Wright Quotes

Right now I’m having amnesia and déjà vu at the same time. I think I’ve forgotten this before.

Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books...

The artist must bow to the monster of his own imagination.

John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of the hunger for life that gnaws in us all.

If at first you don't succeed then skydiving definitely isn't for you.

I just got out of the hospital. I was in a speed reading accident. I hit a book mark and flew across the room.

Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.

Just give me a second. Attempting to give a fuck...Attempting harder to give a fuck...Sorry, there was an error; fuck not given.

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.

Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.

I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done.

If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.

Wouldn’t you like to slip into something more comfortable though? Perhaps a coma?

Conversation, like certain portions of the anatomy, always runs more smoothly when lubricated.

If it's a penny for your thoughts and you put in your two cents worth, then someone, somewhere is making a penny.

Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love.

Love is giving someone the power to completely destroy you, and hoping that they won’t

When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.

I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.

The best kind of friend is the kind you sit with, never say a word and walk away feeling like it was the best conversation you ever had.

An idea is salvation by imagination

There is a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.

I went to a restaurant that serves "breakfast at any time" so I ordered French toast during the Renaissance.

She's one of those people who are like Slinkies." "Slinkies?" "Yeah. Basically useless, but they make you smile when you push them down the stairs.

Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.

Shades of a new morning standing still are worse than the shades of night. At least a person can understand the dark of night. It’s not fickle like the day.

If a person with multiple personalities threatens suicide, is that considered a hostage situation?

When I was in school the teachers told me practice makes perfect; then they told me nobody’s perfect so I stopped practicing.

I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord's Prayer is about.

If a man says something in the woods and there are no women there, is he still wrong?

No matter how old you are now. You are never too young or too old for success or going after what you want. Here’s a short list of people who accomplished great things at different ages 1) Helen Keller, at the age of 19 months, became deaf and blind. But that didn’t stop her. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. 2) Mozart was already competent on keyboard and violin; he composed from the age of 5. 3) Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on “Bright Eyes.” 4) Anne Frank was 12 when she wrote the diary of Anne Frank. 5) Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13. 6) Nadia Comăneci was a gymnast from Romania that scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics at age 14. 7) Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in November 1950, at the age of 15. 8) Pele, a soccer superstar, was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil. 9) Elvis was a superstar by age 19. 10) John Lennon was 20 years and Paul Mcartney was 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in 1961. 11) Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936. 12) Beethoven was a piano virtuoso by age 23 13) Issac Newton wrote Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age 24 14) Roger Bannister was 25 when he broke the 4 minute mile record 15) Albert Einstein was 26 when he wrote the theory of relativity 16) Lance E. Armstrong was 27 when he won the tour de France 17) Michelangelo created two of the greatest sculptures “David” and “Pieta” by age 28 18) Alexander the Great, by age 29, had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world 19) J.K. Rowling was 30 years old when she finished the first manuscript of Harry Potter 20) Amelia Earhart was 31 years old when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean 21) Oprah was 32 when she started her talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind 22) Edmund Hillary was 33 when he became the first man to reach Mount Everest 23) Martin Luther King Jr. was 34 when he wrote the speech “I Have a Dream." 24) Marie Curie was 35 years old when she got nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics 25) The Wright brothers, Orville (32) and Wilbur (36) invented and built the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight 26) Vincent Van Gogh was 37 when he died virtually unknown, yet his paintings today are worth millions. 27) Neil Armstrong was 38 when he became the first man to set foot on the moon. 28) Mark Twain was 40 when he wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and 49 years old when he wrote "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" 29) Christopher Columbus was 41 when he discovered the Americas 30) Rosa Parks was 42 when she refused to obey the bus driver’s order to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger 31) John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he became President of the United States 32) Henry Ford Was 45 when the Ford T came out. 33) Suzanne Collins was 46 when she wrote "The Hunger Games" 34) Charles Darwin was 50 years old when his book On the Origin of Species came out. 35) Leonardo Da Vinci was 51 years old when he painted the Mona Lisa. 36) Abraham Lincoln was 52 when he became president. 37) Ray Kroc Was 53 when he bought the McDonalds Franchise and took it to unprecedented levels. 38) Dr. Seuss was 54 when he wrote "The Cat in the Hat". 40) Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III was 57 years old when he successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. All of the 155 passengers aboard the aircraft survived 41) Colonel Harland Sanders was 61 when he started the KFC Franchise 42) J.R.R Tolkien was 62 when the Lord of the Ring books came out 43) Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became President of the US 44) Jack Lalane at age 70 handcuffed, shackled, towed 70 rowboats 45) Nelson Mandela was 76 when he became President

