Mistake, Judging, Easy

  Haruki Murakami (2011). “Sputnik Sweetheart”, p.84, Random House

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• Truth is always stranger than fiction. We craft fiction to match our sense of how things ought to be, but truth cannot be crafted. Truth is, and truth has a way of astonishing us to our knees. Reminding us, that the universe does not exist to fulfill our expectations. Because we are imperfect beings who are self-blinded to the truth of the world’s stunning complexity, we shave reality to paper thin theories and ideologies that we can easily grasp – and we call them truths. But the truth of a sea in all it’s immensity cannot be embodied in one tidewashed pebble.

  Dean Koontz

  Reality, Self, Sea

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• But please remember: this is only a work of fiction. The truth, as always, will be far stranger.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Fiction, Remember, Please

  Arthur C. Clarke (2000). “2001: A Space Odyssey”, p.16, Penguin

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• Everyone on earth would never starve and forever find love and happiness, since we won, but if we’d lost, they would have gouged out our eyes and thrown us naked onto hot coals and poisonous snakes for all the cheering and hugging at the end, strangers hugging like the end of The Omega Virus when Steve Sturmine finds the antidote.

  Daniel Handler

  Cheer, Eye, Snakes

  Daniel Handler (2012). “Why We Broke Up”, p.68, Egmont UK

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• Tell me, enigmatical man, whom do you love best, your father, Your mother, your sister, or your brother? I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother. Your friends? Now you use a word whose meaning I have never known. Your country? I do not know in what latitude it lies. Beauty? I could indeed love her, Goddess and Immortal. Gold? I hate it as you hate God. Then, what do you love, extraordinary stranger? I love the clouds the clouds that pass up there Up there the wonderful clouds!

  Charles Baudelaire

  Mother, Country, Brother

  Charles Baudelaire, Louise Varèse (1970). “Paris Spleen, 1869”, p.1, New Directions Publishing

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• Most neuroses and some psychoses can be traced to the unnecessary and unhealthy habit of daily wallowing in the troubles and sins of five billion strangers.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Psychosis, Neurosis, Sin

  Robert A. Heinlein (2014). “Stranger in a Strange Land”, p.106, Hachette UK

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• Hospitality means primarily the creation of free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines.

  Henri Nouwen

  Mean, Men, Space

  Henri Nouwen (2013). “Reaching Out”, p.71, Image

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• Writing fiction is not a profession that leaves one well-disposed toward reading fiction. One starts out loving books and stories, and then one becomes jaded and increasingly hard to please. I read less and less fiction these days, finding the buzz and the joy I used to get from fiction in ever stranger works of non-fiction, or poetry.

  Neil Gaiman

  Book, Reading, Writing

  Neil Gaiman (2002). “Adventures in the Dream Trade”, N E S F A Press

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• I'm a writer and this is what I do no matter what name we put to it. Year by year, the world is turning into a darker and stranger place than any of us could want. This is the only thing I do that has potential to shine a little further than my immediate surroundings. For me, each story is a little candle held up to the dark of night, trying to illuminate the hope for a better world where we all respect and care for each other.

  Charles de Lint

  Dark, Night, Years

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• When you’re as charming and physically attractive as myself, it’s easy enough to win over people you meet. But getting strangers to love you...now, that’s the trick.

  John Green

  Love You, Winning, People

  John Green (2012). “The Fault in Our Stars”, p.235, Penguin

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• Nothing is stranger or more ticklish than a relationship between people who know each other only by sight, who meet and observe each other daily - no hourly - and are nevertheless compelled to keep up the pose of an indifferent stranger, neither greeting nor addressing each other, whether out of etiquette or their own whim.

  Thomas Mann

  Sight, People, Ticklish

  Thomas Mann, Stanley Appelbaum (1995). “Death in Venice”, p.41, Courier Corporation

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• Vikus looked at Luxa and opened his arms. She stood, still frozen, staring at him as if he were a complete stranger. "Luxa, it's your grandpa," said Gregor. It seemed like the best and most important thing to say at the moment. "It's your grandpa." Luxa blinked. A tiny tear formed at the corner of her eye. A battle took place on her face as she tried to stop the feelings rising up inside her. The feelings won, and to Gregor's great relief, she ran into Vikus's arms.

  Suzanne Collins

  Eye, Rising Up, Grandpa

  Suzanne Collins (2011). “Gregor the Overlander Collection:”, p.170, Scholastic Inc.

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• With the rise of chiefdoms around 7,500 years ago, people had to learn, for the first time in history, how to encounter strangers regularly without attempting to kill them.

  Jared Diamond

  Years, People, Encounters

  Jared Diamond (2017). “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies”, p.239, W. W. Norton & Company

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• I take no joy in mead nor meat, and song and laughter have become suspicious strangers to me. I am a creature of grief and dust and bitter longings. There is an empty place within me where my heart was once.

  George R. R. Martin

  Song, Laughter, Grief

  George R. R. Martin (2012). “George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones 5-Book Boxed Set (Song of Ice and Fire Series): A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and and A Dance with Dragons”, p.1284, Bantam

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• All of a sudden I didn't fit in anywhere. Not at school, not at home...and every time I turned around, another person I'd known forever felt like a stranger to me. Even I felt like a stranger to me.

  Wendelin Van Draanen

  Home, School, Forever

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• And we'd look at each other the way you do when you see someone on the street you think you recognize, but not quite. Someone you wish with all your heart were there but who is actually just a stranger. And you feel a kind of deep longing that hurts like a huge gash and your inability to fix it leaves you frustrated and angry and bone-deep lonely.

  Michele Jaffe

  Lonely, Hurt, Heart

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