Bj Novak Quotes

If you love something, let it go. If you don't love something, definitely let it go. Basically, just drop everything, who cares.

...slow and steady wins the race, till truth and talent claim their place.

Regret is just perfectionism plus time.

It's not always enough to be brave, I realized years later. You have to be brave and contribute something positive, too. Brave on its own is just a party trick.

I was sad that summer was over. But I was happy that it was over for my enemies, too.

You want to meet someone who likes the same things you do, and who likes you most when you're most being yourself, so that when you are in a relationship, the person will truly be compatible with the real you.

If people are well paid for reality television and cotton candy and dunking a basketball, why can't they be well paid for changing young minds?

You have infinite time here, and there are infinite things to do, but you still don’t end up doing much of it. You do what you love most, over and over.

It is an inside joke of history that all its most exciting adventures inevitably end their careers as homework. Beheadings, rebellions, thousand-year wars, incest on the royal throne, electricity, art, opera, dogs in outer space.

Love always won in the end. No matter how it happened, no matter what it took, no matter what it meant. Fair or not, true or not, love won.

I think it's better to not know certain things. It gives the world an extra bit of mystery, which is important to us as human beings.

Do you think why not is ultimately a better question than why? Why or why not?

All eyes are beautiful, I said, which is why it’s such an easy compliment.

There’s always going to be one more thing. Because that’s what infinite feels like. And the difference between love and everything else is that it’s infinite, it’s built out of something infinite, or it feels like it is, anyway, which is the same thing to us.

I could imagine being his mom and loving him a lot, if that makes sense.

Mindy Kaling gets her own line in the acknowledgments, as previously negotiated by her representatives. Thanks, Mindy. I love you and you're the best.

Everything helped a little bit, at first; but nothing really helped.

I know this sounds crazy to say after one encounter but I kind of fell for you pretty hard & it has been forever since I've connected to anyone like this & my heart is kind of broken in a million pieces.

You think a million billion more things will come your way, a million billion more versions of everything. But no, everything that actually causes that infinite feeling, the circumstances of every infinite feeling, is so, so finite.

People who knew me and sympathized with me were determined to set me up with the other people they sympathized with and were always surprised when I would turn down their offer of what they thought of as romantic charity. “What’s the harm?” they would ask me, truly surprised. The harm, besides those hours that actually do matter when you barely have one night off every couple of weeks, is the little mark you get on you every time you open up a door to a hope and then close it fast in disappointment. It leaves a nick, or a dent, and those nicks and dents are not invisible. I used to see them all the time.

CHILD: “Why does carrot cake have the best icing?” MOTHER: “Because it needs the best icing.” Quantum Nonlocality and the Death of Elvis Presley You may remember

But nobody remembers how long anything takes; they only remember how good it was in the end.

And anyone will tell you that's the whole point. You want to meet someone who likes the same things you do, and who likes you most when you're most being yourself.

You meet a finite number of people in your life. It feels to you like it's infinite, but it's not. I think it's the biggest thing I can see that you can't.

We talked for four hours. I don't remember most of it, but often a little moment in an unrelated conversation or alone on the street will trigger a memory of it I didn't know I had. So I know it's all there somewhere.

Being young was her thing, and she was the best at it. But every year, more and more girls came out of nowhere and tried to steal her thing. One of these days I'm gong to have to get a new thing, she thought to herself--but as quietly as she could, because she knew that if anyone caught her thinking this thought, her thing would be right over right then.

In my opinion, there are two types of perfect. The first is the type that seems so obvious and intuitive to you and everyone else that in a perfect world it would simply be considered standard; but, in reality, in our flawed world, what should be considered standard is actually so rare that it has to be elevated to the level of “perfect.” This is the type of perfect that makes you and most other people think, “Why isn’t everything like this? Why is it so hard to find …” a black V-neck cotton sweater, or a casual non-chain restaurant with comfortable booths, etc.—“that is just exactly the way everyone knows something like this should be?” “Perfect,” we all say with relief when we finally find something like this that is exactly as it should be. “Perfect. Why was this so hard to find?” The other type of perfect is the type you never could have expected and then could never replicate.

I feel like I didn't earn these stories, I feel like they just happened to me.

But no matter what their friends told them, they would always know what really happened. They just kept driving faster, and outran the rain.

why do u always post pics of ur food!? He did it because it made him feel like he was eating his meals with more people.

He kissed her for an eternity, which was fine, because heaven had eternities to burn. Then he kissed her for another.

I opened up a bit and explained that I have a type I'm drawn to naturally, but that I've found that the women I've ended up loving the most have never been what I've thought of as my type, maybe because part of love is being helpless, being out of control of your own emotions.

Is it just that everything came too easy? Because if you're romanticizing 'difficult'...you're going to get over that quickly, I promise you. I promise you. Everyone forgets how difficult 'difficult' really is.

The cute one?” “No, the other cute one.” “Oh, she’s cute too.