If toast always lands butter-side down, and cats always land on their feet, what happens if you strap toast on the back of a cat and drop it?

Oh no, honey, I'm an angel, I swear. The horns are only there to hold up the halo.

I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.

Hey, I have a suggestion, why not put a condom over your head – if you’re going to act like a complete dick then it makes sense to dress like one.

Monday is an awful way to spend 1/7 of your life.

Everyone has a photographic Memory, some just don't have film.

A doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.

I stayed up all night playing poker with tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died.

I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, 'Where’s the self-help section?' She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.

I have a hobby. I have the world’s largest collection of sea shells. I keep it scattered on beaches all over the world. Maybe you’ve seen some of it.

It was the first time I was ever in love, and I learned a lot. Before that I'd never even thought about killing myself.

The other night I was lying in bed, looking up at the stars, and I wondered, 'Where the hell is my roof?

Violence is a personal necessity for the oppressed...It is not a strategy consciously devised. It is the deep, instinctive expression of a human being denied individuality.

Taryn, are you even listening to me? “I pretended to, so let that be enough

I wish, when I was first born, the first thing I said was "Quote" so the last thing I said before I died would be "Unquote.

But instead of spending our lives running towards our dreams, we are often running away from a fear of failure or a fear of criticism.

Plan to be spontaneous tomorrow.

Reading was like a drug, a dope. The novels created moods in which I lived for days.

Why isn’t the word “phonetically” spelled with an “f”?

You know how it is when you're reading a book and falling asleep, you're reading, reading... and all of a sudden you notice your eyes are closed? I'm like that all the time.

I have an inferiority complex, but it’s not a very good one.

Light travels faster than sound. Isn't that why people appear bright before you hear them speak?

Last week the candle factory burned down. Everyone just stood around and sang, 'Happy Birthday.

Taryn,” he drawled in an impatient tone, “I am your mate –” And I’m stubborn, if you want absolute obedience, get a Labrador.

Support bacteria - they're the only culture some people have.

Erections don’t equal personal growth, Trey

I put tape on the mirrors in my house so I don't accidentally walk through into another dimension.

Shin: a device for finding furniture in the dark.

What happens if you get scared half to death twice?

I intend to live forever. So far, so good.

Did you sleep well?" "No, I made a couple of mistakes.

Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

Early in my career...I had to choose between an honest arrogance and a hypercritical humility... I deliberately choose an honest arrogance, and I've never been sorry.

Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.

How many times can a heart be shattered and still be pieced back together? How many times before the damage is irreparable?

What do you say when you feel your life is taken right from your chest, even though I miraculously find myself still breathing?

If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?

A lot of people ask me if I were shipwrecked, and could have only one book, what would it be? I always say, "How to Build a Boat.

Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.

A friend of mine once sent me a post card with a picture of the entire planet Earth taken from space. On the back it said, 'Wish you were here.

They hate because they fear, and they fear because they feel that the deepest feelings of their lives are being assaulted and outraged. And they do not know why; they are powerless pawns in a blind play of social forces.

The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.

I just got lost in thought. It was unfamiliar territory.

I don’t mind if you want to start ranting just as long as you understand I’ll be ignoring every word

I named my dog Stay, so I can say, 'Come here, Stay! Come here, Stay!

It doesn’t matter what temperature a room is, it’s always room temperature.

If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.

If warm air rises, Heaven could be hotter than Hell.

Whose cruel idea was it for the word “lisp” to have an “s” in it?

Nature is my manifestation of God. I go to nature every day for inspiration in the day's work.

If a mute kid swears, should his mother wash his hands with soap?

Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?

