Top 97 Jonathan Carroll Quotes
#1. Dogs are here to remind us life really is a simple thing. You eat, sleep, take walks, and pee when you must. That's about all there is. They are quick to forgive trespasses and assume strangers will be kind.
Jonathan Carroll
#3. The fact that I'm silent doesn't mean I have nothing to say.
Jonathan Carroll
#6. I think we love differently every day. Like the guy who said you can't stand in a river at exactly the same place twice. Today I love you differently than yesterday, or will tomorrow.
Jonathan Carroll
#7. I write about what interests me. It's very dangerous when you try to satisfy an audience.
Jonathan Carroll
#8. Learn to wait; invariably either things will change or your heart will.
Jonathan Carroll
#9. The questions are the danger.
Leave them alone and they sleep.
Ask them, awake them, and more than you
know will begin to rise.
Jonathan Carroll
#11. If I don't feel like writing today or for a few days, I don't. And I don't think about it. It is not an obligation-it is the greatest privilege.
Jonathan Carroll
#12. Yo can always take back the lost parts of yourself if you can find and recognize them.
Jonathan Carroll
#13. Both young children and old people have a lot of time on their hands. That's probably why they get along so well.
Jonathan Carroll
#14. Why do people always gesture with their hands when they talk on the phone?
Jonathan Carroll
#16. I forgive nothing. If you stole my orange crayon in the fifth grade, you're still on my hit list, buddy.
Jonathan Carroll
#17. The first great real intimacy between two people begins when secrets are told.
Jonathan Carroll
#18. Some people are like blue jeans- the older and more beat up they get, the better they look.
Jonathan Carroll
#19. The angel said, I like black-and-white films more than color because they're more artificial. You have to work harder to overcome your disbelief. It's sort of like prayer.
Jonathan Carroll
#20. Its easy to lose sight of what you want when you think you want everything.
Jonathan Carroll
#21. I read less of everything now. With only fond memories of others' work, it will be interesting to give my own journal writing a try now.
Jonathan Carroll
#22. There's almost always a point in a book where something happens that triggers the rest of the plot.
Jonathan Carroll
#23. I had always liked blind dates. If nothing else, it was an interesting way of discovering what people thought of you.
Jonathan Carroll
#24. Coffee on an airplane always smells bad. Whenever it is served, suddenly the whole cabin stinks of it.
Jonathan Carroll
#27. Death doesn't make you sad- it makes you empty. That's what's so bad about it. All of your charms and beliefs and funny habits fall fast through a big black hole, and suddenly you know they're gone because just as suddenly, there's nothing left at all inside.
Jonathan Carroll
#29. Far more disturbing than any spook house at an amusement park is a ride through the old hometown if you've been away for years.
Jonathan Carroll
#30. Kids own nothing. Everything is either promised, borrowed, longed for or exaggerated.
Jonathan Carroll
#31. Even the handsomest men do not have the same momentary effect on the world as a truly beautiful woman does.
Jonathan Carroll
#32. One of the joys of being a dog is that they have no concept of the word "future." Everything is right now, and if right now happens to be a warm floor and a full stomach, then life is good.
Jonathan Carroll
#34. Like a spider web that you walk into, it is not so easy to get all the tendrils of real love off after you have passed through it.
Jonathan Carroll
#36. One of the saddest realities is that we never know when our lives are at their peak. Only after it is over and we have some kind of perspective do we realize how good we had it a day, a month, five years ago.
Jonathan Carroll
#37. Everything will haunt you, all the storms will find you, everything will remind you she's gone.
Jonathan Carroll
#38. When I was in college, I was the editor of the literary magazine and insisted neither the editors nor the writers be specifically identified-only our student numbers appeared on the title page. I love that idea and still do.
Jonathan Carroll
#39. Women are always complaining about men's fascination with breasts. But what if men were absolutely indifferent to breasts? What would women do then with these things that serve one function once or twice in a lifetime, and the rest of the time are just in the way?
Jonathan Carroll
#40. The only question that nobody ever asks is: What breaks your heart? I think that should be asked of all "artists." ... So, what breaks your heart?
