Explanation Quotes - Page 28

• I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Slaughterhouse Five, Mountain, Doe

  Harold Bloom, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (2009). “Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-five”, p.141, Infobase Publishing

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• There is never a sudden revelation, a complete and tidy explanation for why it happened, or why it ends, or why or who you are. You want one and I want one, but there isn't one. It comes in bits and pieces, and you stitch them together wherever they fit, and when you are done you hold yourself up, and still there are holes and you are a rag doll, invented, imperfect. And yet you are all that you have, so you must be enough. There is no other way.

  Marya Hornbacher

  Together, Want, Way

  "Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia". Book by Marya Hornbacher, www.glamour.com. 1998.

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• I like children. If they're properly cooked.

  W. C. Fields

  Children, Ifs

  Fields for President ch. 7 (1940)

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• Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Heartbreak, Betrayal, Causes

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• I was still owed an explanation, I thought, but so what? What good was it going to do me? It wouldn't have made me any happier. It was like scratching when you have chicken pox. You think it's going to help, but the itch moves over, and then moves over again. My itch suddenly felt miles away, and I couldn't have reached it with the longest arms in the world. Realizing that made me scared that I was going to be itchy forever, and I didn't want that.

  Nick Hornby

  Moving, Thinking, Forever

  "A Long Way Down". Book by Nick Hornby, May 7, 2005.

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• ...the girl with the tip-tilted nose, the forget-me-not eyes, the rose red cheeks and the lily-white neck and shoulders who gave the explanation in a trembling voice: “It’s the ghost!

  Gaston Leroux

  Girl, Eye, Voice

  Gaston Leroux (2016). “The Phantom of the Opera & The Mystery of the Yellow Room (Mystery Classics): The Ultimate Gothic Romance Mystery and One of the First Locked-Room Crime Mysteries”, p.10, e-artnow

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• Our ignorance can be divided into problems and mysteries. When we face a problem, we may not know its solution, but we have insight, increasing knowledge, and an inkling of what we are looking for. When we face a mystery, however, we can only stare in wonder and bewilderment, not knowing what an explanation would even look like.

  Noam Chomsky

  Ignorance, Knowing, Looks

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• What is magic? There is the wizard's explanation... wizards talk about candles, circles, planets, stars, bananas, chants, runes and the importance of having at least four good meals every day.

  Terry Pratchett

  Stars, Circles, Magic

  Terry Pratchett (2008). “Lords And Ladies: (Discworld Novel 14)”, p.141, Random House

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• In one thing you have not changed, dear friend," said Aragorn: "you still speak in riddles." "What? In riddles?" said Gandalf. "No! For I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to; the long explanations needed by the young are wearying.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Talking, Long, Speak

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Two Towers: Being the Second Part of The Lord of the Rings”, p.485, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Tell all the Truth but tell it slant-- Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth's superb surprise As Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind--

  Emily Dickinson

  Children, Lying, Congratulations

  Emily Dickinson, Helen Vendler (2010). “Dickinson”, p.431, Harvard University Press

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• We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We're a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don't really have an explanation for.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Success, Problem, Storytelling

  "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking". Book by Malcolm Gladwell, January 11, 2005.

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• Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Running, Memories, Knowing

  Hunter S. Thompson (2011). “The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time”, p.104, Simon and Schuster

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• Pooh! Grown-ups are always thinking of uninteresting explanations.

  C. S. Lewis

  Thinking, Nephew, Always Thinking

  C. S. Lewis (2013). “The Chronicles of Narnia Complete 7-Book Collection with Bonus Book: Boxen”, p.19, Harper Collins

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• I flicked my eyes over to Steve again and saw him straighten. He would need a diversion just to start. “Explanations?” I bellowed. “Explanations? There’s your explanation…there!” I stabbed a finger dramatically towards the far corner of the room. Pathetic, really. I mean, talk about the oldest trick in the book. But it’s a good book, and the trick would have been cut from subsequent editions if it didn’t sometimes work.

  Stephen Fry

  Book, Mean, Eye

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• I flung open the door. I got a momentary flash of about a hundred and fifteen cats of all sizes and colours scrapping in the middle of the room, and then they all shot past me with a rush and out of the front door; and all that was left of the mobscene was the head of a whacking big fish, lying on the carpet and staring up at me in a rather austere sort of way, as if it wanted a written explanation and apology.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Lying, Cat, Apology

  P. G. Wodehouse (2016). “Expecting Jeeves”, p.34, Courier Dover Publications

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• Indeed there has never been any explanation of the ebb and flow in our veins--of happiness and unhappiness.

  Virginia Woolf

  Ebb And Flow, Veins, Unhappiness

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.818, Delphi Classics

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• Just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Attitude, Mean, Understanding

  Twitter post from Jan 20, 2017

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• People derived too much pleasure from seeing their fellow man morally humiliated to spoil that pleasure by hearing out an explanation.

  Milan Kundera

  Men, People, Fellow Man

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• Don't try to steer the boat. Don't open shop for yourself. Listen. Keep silent. You are not God's mouthpiece. Try to be an ear, And if you do speak, ask for explanations.

  Rumi

  Trying, Ears, Speak

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• The only people who can ever put ideas into context are people who don't care; the unbiased and apathetic are usually the wisest dudes in the room. If you want to totally misunderstand why something is supposedly important, find the biggest fan of that particular thing and ask him for an explanation. He will tell you everything that doesn't matter to anyone who isn't him. He will describe paradoxical details and share deeply personal anecdotes, and it will all be autobiography; he will simply be explaining who he is by discussing something completely unrelated to his life.

  Chuck Klosterman

  Ideas, People, Important

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• No, no! The adventures first, explanations take such a dreadful time.

  Lewis Carroll

  Patience, Adventure, Adventurous Life

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• The longer I live, the more uninformed I feel. Only the young have an explanation for everything.

  Isabel Allende

  Young, Uninformed, Feels

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• That the boat did not upset I simply state as a fact. Why it did not upset I am unable to offer any reason. I have often thought about the matter since, but I have never succeeded in arriving at any satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon. Possibly the result may have been brought about by the natural obstinacy of all things in this world. The boat may possibly have come to the conclusion, judging from a cursory view of our behaviour, that we had come out for a morning's suicide, and had thereupon determined to disappoint us. That is the only suggestion I can offer.

  Jerome K. Jerome

  Suicide, Morning, Views

  Jerome K. Jerome, Geoffrey Harvey (2008). “Three Men in a Boat and Three Men on the Bummel”, p.135, Oxford University Press

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• Very simple was my explanation, and plausible enough---as most wrong theories are!

  H. G. Wells

  Simple, Enough, Theory

  H. G. Wells (2015). “The Time Machine: H. G. Wells Collections”, p.25, 谷月社

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• That's what the leadership was teaching me, day by day: that the self-interest I was supposed to be looking for extended well beyond the immediacy of issues, that beneath the small talk and sketchy biographies and received opinions, people carried with them some central explanation of themselves. Stories full of terror and wonder, studded with events that still haunted or inspired them. Sacred stories.

  Barack Obama

  Teaching, Self, Issues

  Barack Obama (2007). “Dreams From My Father”, p.190, Canongate Books

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