Daisy > Daisy 's Quotes

“How have so many humans reached the point where they accept that even miserable, unnecessary work is actually morally superior to no work at all?”
― David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

“The beautiful unruliness of literature is what makes it so much fun to wander through: you read Jane Austen and you say, oh, that is IT. And then you turn around and read Sterne, and you say, Man, that is IT. And then you wander across a century or so, and you run into Kafka, or Calvino, or Cortazar, and you say, well that is IT. And then you stroll through what Updike called the grottos of Ulysses, and after that you consort with Baldwin or Welty or Spencer, or Morrison, or Bellow or Fitzgerald and then back to W. Shakespeare, Esq; the champ, and all the time you feel the excitement of being in the presence of IT. And when you yourself spend the good time writing, you are not different in kind than any of these people, you are part of that miracle of human invention. So get to work. Get on with IT, no matter how difficult IT is. Every single gesture, every single stumble, every single uninspired-feeling hour, is worth IT." Richard Bausch”
― Kathy Fish

“For readers worldwide, the attraction of romance novels seems to be that they provide hope, strength, and the assurance that happy endings are possible. Romance makes the promise that no matter how bleak things sometimes look, in the end everything will turn out right and true love will triumph -- and in an uncertain world, that's very comforting.”
― Leigh Michaels, On Writing Romance: How to Craft a Novel That Sells

“I've been working hard on [Ulysses] all day," said Joyce.

Does that mean that you have written a great deal?" I said.

Two sentences," said Joyce.

I looked sideways but Joyce was not smiling. I thought of [French novelist Gustave] Flaubert. "You've been seeking the mot juste?" I said.

No," said Joyce. "I have the words already. What I am seeking is the perfect order of words in the sentence.”
― James Joyce

“Essential doesn’t have to mean minimal; it simply means eliminating distraction from what matters.”
― Kendra Adachi, The Lazy Genius Way: Embrace What Matters, Ditch What Doesn't, and Get Stuff Done

“When you’re beginning a task, remember what matters and then ask yourself, What one thing can I do that will most calm the crazy?”
― Kendra Adachi, The Lazy Genius Way: Embrace What Matters, Ditch What Doesn't, and Get Stuff Done

“If cleaning your house is tending to your home and making space for what matters, think about that for a minute. Breathe.”
― Kendra Adachi, The Lazy Genius Way: Embrace What Matters, Ditch What Doesn't, and Get Stuff Done

“Self-care should be a regular practice of doing what makes you feel like yourself. It’s a practice of remembering who you are.”
― Kendra Adachi, The Lazy Genius Way: Embrace What Matters, Ditch What Doesn't, and Get Stuff Done

“Your tasks aren’t necessarily the origin of your stress; trying to fit into a mold of who you think you should be almost always is.”
― Kendra Adachi, The Lazy Genius Way: Embrace What Matters, Ditch What Doesn't, and Get Stuff Done

“They were full of things men eat in the woods: Dinty Moore, canned soup, sardines, eggs, bacon, pudding cups, coffee, plenty of Wonder Bread, two sixpacks of beer, and our annual bottle of Jack Daniel’s.”
― Stephen King, You Like It Darker

“I remember thinking that the fading of hopes and ambitions was mostly painless. That was good, but it was also rather horrible. I wanted to be a writer, but I was beginning to think being a good one was beyond me. If it was, the world would continue to spin. You relaxed your hand… opened your fingers… and something flew away. I remember thinking maybe that’s all right.”
― Stephen King, You Like It Darker

“I think our only two choices were to laugh or to scream. If I’d been alone, I almost certainly would have screamed. And run away, probably to hide under my bed like a child and deny I’d seen anything. Because we were together, and grown men, we laughed.”
― Stephen King, You Like It Darker

“We became famous. We became rich. Our dreams came true. Nothing wrong with those things, and if I ever have doubts about the shape of my life, doesn’t everybody? Don’t you?”
― Stephen King, You Like It Darker

“When intelligence outraces emotional stability, it’s always just a matter of time.”
― Stephen King, You Like It Darker

“Because of the noise in your lives. Because of your thoughts. Thoughts are pointless. Worse, dangerous.”
― Stephen King, You Like It Darker

“Marriage is honesty; it’s also a repository of shared secrets.”
― Stephen King, You Like It Darker

“It’s all right to want what you can’t have. You learn to live with it. I tell myself that, and mostly I believe it.”
― Stephen King, You Like It Darker

“I have always regarded the feet as the most intimate and personal part of our bodies, and not the genitals, not the heart, or even the brain, organs of no great significance that are too highly valued. It is in the feet that all knowledge of Mankind lies hidden; the body sends them a weighty sense of who we really are and how we relate to the earth. It's in the touch of the earth, at its point of contact with the body that the whole mystery is located - the fact that we're built of elements of matter, while also being alien to it, separated from it. The feet - those are our plugs into the socket.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

“Grief sleeps but doesn’t die. At least not until the griever does.”
― Stephen King, You Like It Darker

“We don’t have to take things so personally. We take things to heart that we have no business taking to heart. For instance, saying “If you loved me you wouldn’t drink” to an alcoholic makes as much sense as saying “If you loved me, you wouldn’t cough” to someone who has pneumonia. Pneumonia victims will cough until they get appropriate treatment for their illness. Alcoholics will drink until they get the same. When people with a compulsive disorder do whatever it is they are compelled to do, they are not saying they don’t love you—they are saying they don’t love themselves.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“Many of the people I’ve worked with in family groups have been that obsessed with people they care about. When I asked them what they were feeling, they told me what the other person was feeling. When I asked what they did, they told me what the other person had done. Their entire focus was on someone or something other than themselves. Some of them had spent years of their lives doing this—worrying about, reacting to, and trying to control other human beings. They were shells, sometimes almost invisible shells, of people. Their energy was depleted—directed at someone else. They couldn’t tell me what they were feeling and thinking because they didn’t know. Their focus was not on themselves.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“This I consider the defining feature of a bullshit job: one so completely pointless that even the person who has to perform it every day cannot convince himself there’s a good reason for him to be doing it.”
― David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

“Bullshit jobs are not just jobs that are useless or pernicious; typically, there has to be some degree of pretense and fraud involved as well. The jobholder must feel obliged to pretend that there is, in fact, a good reason why her job exists, even if, privately, she finds such claims ridiculous.”
― David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

“If we’re at the point where in order to sell products, you have to first of all trick people into thinking they need them, then I think you’d be hard-pressed to argue that these jobs aren’t bullshit.”
― David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

“Human beings certainly tend to rankle over what they consider excessive or degrading work; few may be inclined to work at the pace or intensity that “scientific managers” have, since the 1920s, decided they should; people also have a particular aversion to being humiliated. But leave them to their own devices, and they almost invariably rankle even more at the prospect of having nothing useful to do.”
― David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

“Of course, we learned our lesson: if you’re on the clock, do not be too efficient. You will not be rewarded, not even by a gruff nod of acknowledgment (which is all we were really expecting). Instead, you’ll be punished with meaningless busywork.”
― David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

“the psychological and emotional labor required to balance meaningful interests and bullshit work is often daunting.”
― David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

“The more your work helps and benefits others, and the more social value you create, the less you are likely to be paid for it.”
― David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

“Work, Aristotle insisted, in no sense makes you a better person; in fact, it makes you a worse one, since it takes up so much time, thus making it difficult to fulfill one’s social and political obligations.”
― David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

“Subscribing to prepackaged notions of balance and generic wellness when they don’t fit who you are isn’t being healthy, it’s being obedient.”
― Katherine Morgan Schafler, The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power