Jonathan Carroll
#41. You have to walk carefully in the beginning of love; the running across fields into your lover's arms can only come later when you're sure they won't laugh if you trip.
Jonathan Carroll
#42. The trouble with wars is that they all look alike to people who aren't involved. Only the skin color of the dead is different.
Jonathan Carroll
#43. Time talks behind our back. To our face it's friendly and logical, never hesitating to give more of itself. But when we're not looking, it steals our lives and says bad things about us to the parts of us it's stolen
Jonathan Carroll
#44. Lying is too much trouble. You have to make sure to taste each word before letting it off your tongue. I hate that. It's hard enough making people understand without lying.
Jonathan Carroll
#45. I started a short story but it was so dreary that even my pen threw up.
Jonathan Carroll
#46. Pilot had never seen this particular ghost before. Head resting on paws, he mildly wondered what it was doing here. Dogs see ghosts about as often as people see cats. They're there but they're no big deal.
Jonathan Carroll
#47. Fear pounds on the door to our heart demanding to be let in. Joy is modest and often comes into our lives like a shy person entering a room; it can take a while to even notice it's there.
Jonathan Carroll
#48. How easily we ignore or forget the small kindnesses and considerations in life which are really the only everyday magic we witness on a regular basis. Just think- to make happiness out of nothing more than a few kind words or a generous gesture.
Jonathan Carroll
#50. The problem with waiting for someone, whether that wait is an hour or a lifetime, is everyone's 'clock' is different. So what you might consider forever is only a little while to them, or vice versa.
Jonathan Carroll
#51. Real love is always chaotic. You lose control; you lose perspective. You lose the ability to protect yourself. The greater the love, the greater the chaos. It's a given and that's the secret.
Jonathan Carroll
#52. People who truly love us can be divided into two categories: those who understand us, and those who forgive us our worst sins. Rarely do you find someone capable of both.
Jonathan Carroll
#53. You know people don't get better as we get older- we just get more of who we are.
Jonathan Carroll
#54. Sure, because it's a fairy tale. They're always so tediously moral. Nobody gets away with anything fun and all the interesting people are bad guys.
Jonathan Carroll
#55. The only two important things in life are real love and being at peace with yourself.
Jonathan Carroll
#56. Your boyfriend had a dream about potatoes and you're asking me to interpret it? I'm just old. Being old doesn't mean you know more; it means you ate enough fiber.
Jonathan Carroll
#57. May this house stand until an ant drinks the ocean and a tortoise circles the world.
Jonathan Carroll
#58. Krakow is one of my favorite places on earth. It is a medieval city full of young people. A wonderful, striking combination.
Jonathan Carroll
#59. Tell your mother the Law of Stolen Flight.'
'Only flame, and things with wings. All the rest suffer stings.
Jonathan Carroll
#61. I have never heard anyone say This is it. I know right now is the high point of my life. It will never get any better. Only in retrospect do we recognize the best times and of course then it is too late.
Jonathan Carroll
#62. The Viennese wash everything. Where else in the world does the government hire public servants to wash public telephone booths and the glass over traffic lights? Every time I see someone doing these things, I smile like a child.
Jonathan Carroll
#63. The only way to make beauty ugly is to show it's crazy. Like twisting the top off a jar of something wonderful to eat, the moment he's hit by the terrible smell of it gone bad, even the hungriest person will drop the jar in the trash without a second thought.
Jonathan Carroll
#64. If you are very lucky, you're allowed to be in certain places during just the right season of your life: by the sea for the summer when you're seven or eight and full of the absolute need to swim until dark and exhaustion close their hands together, cupping you in between.
Jonathan Carroll
#65. At a Boston signing, someone from the audience asked why I was so obsessed with furniture in my books. The question rattled around in my head. I had no idea that I was obsessed with furniture.
Jonathan Carroll
#66. It took me less than half a lifetime to realize that regret is one of the few guaranteed certainties. Sooner or later everything is touched by it, despite our naive and senseless hope that just this time we will be spared its cold hand on our heart.
Jonathan Carroll
#67. In the end, each of us has only one story to tell. It takes a lifetime to live that story but sometimes less than an hour to tell it. The
Jonathan Carroll
#68. Animals are on earth to protect mankind. When you gather a bunch of them together like this, you create a safe haven. Nothing can touch you here.
Jonathan Carroll
#69. It's always fun to walk down the street with or behind a really beautiful woman, for no reason other than to see how the world reacts to them.
Jonathan Carroll
#70. Most men think they are good drivers. Most women think they are good in bed. They aren't.
Jonathan Carroll
#72. Very often I'll find out at the end of a book what I put in at the beginning. A sort of process of elimination and discovery in one.
Jonathan Carroll
#73. Everyone coming out of a perfume store is smelling the back of their hand.
Jonathan Carroll
#74. Some people are more forgiving when they understand a situation, while others become even more furious once they see the whole picture.
Jonathan Carroll
#75. Fear's greatest weapon is its ability to blind one to anything. In its presence, we forget there are others to consider, things to save besides ourselves.
Jonathan Carroll
#76. Great sleep dreams seduce and sometimes torture. The best ones can almost break our heart when we awaken from them and find ourselves back ... here.
Jonathan Carroll
#77. The world can be divided between people who can get a waiter's attention and those who can't.
Jonathan Carroll
#78. The Wilmington, Delaware, television station that bills itself as The Family Minded Station is Channel 69.
Jonathan Carroll
#79. The keys that unlock the heart are made of funny materials: a disarming phrase that comes out of the blue, nowhere, a certain sexy walk that sends you reeling, the way someone hums when she is alone. My father said it was the way my mother danced with him.
Jonathan Carroll
#80. How does these things happen? How do we go mad in small ways and calmly work the madness into our everyday little exercises...?
Little by little...
Jonathan Carroll
#81. Salzburg ... is a mountain town with a rushing river running right through the center, everything in the rain various shades of green and brown.
Jonathan Carroll
#82. Most men, no matter how well or badly dressed, carry overstuffed, beat up wallets that should have been replaced years ago. Why is that? Every time I see a guy take out a wallet anywhere, it looks like a piece of old melted chocolate cake-with strings.
Jonathan Carroll
#83. In Poland, my audience is all women between 18 and 30. At U.S. conventions, you have the fantasy and science fiction crowd. At Harvard you have an entirely different audience. It's so schizophrenic.
Jonathan Carroll
#85. Sometimes it is the smallest thing that saves us: the weather growing cold, a child's smile, and a cup of excellent coffee.
Jonathan Carroll
#87. Only the guilty and the lovers really fear. The first because of what they are, the second for what they might lose.
Jonathan Carroll
#88. For an adult, eating alone at McDonald's is admitting a kind of defeat.
Jonathan Carroll
#89. Here's something you must know and don't forget it - animals never lie. They don't like, they don't put on disguises, and they are always true to what they are. That's why you can trust them.
Jonathan Carroll
#90. Listening to him, I realized how lucky I was not to have had a wonderful childhood. Those who do, or those who peak in their early years, have only that remembered joy or strength to tide them over the rest of their lives. Nothing could ever be as good as that time; for them nothing ever is.
Jonathan Carroll
#92. The Angel of Death was nothing special to look at: it had manifested itself today as a plate of someone's finished meal of bacon and eggs. Egg yolk was smeared across the white plate. Inside this smear were scattered bread crumbs.
Jonathan Carroll
#93. If it was as logical as that, I wouldn't continue to feel as bad as I do. I know what you're saying, and you're absolutely right in a way. But logic and rationality only go so far. Then you know what happens? Ha! Then your heart adds its two cents and everything reasonable goes right-out-the-window.
Jonathan Carroll
#94. Dogs are the kids we've always wanted. They're totally devoted and want to live with you until they die. Not like children who can't wait to take off as soon as they grow up and don't need you anymore.
Jonathan Carroll
#95. I find you write with one person in mind. Usually for me that one person is my wife, because she's my most severe critic and understands best what I'm trying to do.
Jonathan Carroll
#96. Sometimes you have to give up on people. Not because you don't care, but because they don't.
Jonathan Carroll
#97. I would have given him everything. I would have pulled down planets to make our life work.
Jonathan Carroll
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