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Chris Lavergne

4,096 Quotes
President of Thought.is
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4,096 quotes curated by Chris Lavergne:

“Children are a kind of cartography, and all one has to do is obey the map they present to you on the day they are born.”
— Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life: A Novel
Tagged: Childern, Having Kids, Parenthood
“Since then, he has tried to tell Willem more things. But there are so many topics that he has never discussed with anyone since Ana, now twenty-five years ago, that he finds he literally doesn't have the language to do so. His past, his fears, what was done to him, what he has done to himself — they are subjects that can only be discussed in tongues he doesn't speak: Farsi, Urdu, Mandarin, Portuguese. Once, he tried to write some things down, thinking that it might be easier, but it wasn't— he is unclear how to explain himself to himself.”
— Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life: A Novel
Tagged: Inner Distances, The Difficulty Of Communication, Trauma
“But what was happiness but an extravagance, an impossible state to maintain, partly because it was so difficult to articulate?”
— Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life: A Novel
Tagged: Can We Even Begin To Articulate?, Finding The Right Words, Happiness, Searching For Joy, 107 Of The Greatest Single Sentences In Literature, Perfect Sentences
“How might things have been different if he spoke only one sentence?”
— Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life: A Novel
Tagged: Destiny, Finding The Right Words, In Retrospect, Looking Back, The Course of Change, Words As Destiny Drivers
“When did pursuing your ambitions cross the line from brave into foolhardy? How did you know when to stop?”
— Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life: A Novel
Tagged: Brave, Fool, Stop
“But somewhere inside you, whether you were making out with someone in a bar or having dinner with your friends, was always your canvas, its shapes and possibilities floating embryonically behind your pupils. There was a period — or at least you hoped there was — with every painting or project when the life of that painting became more real to you than your everyday life, when you sat wherever you were and thought only of returning to the studio, when you were barely conscious that you had tapped out a hill of salt onto the dinner table and in it were drawing your plots and patterns and plans, the white grains moving under your fingertip like silt.”
— Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life: A Novel
Tagged: Second Vision, The Passion, The Vision Behind Vision, Artist
“New York was populated by the ambitious. It was often the only thing that everyone here had in common.”
— Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life: A Novel
Tagged: Ambition, New York City
“At the moment that we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold, that magic threshold into a library, we change their lives forever, for the better. ”
— Barack Obama, ala.org
Tagged: Education, Reading
“A lot of young people no longer see the trades and skilled manufacturing as a viable career. But I promise you, folks can make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree.”
— Barack Obama, insidehighered.com
Tagged: Art History, Education
“We need to invest in the skills and education of our people. Now, this year, we've broken through the stalemate between left and right by launching a national competition to improve our schools. And the idea here is simple: Instead of rewarding failure, we only reward success. Instead of funding the status quo, we only invest in reform--reform that raises student achievement; inspires students to excel in math and science; and turns around failing schools that steal the future of too many young Americans, from rural communities to the inner city.”
— Barack Obama, Whitehouse.gov
Tagged: Education