Didn't they realize how much interesting shit there was to see and do in this world if you just woke up at a normal fucking time like a normal fucking person?

The Battle Creek, Michigan, headquarters of Kellogg’s looks like a spaceship built to look like a pyramid that was then hastily converted into a public library during a period of intergalactic peace.

eople—even good, impressive people—always want something simple and unimpressive. Everything good and impressive that they do in their lives is a result of the impressive path they take to get what they want—not a result of wanting an impressive thing.

If you love something, let it go. If you don’t love something, definitely let it go. Basically, just drop everything, who cares.

slow and steady wins the race, till truth and talent claim their place.

Discussion question: Do you think Julie should fuck the warlord? Why or why not?

It feels like the world is made of music, and you are the world.

If you love something, let it go. If you don't love something, definitely let it go. Basically, just drop everything, who cares.

I can’t even handle love, there’s no way I can handle it being taken away. I won’t survive it. Please. Please. Please!” I said that I had something to say to her, which made her listen in a way that she didn’t when I simply said things without the preface. Even though the preface meant nothing, it calmed her, just as it calmed real people, for the same no-reason. I told her what people tell people. That this was what it felt like when love was taken away—but that it wasn’t the truth, it was just a feeling. It would pass. It would take time. She would recharge. She didn’t believe me. No one ever believes it, I said. That’s part of what the feeling is.

We talked for four hours. I don't remember most of it, but often a little moment in an unrelated conversation or alone on the street will trigger a memory of it that I didn't know I had. So I know it's all there somewhere.

In the aftermath of an athletic humiliation on an unprecedented scale—a loss to a tortoise in a footrace so staggering that, his tormenters teased, it would not only live on in the record books, but would transcend sport itself, and be taught to children around the world in textbooks and bedtime stories for centuries; that hundreds of years from now, children who had never heard of a “tortoise” would learn that it was basically a fancy type of turtle from hearing about this very race—the hare retreated, understandably, into a substantial period of depression and self-doubt.

And good luck to you, tortoise,” whispered the hare, leaning in close. “And just so you know—nobody knows this, and if you tell anyone I said it, I’ll deny it—but I’m not really a hare. I’m a rabbit.” This wasn’t true—the hare just said it to fuck with him.

he seemed to be blazing outside the lines of his own body, as if he were drawn in crayon by an excited five-year-old;

YO SOY SAUCE! CÓMPRAME!

...the difference between love and everything else is that it's infinite, it's built out of something infinite, or it feels like it is, anyway, which is the same thing to us.

Do you think Johnny Depp should have driven his motorcycle off the mountain highway to his death? Why or why not?

Do you think discussion questions can be unfairly leading sometimes? Why? • Who are we supposed to be discussing these questions with? • Do you normally have discussions in response to a question that was posed by a person not participating in the discussion? Why or why not?

What needed to stop was the succession of dates with these relatively impressive, relatively interesting people, when I could tell from the first minute that everyone here was going to end as a runner-up in a long race to nowhere in particular, broken-down, exhausted, no one wearing a medal.

John Grisham exhaled, feeling his breath leave his body as he did, like his wife’s yoga instructor had taught him to do that one time. He never went back to that yoga instructor, but he still thought about that session sometimes.

Josh Funk and Hunter Fraser: we haven't been in touch in years, but you made me feel like the funniest kid in the world. I would stay up late on school nights to write things to try to make you laugh the next day in class, and you inspired the one piece of advice on writing that I've ever felt qualified to give: write for the kid sitting next to you.

What’s the difference between this school and a happy retirement community?” The room was silent again. “The difference is ’rithmetic! A retired person living by the ocean, just doing a little reading and writing till the end of their days—that’s the dream, right? ‘What do you do all day?’ ‘Some reading, a little writing.’ Sounds idyllic, right? And yet school sucks. Everybody hates it. What’s the difference? ’Rithmetic! It’s time somebody put their finger on this fucking obvious thing.

The harm, besides those hours that actually do matter when you barely have one night off every couple of weeks, is the little mark you get on you every time you open up a door to a hope and then close it fast in disappointment. It leaves a nick, or a dent, and those nicks and dents are not invisible. I used to see them all the time.

 Kindness Among Cakes CHILD: “Why does carrot cake have the best icing?” MOTHER: “Because it needs the best icing.

so far only goes so far.

CHILD: “Why does carrot cake have the best icing?” MOTHER: “Because it needs the best icing.

He started writing poetry again, but it didn't come as easily. It was hard now to get past the self-consciousness - the silliness, really - of being such a well-established adult applying himself, seriously, to such a youthful joy.

pay him back, we really would have to do something

If you love something, let it go. If you don't love something, definitely let it go. Basically, just drop everything. Who cares.

But I didn't mind. I loved that everything was cataloged and ready to go and that I was technically now living and sleeping in a library.

Do you think Johnny Depp should have drive his motorcycle off the mountain highway to his death? Why or why not?

