Favorite Quotes

“One person's craziness is another person's reality."

"If you've ever had that feeling of loneliness, of being an outsider, it never quite leaves you. You can be happy or successful or whatever, but that thing still stays within you."

"Classes will dull your mind, destroy the potential for authentic creativity."

“I cannot waste time in these classes and these books, memorizing the weak assumptions of lesser mortals.”

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."

"I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious."

“Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.”

as Ace Rothstein in Casino:

"There are three ways of doing things around here:the right way, the wrong way and the way that I do it."

"You laugh at me because I'm different, I laugh at you because you're all the same."

"If you don't any have enemies, you don't have character."

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.”

“I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.”

“I didn't want to wake up. I was having a much better time asleep. And that's really sad. It was almost like a reverse nightmare, like when you wake up from a nightmare you're so relieved. I woke up into a nightmare.”

“I don't know how I can be so ambitious and so lazy at the same time.”

“I don't owe people anything, and I don't have to talk to them any more than I feel I need to.”

“I'm smart but not enough--just smart enough to have problems.”

“Some of the most profound truths about us are things that we stop saying in the middle.”

“When you're surrounded by all these people, it can be lonelier than when you're by yourself."

“I feel like a defective model, like I came off the assembly line flat-out fucked and my parents should have taken me back for repairs before the warranty ran out.”

“...if you feel everything intensely, ultimately you feel nothing at all.”

“The planet is fine. The people are fucked.”

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”

“Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.”

“If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it.”

“Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.”

“If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and man.”

“I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”

“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure. ”

“Out of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most.”

“When angry, count four. When very angry, swear.”

“Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.

“He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.”

“The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it he knows too little.”

“Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.”

"Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today."

"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."