People could close their eyes to greatness, to horrors, to beauty, and their ears to melodies or deceiving words. But they could not escape scent. For scent was a brother of breath. Together with breath it entered human beings, who could not defend themselves against it, not if they wanted to live. And scent entered into their very core, went directly to their hearts, and decided for good and all between affection and contempt, disgust and lust, love and hate. He who ruled scent ruled the hearts of men.
– from Perfume book by Patrick Suskind
A society cannot run as it …
A society cannot run as it should unless people with excellent legal minds make it their business to make it run.
– from A Little Life book by Hanya Yanagihara
You could try as hard as …
You could try as hard as possible to imagine someone else’s tragedy – drowning in icy waters, living in a city split by a wall – but nothing truly hurt until it happened to you. Most of all, to your child.
– from The Husband’s Secret book by Liane Moriarty
When you love someone, you want …
When you love someone, you want to make this world look different for them. To give all the ugly stuff meaning, and amplify the good. That’s what you do.
– from Beach Read book by Emily Henry
Japanese women are required to be …
Japanese women are required to be self-denying, hard-working and ascetic, and in the same breath, to be feminine, soft and caring towards men. Everyone finds that an impossible balance to strike, and they struggle desperately as a result. Even when they do manage to strike it, there’s no redemption to be had. They’re never fully free.
– from Butter book by Asako Yuzuki
The power of ignorance is never …
The power of ignorance is never to be underestimated. It is very powerful and the world is ruled by it most of the time. You think your knowledge, your fire, your Enlightenment will do things, but the Enlightened are always an individual, the ignorant are in masses. There is a huge power to that.
– from Death; An Inside Story book by Sadhguru
The capitalist world is a Boston …
The capitalist world is a Boston Marathon that never ends – there is no respite at the end of a punishing two-hour race. The race goes on and on and on and on and on: 24 hours × 7 days a week × 365 days a year. It’s unending, unrelenting, unforgiving.
– from What I Learned About Investing from Darwin book by Pulak Prasad
It doesn’t matter if you’re fighting …
It doesn’t matter if you’re fighting a war with swords, with bombers, or with sticks and stones – weapons are no good unless you know when and where to aim them.
– from The Rose Code book by Kate Quinn
To me, America is about empowering …
To me, America is about empowering true innovators (like founders), true risk-takers (like investors), true thinkers (like professors), and true elected leaders over the bureaucratic intermediaries who are hired to “manage” them all.
– from Woke, Inc. book by Vivek Ramaswamy
My little life was about to …
My little life was about to change. But we never know, do we? Life turns on a dime.
– from 11/22/63 book by Stephen King