Being young was her thing, and she was the best at it. But every year, more and more girls came out of nowhere and tried to steal her thing. One of these days I'm gong to have to get a new thing, she thought to herself--but as quietly as she could, because she knew that if anyone caught her thinking this thought, her thing would be right over right then.

Love always won.

wasn’t he approaching Ricardo Montalban? Probably because there were more interesting things in heaven than Ricardo Montalban.

Never, in the history of competition—athletic or otherwise, human or otherwise, mythical or otherwise—has anyone ever kicked anyone’s ass by the order of magnitude that the hare kicked the ass of that goddamn fucking tortoise that afternoon.

It was a good thing they were used to love, or they might have fainted from the size of the feeling.

No-the lesson of this story has nothing to do with the tortoise, thought the hare, and everything to do with the hare

But you can’t see it, because to you everything is infinite. You think a million billion more things will come your way, a million billion more versions of everything. But no, everything that actually causes that infinite feeling, the circumstances of every infinite feeling, is so, so finite. And

This Is 40 basically, the one that finally gives you permission to stop waking up in a panic- sweat of misery in the middle of the night to cross-check his Wikipedia bio against your own life and obsess over exactly what they had accomplished by the age you are now.

If You Love Something If you love something, let it go. If you don’t love something, definitely let it go. Basically, just drop everything, who cares.

He did it because it made him feel like he was eating his meals with more people. It was the same reason he liked the teasing.

Kindness Among Cakes CHILD: “Why does carrot cake have the best icing?” MOTHER: “Because it needs the best icing.

The only area I can think of where the moon experience might have any edge at all over the walking trails of Knox County, Tennessee, would be in the symbolism department, in the sheer majesty of it all. When you think about how the moon is a celestial phenomenon that has dominated the nights of humans since before humans were even humans, a place so foreign to our understanding that, until recently in the history of our species, people didn’t even think of it as a place, or even as an object, but as an abstraction tied to God; a place that is still, even now that we do understand it, so alien to our everyday thinking that it is never included on any of our maps or globes and can only be reached by a dangerous voyage across hundreds of thousands of miles of literal, actual nothingness; and to know that you have been there and stood on that rock/God/place, with your own two feet, and kicked the dust and moved it a little, and come back home, with the story to tell … . And then, no matter where you are in life, to be able to always look down at those ten little toes that carry you through your house or the hallways of your job or around the same walking path you’ve been walking for years that you still love in a way even though, somehow, at some point, its loveliness lost its dust of luster in your eyes—to know that no matter where you are, no matter how dull the favorite colors of your life become, you can always look down at those ten little toes and think about how they have been with you to a place that almost no one alive can imagine, and no one dead could have conceived of. And then someday, when you’re about to die yourself, and you’re scared, at least you know you’ve already been somewhere mysterious. That’s honestly all I can come up with, pro-moon-wise. To each his own, I suppose.

They both scanned the menus, each pair of eyes starting in the unhelpful middle of the dessert menu for some no-reason, then tipsily circling around and around until most of the important words had been absorbed.

Ghosts...They're real as an idea, but they're not real real. That's what's scary about ghosts is that they aren't real. If they were real, they wouldn't be scary at all would they? We would just smile and say, 'Hi ghosts!' What's scary is that little piece of someone that feels like it might still be there, isn't there at all.

Nobody knew why the market was down that day. But it didn’t stop everyone from having a theory. “Worries over Spain’s role in the EU brought the market down today,” said a woman on the radio. “The market had an off day today, due to uncertainty in oil futures,” announced a man on television. “Market Slightly Down as Health Care Details Come into Focus” wrote a newspaper writer. The truth was no one knew why the market was down. It started the day, just … down. It stayed down most of the day. It had an up moment for a little bit around lunch, but was still, just, down. Why

He loved saying “Rome” like that. “Head into Rome,” “swing by Rome.” It was just the nearest place to them. How cool was that! Rome, the city of legends, of conquerors, of history, of myth—this was where he bought batteries!

*Advice to his younger self B.J. was very anxious during the first season of The Office because he was always trying to write something extra on the side that he never had time to finish. He really didn't stop to enjoy the incredible, once-in-a-lifetime experience of The Office. B.J. wishes he had told him self back then that it was a very special time in his life, and that he should own it and enjoy it, instead of being so nervous, for what ended up being no reason at all. 'And you know what I also tell people all the time? If Will Smith isn't in a move for 3 years, you're not walking around saying, 'Where's Will Smith?' Nobody's paying attention to anyone else at all. You think everyone is, but they're not. So take as long as you want if you're talented. You'll get their attention again if you have reason to.'" B.J. Novak

Everyone agreed and then asked what I had in mind. I had no idea what I had in mind. It felt like no one had ever been our age before.

for fate—or not-fate—I’m still not sure about it, but it’s not something that keeps me up at night. I’ve lived it, and the people who still wonder about that kind of thing can call it whatever they want.