"And when they start talking, and they always do, you find that each of them has a story they want to tell. Everyone, no matter how old or young, has some lesson they want to teach. And I sit there and listen and learn all about life from people who have no idea how to live it."

--

Source : Paul Neilan (2007). “Apathy and Other Small Victories: A Novel”, p.40, Macmillan

Paul Neilan

#Talking Quotes #Ideas Quotes #People Quotes

“It is wise to remember that too much success in the stock market is in itself an excellent warning.”
“Perhaps the single most dramatic example of this phenomenon of software eating a traditional business is the suicide of Borders and corresponding rise of Amazon”
“Most poor people in America are white. The family breakdown issue is an issue that crosses all sorts of racial lines. High school dropout issues. But because of the flow of events which involve the racial component, we've sometimes confused racial issues with other issues which are trans-racial.”
“It may seem to your conceited to suppose that you can do anything important toward improving the lot of mankind. But this is a fallacy. You must believe that you can help bring about a better world. A good society is produced only by good individuals, just as truly as a majority in a presidential election is produced by the votes of single electors. Everybody can do something toward creating in his own environment kindly feelings rather than anger, reasonableness rather than hysteria, happiness rather than misery.”
“I try to preface everything with "this isn't new." Because most social movements have happened before and I get that. Nothing I'm doing is new.”
“The breakdown of his(Plato's) philosophy is made apparent in the fact that he could not trust to gradual improvements in education to bring about a better society which should then improve education, and so on indefinitely. Correct education could not come into existence until an ideal state existed, and after that education would be devoted simply to its conservation. For the existence of this state he was obliged to trust to some happy accident by which philosophic wisdom should happen to coincide with possession of ruling power in the state.”
“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”

Source : "Flicker to Flame: Living with Purpose, Meaning, and Happiness". Book by Jeffrey Thompson Parker, October 2006.
“Only the highest souls realize and accept that he who sins is far more to be pitied, aye, and loved, if love is what the highest human passion should be, than is the one against whom the sinner has sinned.”

You may also like:

Amy Hempel
Writer
Arthur Nersesian
Novelist
Brian Evenson
Writer
Chad Kultgen
Author
Craig Clevenger
Author
Denis Johnson
Writer
Max Barry
Author
Monica Drake
Writer
Will Christopher Baer
Author