Olsen Quotes

If only these walls could talk…the world would know just how hard it is to tell the truth in a story in which everyone’s a liar.

Now that im older i'm more aware of things that make me feel complete as a person. I'm trying to concentrate on those things as opposed to things that make feel empty

Many introverts don't feel as if they know enough about a subject until they know almost everything.

Staying true to what makes you happy, because that always ends up producing the best result.

It was late in September and a little more than twenty degrees, so what the hell were people smiling for? They ought to be raising their faces toward the ozone layer in horror.

Having people in different optimal environments increases the chances of survival of the human race as a whole. It is nature's way to preserve her species.

The way I see it, you have to take every chance you get because there may not be another one. You have to learn from your mistakes because nobody's perfect. You have to laugh, love & live every day as if it's your last.

Children are like wet cement. Whatever falls on them makes an impression. —Haim Ginott

But promises based on ignorance always prove disappointing.

According to Charles Olsen, the best poetry is a kind of schizophrenia. The poem does not "express" the poet's thoughts or feelings. It is "a transfer of energy between the poet and the reader".

I am the cute one! She's just my sister.

Be critical. Women have the right to say: This is surface, this falsifies reality, this degrades.

It is a long Baptism into the seas of humankind, my daughter. Better immersion and in pain than to live untouched. Yet how will you sustain?

Why you need a reason for everything? Reason is something people say to make sense of things that don't make sense.

no one can help a troubled person who doesn’t think they need it.

The second difference between the introvert and the extrovert is how they experience external stimulation. Extroverts like to experience a lot, and introverts like to know a lot about what they experience.

But there is more – to rebel against what will not let life be.

He said to the big fellow with the taffy hair, “Before we finish off this operation, I need to hit you up with some ideas.” At that moment, Cade noticed how physically similar Preston was to Merlin Olsen, the NFL great, actor, and all-round good man. He marveled at Preston, the man who couldn’t be happier, as he twirled his head from monitor to monitor, adjusting joysticks and pressing buttons in this claustrophobic workspace.

I loved my mother because I didn’t know I had a choice. I had to love her.

For Guy Davenport--whom he told me John Barth once called the last modernist--modernism is 'a renaissance of the archaic'.

Librarians wield unfathomable power. With a flip of the wrist they can hide your dissertation behind piles of old Field and Stream magazines. They can find data for your term paper that you never knew existed. They may even point you toward new and appropriate subject headings. Their knowledge extends beyond mere categories. They cannot be confined to disciplines. Librarians are all-knowing and all-seeing. They bring order to chaos. They bring wisdom and culture to the masses. They preserve every aspect of human knowledge. Librarians rule...

The hardest thing to ever do is to reveal the naked soul to the world. However, in doing so brings healing, growth, strength, and powerful inspiration!

The introvert is pressured daily, almost from the moment of awakening, to respond and conform to the outer world.

Her daughter's comment amused Emily. 'I didn't know stalking could be a group activity

There are worse words than cuss-words, there are words that hurt.

If I don't know the worst thing about you, how can I ever really care about you?

Trust and stupidity are close friends. Of course, no one really knows that until it’s too late.

No one speaks the truth to anyone anymore. Lies either by omission or purposefully have become our national pastime. Backstabbing is an Olympic sport. Or at least it should be.

The psychopath [or sociopath] makes a mockery not only of the truth but also of all authority and institutions. —Arnold Buss, M.D." Psychopathology

For the last fifty years or so, The Novel’s demise has been broadcast on an almost weekly basis. Yet it strikes me that whatever happens, however else the geography of the imagination might modify in the future in, say, the digital ether, The Novel will continue to survive for some long time to come because it is able to investigate and cherish two things that film, music, painting, dance, architecture, drama, podcasts, cellphone exchanges, and even poetry can’t in a lush, protracted mode. The first is the intricacy and beauty of language—especially the polyphonic qualities of it to which Bakhtin first drew our attention. And the second is human consciousness. What other art form allows one to feel we are entering and inhabiting another mind for hundreds of pages and several weeks on end?

Some of this story is completely true. And some of it isn't. Like truth, evil comes in all sorts of flavors. Some bitter. Some deceptively sweet. Sometimes it comes with a heavy price. While most people don't invite evil into their lives, the dirty little secret is that an invitation isn't necessary. Locked doors don't matter. Neither do fancy security systems. Evil is kind of amazing when you think about it. She knows how to get inside.

If nature intended us to talk more than listen, she would have given us two mouths and one ear. —ANONYMOUS

Carl sent a message from his brain to his hands that it was still illegal to strangle people.

For a writer, I'm not sure that feeling of knowing you've just written something good and strong can be trumped. Not because it means I did something right. But because it proves how many wrongs I pushed through to get there.

For introverts who have a high level of internal activity, anything coming from the outside raises their intensity level index quickly. It’s kind of like being tickled—the sensation goes from feeling good and fun to “too much” and uncomfortable in a split second.

When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can oftentimes arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don't put in the time or energy to get there.

From the inside, a violent home looks starkly different than it does to outsiders. Children who grow up with cold, narcissistic, or sadistic parents don’t know that a caretaker with the potential for extreme cruelty is not the norm. Even when they see a contrast in the families of friends, they’ve already been robbed of the ability to challenge parental authority. Instead of seeking help, they hunker down and adapt.

I have had to learn the simplest things last. Which made for difficulties.

Maybe it was more than that. Maybe some things shouldn't be explained.

