characteristics Quotes

“Sometimes a man seems to reverse himself so you would say, ‘he can’t do that. It’s out of character’. Maybe it’s not. It could just be another angle, or it might be that the pressures above or below have changed his shape. You see it in war a lot - a coward turning a hero and a brave man crashing in flames.”

“I am a sick man.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. ”

“Dammit, sir,” Judge Stevens said, “will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad?”

” Each human being shall have all of these in him, and they will constitute his nature. In some, there will be high and fine characteristics which will submerge the evil ones, and those will be called good men; in others the evil characteristics will have dominion, and those will be called bad men.”

“Style, like taste, is resistant to lucid definition; however, both, as living things should be, are subject to constant change.”

“As the Zen Buddhist saying goes, how you do anything is how you do everything.”

“The most beautiful thing about you is that you’re not a sock puppet.”

“Only children tell the whole truth, you know. That’s what makes them children.”

“That other people can often see things about you that you yourself cannot see, even if those people are stupid.”

“So why not mercy and justice to sweet youth from an omnipotent and benevolent Creator? There are only three answers. He is not omnipotent, or he is not benevolent, or-the dreariest possibility of all-he is inattentive. What if that was what happened to my nephew? That God’s gaze had merely strayed elsewhere?”

“That word again – responsibility. I’d been hearing it so much lately. From my teachers, from my parents, from everybody. Because I was tall (was that my fault?) and I played footy […] I ended up with all this responsibility. It didn’t seem fair.”

“You’ve got to look like you’re trying to stop him, though. If you don’t then you’re a gutless wonder. A gutless wonder is about the worst thing you can be in our town. If you’re a boy that is.”

“Take my puddle, for example. There are normally three of us in it, though sometimes you could say four or five. First there’s me, and I’m exasperating and potentially infamous.”

“There once was a herd of elephants. Elephants young, elephants old, elephants tall or fat or thin. Elephants like this, that or the other, all different but all happy and all the same colour. All, that is, except Elmer.”

“You see, Carter, people are two things: greedy and cruel. So we have a perfect set up here. The greed part—a kid pays a buck for a chance to win a hundred. Plus fifty boxes of chocolates. The cruel part—watching two guys hitting each other, maybe hurting each other, while they’re safe in the bleachers.”

“I take a longer look at the words on her headstone. Brave, kind, loyal, sweet, loving, graceful, strong, thoughtful, funny, genuine, hopeful, playful, insightful, and on and on… Was she, though? Was she any of those things? The words make me angry. I can’t look at them any longer. Why do we romanticize the dead? Why can’t we be honest about them?”