I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they’d never expect it.

I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met.

Easter was when Hope in person surprised the whole world by coming forward from the future into the present.

If I want your opinion, I’ll kick it out of you, okay?

The point of the resurrection…is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die…What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it…What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself—will last into God's future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether (as the hymn so mistakenly puts it…). They are part of what we may call building for God's kingdom.

When we learn to read the story of Jesus and see it as the story of the love of God, doing for us what we could not do for ourselves--that insight produces, again and again, a sense of astonished gratitude which is very near the heart of authentic Christian experience.

Here's something for you to remember; you might have been born into money, but you came out of a vagina the same as everyone else. Popping out of one that's rich doesn't make you anything but lucky, or susceptible to being stuck your own arse. Whichever.

As we live and as we are, Simplicity - with a capital "S" - is difficult to comprehend nowadays. We are no longer truly simple. We no longer live in simple terms or places. Life is a more complex struggle now. It is now valiant to be simple: a courageous thing to even want to be simple. It is a spiritual thing to comprehend what simplicity means.

If you are a monster, stand up. If you are a monster, a trickster, a fiend, If you’ve built a steam-powered wishing machine If you have a secret, a dark past, a scheme, If you kidnap maidens or dabble in dreams Come stand by me. If you have been broken, stand up. If you have been broken, abandoned, alone If you have been starving, a creature of bone If you live in a tower, a dungeon, a throne If you weep for wanting, to be held, to be known, Come stand by me. If you are a savage, stand up. If you are a witch, a dark queen, a black knight, If you are a mummer, a pixie, a sprite, If you are a pirate, a tomcat, a wright, If you swear by the moon and you fight the hard fight, Come stand by me. If you are a devil, stand up. If you are a villain, a madman, a beast, If you are a strowler, a prowler, a priest, If you are a dragon come sit at our feast, For we all have stripes, and we all have horns, We all have scales, tails, manes, claws and thorns And here in the dark is where new worlds are born. Come stand by me.

What makes us leave what we love best? What is it inside us that keeps erasing itself When we need it most, That sends us into uncertainty for its own sake And holds us flush there until we begin to love it And have to begin again? What is it within our own lives we decline to live Whenever we find it, making our days unendurable, And nights almost visionless? I still don't know yet, but I do it.

Our too-young and too-new America, lusty because it is lonely, aggressive because it is afraid, insists upon seeing the world in terms of good and bad, the holy and the evil, the high and the low, the white and the black; our America is frightened of fact, of history, of processes, of necessity. It hugs the easy way of damning those whom it cannot understand, of excluding those who look different, and it salves its conscience with a self-draped cloak of righteousness

[L]asting love is something a person has to decide to experience. Lifelong monogamous devotion is just not natural—not for women even, and emphatically not for men. It requires what, for lack of a better term, we can call an act of will. . . . This isn't to say that a young man can't hope to be seized by love. . . . But whether the sheer fury of a man's feelings accurately gauges their likely endurance is another question. The ardor will surely fade, sooner or later, and the marriage will then live or die on respect, practical compatibility, simple affection, and (these days, especially) determination. With the help of these things, something worthy of the label 'love' can last until death. But it will be a different kind of love from the kind that began the marriage. Will it be a richer love, a deeper love, a more spiritual love? Opinions vary. But it's certainly a more impressive love.

so here i sit. a sum of the parts. about a third way down this wonderful path, so to speak. and i've been thinking lately about a friendship that fell apart with time, with distance, and with the misunderstanding of youth. i'm trying not to confuse sadness with regret. not the easiest thing at times. i dont regret that certain things happened. i understand that perhaps i had a choice in the matter, or perhaps i believe in fate. probably not, but so far actions as small as the quickest glance to events as monumental as death have pushed me slowly along to right here, right now. there was no other way to get here. the meandering and erratic path was actually the straightest of lines. take away a handful of angry words, things once thought of as mistakes or regrets, and i'm suddenly a different person with a different history, a different future. that, i would regret. so here i sit. thinking about a person i once called my best friends. a man who might be full of sadness and regret, who might not give a damn, or who might, just might, remember the future and realize that's where its at.