Quotes by Authors - Page 275

The director of one of the nursing homes I have studied said, "We do not become children as we age. But because dependency can look childlike, we too often treat the elderly as though this were the case.
Sherry Turkle
The democratic age mourns the value of human beings.
Harold Bloom
I knew that the Name was still with him, animating his soul, even as his body failed.
Geraldine Brooks
To die trying is the proudest humans thing.
Robert A. Heinlein
the unconscious is so seductive because mortality is alien to it
Dean Cavanagh
The conversation did not go very well and I began telling him about the people with their trays in the great cafeteria and suggesting that it would have done us more good to go there to be put in mind of our own mortality.
Barbara Pym
We reach the end of our lives long before we reach the end of ourselves.
Marty Rubin
I know that we have to live each moment because we won’t be here for ever, and that I wouldn’t want to be anyway, because knowing something’s going to end makes you appreciate it more, makes you want to savour every moment.And I know that I won’t sign the Declaration, even if it makes me different, even if it makes me suspicious. Because no one needs to live for ever.I think that sometimes you can outstay your welcome.
Gemma Malley
Life itself is the axiom of the empty set. It begins in zero and ends in zero.
Hanya Yanagihara
A shapeless figure bent over him, he smelt the fresh leather of the revolver belt; but what insignia did the figure wear on the sleeves and shoulder straps of its uniform—and in whose name did it raise the dark pistol barrel?A second, smashing blow hit him on the ear. Then all became quiet. There was the sea again with its sounds. A wave slowly lifted him up. It came from afar and travelled sedately on, a shrug of eternity.
Arthur Koestler
But to elude deathis not easy: attempt it who will,he shall go to the place prepared for eachof the sons of men, the soul-bearersdwelling on earth, ordained them by fate:laid fast in that bed, the body shall sleepwhen the feast is done.
Michael Alexander
Mortality was never designed to torture you. It was designed to test you.
Toni Sorenson
I’m pretty sure Mom and Dad didn’t see me coming, either: the kid with the black moods, the kid whose mind was always elsewhere, flinching from real life as from a bruise. Who wanted to lay a fiction-filter on top of everything and pretend it was something else just to keep the sheer disappointment of it all bearable: this limited, empirical experience of ours, trapped inside a decaying shell of meat, mainly able to perceive that nothing lasts, even in our most pleasurable moments.
Gemma Files
The question was not death; living things die. It was love. Not that we died, but what we cared wildly, then deeply, for one person out of billions. We bound ourselves to the fickle, changing, and dying as if they were rock.
Annie Dillard
No one, in the end, made it out of this life alive.
Garth Risk Hallberg
I was a couple of summers past twenty but I felt there were stones under that frozen, dun earth that were younger than me.
Robert Low
The question was not death; living things die. It was love. Not that we died, but that we cared wildly, then deeply, for one person out of billions. We bound ourselves to the fickle, changing, and dying as if they were rock.
Annie Dillard
A whole planet of worlds, and not one of them—not one—has a soul. They wander through their lives separate and alone, unable even to communicate except through grunts and tokens: as if the essence of a sunset or a supernova could ever be contained in some string of phonemes, a few linear scratches of black on white. They've never known communion, can aspire to nothing but dissolution. The paradox of their biology is astonishing, yes; but the scale of their loneliness, the futility of these lives, overwhelms me.
Peter Watts
In the end, the body betrayed everyone.
Gail Tsukiyama
Me, I'm living under a sword too, as Jack may have told you. An old wino's disease, which could lay me in the grave most anytime. Not that I mind too much; I've done everything I ever wanted to do. But ... as you know, one would like to continue doing the good things over and over again, so long as there's pleasure in it.
Edward Abbey
I had to ride my bike to and from their god damn plant way up north in the high-chemical crime district, and reachable only by riding on the shoulder of some major freeways. I could feel the years ticking off my life expectancy as the mile markers struggled by.