She’d done exactly what she’d wanted to do. Making people unhappy was her way of having fun.

I know nothing of writing books properly. I write in the same manner I live life: one feeling at a time. If this makes me a bad writer, then I might hope to author several bad books.

People become librarians because they know too much. Their knowledge extends beyond mere categories. They cannot be confined to disciplines. They bring order to chaos. They bring wisdom and culture to the masses. Librarians rule. And they will kick the crap out of anyone who says otherwise.

In tiny Denmark the system wasso ingenious that if you knew some dirt about somebody, they also knew something just as bad about you. If it wasn't hushed up, the one person's offense quickly infected the other's. A strange, practical principle that meant that no one would say anything about anyone else, not even if they were caught with their hands in the biscuit tin.

You poke at evil with a stick," Valerie had said, offering chilling advice they'd never forget. "Never use your fingers.

Introverted people who balance their energy have perseverance and the ability to think independently, focus deeply, and work creatively.

When overstimulated, the introvert’s mind can shut down, saying, No more input, please. It goes dark.

Dying, she thought, is the only way out of what is happening to me.

I was free. Free also means nothing.

Within you there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat any time and be yourself. —Hermann Hesse

Lifelong full-body salving is why Black folks look so young. Black doesn’t snap, crackle, or pop—why? Because: moisture. It’s why some of us look twelve at thirty. Listen to me, white folks. I’m dropping life secrets here. Why else do you think the Olsen twins (born in 1986) look the same age as Nia Long (born in 1970)? You haven’t used the BUTTERS.

Education isn’t something your professors make for you. It’s something you make for yourself.

The most beautiful things aren't ever things, are they?

But in late March in the Pacific Northwest, a cease-fire on precipitation only meant the clouds were taking a coffee break.

Your eyes. They’re gorgeous,” I said, unable to tear my gaze away. “That’s because they’re looking at you,” he intoned.

I'm a successful businessman, a very successful bussinessman,' he said, dead-eyed to the camera. 'Guys like me don't kill our wives. We trade 'em in and get a new one

What in me demanded that goodness in her? And what was the cost, the cost to her of such goodness?

Victims of abuse can still love the monster. This ambivalent loyalty might just be the predator’s ultimate form of damage.

Hmm.” “What?” I glance down to find Heath studying my cock with a furrowed brow, as though it’s some kind of puzzle he’s trying to work out. “Well… do I have to do anything special with the foreskin?” “Yes, there’s a little latch at the back so you can take it off,” I deadpan. “Just leave it on the nightstand and I’ll reattach it when you’re done.” He straightens up and sends me an arctic glare, prompting a fit of laughter to rumble through my entire body. “You’re an asshole.

What keeps you confident in a healthy way is knowing that everyone else around you is going to support you and teach you and you're going to learn from them. I just feel open to learning from people.

I'd tell my mother to, you know, go you-know-what herself and I would go help those children. They're in an orphanage and they've got family! That's sickening. What does John do? Nothing. His kids are in an orphanage... and he does nothing. ~ Michelle Jarvis

Literary history and the present are dark with silences . . . I have had special need to learn all I could of this over the years, myself so nearly remaining mute and having to let writing die over and over again in me. These are not natural silences--what Keats called agonie ennuyeuse (the tedious agony)--that necessary time for renewal, lying fallow, gestation, in the natural cycle of creation. The silences I speak of here are unnatural: the unnatural thwarting of what struggles to come into being, but cannot.

The women laugh a little. I do too. Though I’m only mimicking their laughter. Nothing is funny to me.

It was dimly lit with very few other people—just about my pace of excitement.

Der skal to mennesker til et venskab, men kun ét til svig.

I have had days stare back at me as if to say, let’s see who will darken first.

Maeve, you wrote this to Tillie Olsen, who treasured it, and had it up on her studio wall. I copied it, and it’s now on the [bulletin] board over my desk.” The passage reads: I have been trying to think of the word to say to you that would never fail to lift you up when you are too tired or too sad [to] not be downcast. But I can think only of a reminder—you are all it has. You are all your work has. It has nobody else and never had anybody else. If you deny it hands and a voice, it will continue as it is, alive, but speechless and without hands. You know it has eyes and can see you, and you know how hopefully it watches you. But I am speaking of a soul that is timid but that longs to be known. When you are so sad that you “cannot work” there is always danger fear will enter in and begin withering around. A good way to remain on guard is to go to the window and watch the birds for an hour or two or three. It is very comforting to see their beaks opening and shutting. This is real friendship—the kind that takes another’s soul as seriously as one’s own. Aristotle considered it the highest order of love, philia, or “friendship love,” in which tending to somebody else’s welfare is central to our own flourishing.

When I stop trying to create a life for myself, I find the life God creates for me. When I cease trying to make a name for myself—competing, grasping, pushing my way to the top—His name emerges through the actions of my life.

A mysterious object, a good book. It did that to you; made it almost painful turning the last page. Then it clung in your mind, like static, refusing to let go until another good book came along and gently weaved its undoing spell.

Introverted children may not be as demonstrative as extroverted children. They love and value you, but they may not talk about it as much. Accept your temperament and your child’s. They can’t be changed. Both of you have wonderful qualities to contribute to your family and to the world.

She kept too much in herself. Her life was such that she had to keep too much in herself. My wisdom came too late. She is a child of her age, of depression, of war, of fear. Let her be. So, all that is in her will not bloom, but in how many does it? There is still enough left to live by. Only help her to know, help make it so there is cause for her to know that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron.