“Crisis doesn t change people; it reveals them.”
“A person with no enemies is a person with no personality.”
“And on the threshold of being no more I succeed in being another.”
“I just hope I don t become so blissful I become boring. I think I ll always be neurotic enough to do something weird.”
“You feel like it’s going to rain.”
“I change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I’m somebody else.”
“... to be forceful was not the same as being powerful and to be gentle was not the same as being fragile...”
“Chemically, I m as off as I can be. But you fix me.”
“They watched each other at times as a cat would watch a mouse, playfully but seriously. The inspector smiled and the teacher smiled back, and the cat in each smiled too.”
“Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Do not bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.”
“There s such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I m such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn t be half so interesting.”
“I ve always been very confident in my immaturity.”
“I hold that a strongly marked personality can influence descendants for generations.”
“I think insomnia is a sign that a person is interesting.”
“If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the creative temperament --it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No--Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.”
“Every instinct that is found in any man is in all men. The strength of the emotion may not be so overpowering, the barriers against possession not so insurmountable, the urge to accomplish the desire less keen. With some, inhibitions and urges may be neutralized by other tendencies. But with every being the primal emotions are there. All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike some one they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.”
“Marsh: Our best efforts were never even a mild annoyance to the Lord Ruler. Kelsier: Ah, but being an annoyance is something that I am very good at. In fact, I m far more than just a mild annoyance--people tell me I can be downright frustrating. Might as well use this talent for the cause of good, eh?”