Neal Stephenson
And if I were to open you up - would you see anything less remarkable? Less intricately dazzling, in its squelching, spongy way? Lungs and heart and spleen, and all the rest - ticking away, as it were? Yet you walk down the boulevard, and pass any number of such wonderful devices, all ticking away as they walk, and think it no great marvel.
K.W. Jeter
Even if their supplies of love are finite, they've figured out that life is, too, and they're no longer rationing.
Julianna Baggott
The hospital room was as cold as dead skin, the hallway crowded with lost souls and reeking of illness.
Raquel Cepeda
Then I could not help wondering what the watching gods thought of us, with our clever masks and our jokes. What we think of crickets, perhaps, whose singing we hear with pleasure, though some of us smash them with our heels when they venture into sight.
Gene Wolfe
What could a child know of the darkness of God's plan? Or how flesh is so frail it is hardly more than a dream
Cormac McCarthy
All the mortal world is a lethal enemy during those hours between dawn and dusk.
Anne Rice
As we live our precarious lives on the brink of the void, constantly coming closer to a state of nonbeing, we are all too often aware of our fragitlity.
Iris Murdoch
Love was generous precisely because it could never be immortal.
Peter S Beagle
We know summer is the height of of being alive. We don't believe in God or the prospect of an afterlife mostly, so we know that we're only given eighty summers or so per lifetime, and each one has to be better then the last, has to encompass a trip to that arts center up at Bard, a seemingly mellow game of badminton over at some yahoo's Vermont cottage, and a cool, wet, slightly dangerous kayak trip down an unforgiving river. Otherwise, how would you know that you have lived your summertime best? What is you missed out on some morsel of shaded nirvana?
Gary Shteyngart
I am simply looking for a companion with whom to spend my days, a companion who will cherish as much as I the stupidity of living in the moment, and spend every dull, amazing second with me.
Heidi Julavits
Yet at the last Beren was slain by the Wolf that came from the gates of Angband, and he died in the arms of Tinúviel. But she chose mortality, and to die from the world, so that she might follow him; and it is sung that they met again beyond the Sundering Seas, and after a brief time walking alive once more in the green woods, together they passed, long ago, beyond the confines of this world. So it is that Lúthien Tinúviel alone of the Elf-kindred has died indeed and left the world, and they have lost her whom they most loved.
J.R.R. Tolkien
As for oblivion, well, we can wait a little while for that.
Anne Rice
Nothing can last forever. There isn't any memory, no matter how intense, that doesn't fade out at last.
Juan Rulfo
There is something miraculous in the way the years wash away your evidence, first you, then your friends and family, then the descendants who remember your face, until you aren’t even a memory, you’re only carbon, no greater than your atoms, and time will divide them as well.
Anthony Marra
Whatever condition we are in, we must always do what we want to do, and if we want to go on a journey, then we must do so and not worry about our condition, even if it's the worst possible condition, because, if it is, we're finished anyway, whether we go on the journey or not, and it's better to die having made the journey we're been longing for than to be stifled by our longing.
Thomas Bernhard
Yes, man is mortal, but that would be only half the trouble. The worst of it is that he's sometimes unexpectedly mortal—there's the trick!
Mikhail Bulgakov
On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Chuck Palahniuk
There is not love of life without despair about life.
Albert Camus
Life is only precious because it ends, kid.
Rick Riordan
A small fact:You are going to die....does this worry you?
Markus Zusak
If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.
Ernest Hemingway
Man is born to dream, to be enlightened, to connect and to be fulfilled. Managers are too.
Stan Slap
Bury My Heart is "a life-altering approach to turning managers into unconditionally committed leaders.
Stan Slap
Your brand is the unique persona and identity of you, your company, product or service that sets it apart from others in the same market space. It is the image you or your business present to the world. A brand is composed of many different pieces which, together, capture the attention of your buyers. Some of the pieces are physical, but much of branding is intangible; ideas and thoughts put into words, pictures and videos. When small business owners ask themselves “What is branding?” the answer is, “the essence of the business, products or services.” Your personal brand conveys the way you are perceived; and how you want people to see and feel about you, your business and your products or services. You may want to sound very dignified and reinforce your ‘expert status’ and credibility depending on your products or services. Or you may want to sound approachable, edgy and smart. Whatever voice you choose, carry it into all your messaging, marketing materials, and web presence (your platform).
Kytka Hilmar-Jezek
Book authors are in high demand for speaking engagements and appearances; they are the new ‘celebrity’ and celebrities gain access. Authors not only make money from royalties or book advances but from their keynotes, presentations and strategically branded product lines. This includes entrepreneurial ideas for you to extend yourself beyond just writing and prepares you to add speaking and consulting to your revenue stream. You have to begin to look outside book sales and towards the speaking market. There are radio, interviews, news, television, small channel television keynotes, lectures, seminars and workshops. These types of events have the possibility to be much more lucrative than just selling books. In essence, the book builds and brands you in the public eye. It gives you credibility and the opportunity to be more than you are. It enables you to now be a voice, a teacher, a leader, an expert - after all, you wrote the book on it!
Kytka Hilmar-Jezek
The question is not how to get managers’ emotional commitment but why manager’s don’t give it even if they like their company.
Stan Slap
The personal values managers reported being the most under pressure to compromise to do their jobs successfully: 1. Family 2. Integrity.
Stan Slap
The decision to create a book trailer is entirely up to you. I can remember when "video killed the radio star" on MTV and how excited I was with some music videos (the ones that lived up to or exceeded my imagined vision of the song) and the ones I disliked so much, I even stopped listening to the song (the imagery just ruined it for me!) Some people argue that in a visual landscape, a book trailer is a must, while others stand firm that books should be read and not seen; unless of course it gets made into a screenplay and then a film. The most practical advice is to trust your instinct. You know what you want to say with your book and if it aligns congruently with your brand, then for a non-fiction book it may be a strategic move. On the other hand, it may come off as too "salesy" and go in the opposite direction. As you can see, I still have a love / hate relationship with matching someone else's images to my own imagination. No matter what you decide, remember to keep it aligned with your brand.
Kytka Hilmar-Jezek
So sure, start with a slogan. But don't bother wasting any time on it if you're merely going for catchy. Aim for true instead.
Seth Godin
Branding is about everything.
Tom Peters
There comes a point when you realize that these things, these brands, aren't "enough." Having more or better or best doesn't provide you with a lasting sense of having more or being better or being best. It's a rather fleeting experience, this romantic attachment to brands, and I find that if I'm not careful, the search for having more or better or best is a precarious journey into the infinite. When you depend on finite objects-or brands-to provide you with a long-term sense of self or love or pride or achievement, you start yourself out on a path with no end. No object, no product, and no brand can provide you with ultimate, infinite satisfaction.
Debbie Millman
Without sense of purpose and clear direction of your life, you will only be building a fake brand of you
Bernard Kelvin Clive
Personal Branding is the combination of one’s skills and talents to produce value for people that creates an impression, a perception and reputation in the mind of others
Bernard Kelvin Clive
Contributors and distributors tend to do better at personal branding than takers and fakers.
Ryan Lilly
Sensible brands lend themselves to all of the senses.
Ryan Lilly
For a case study in personal branding. Google “Jarod Kintz.” He’s kind of a big deal.
Ryan Lilly
If your personal brand were at a trade show alongside several thousand others, how would you fare? Now scale that to the global economy.
Ryan Lilly
In this value driven and ‘connection economy’, skills & talents alone are dime-a-dozen, you need to be able to add value to others and build great connections
Bernard Kelvin Clive
Carve-out a niche, craft a personal pitch, push-out content and your brand is enriched.
Ryan Lilly