Quotes on People

People have obsessions and fears and passions which they don't admit to. I think every character is interesting and has extremes. It's the novelist privilege to see how odd everyone is.

People who do a job that claims to be creative have to be alone to recharge their batteries. You can’t live 24 hours a day in the spotlight and remain creative. For people like me, solitude is a victory.

There are times in life when people must know when not to let go. Balloons are designed to teach small children this.

The proper ending for any story about people it seems to me, since life is now a polymer in which the Earth is wrapped so tightly, should be the same abbreviation, which I now write large because I feel like it, which is this one: ETC.

The easiest thing to be in the world is you. The most difficult thing to be is what other people want you to be. Don't let them put you in that position.

Sometimes, people trying to commit suicide manage it in a manner that leaves them breathless with astonishment.

Capitalism tries for a delicate balance: It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people’s stuff.

If you want to make a million you don't have to understand money, what you have to understand is people's fears about money

Crowds of questions stream through me like lines of people exiting a soccer ground or a concert. They push and shove and trip. Some make their way around. Some remain in their seats, waiting for their opportunity.

You musn’t be afraid of the dark.’ ‘I’m not,’ said Shadow. ‘I’m afraid of the people in the dark.

... motivating people, forcing them to your will, gives you a cynical attitude toward humanity. It degrades everything it touches.

I get so tired of people saying, 'Oh, you only make fantasy films and this and that', and I'm like, 'Well no, fantasy is reality', that's what Lewis Carroll showed in his work.

I have an idea about voting, how about on every ballot we include "None of the above". People may laugh at that, but what that is, it is a vote of no confidence in your government and I'm willing to bet that in some elections, 'None of the Above' would win. Imagine if you won the election but lost to 'None of the Above'. Wouldn't that make you re-think your positions?

Awareness is everything. Hallie once pointed out to me that people worry a lot more about the eternity *after* their deaths than the eternity that happened before they were born. But it's the same amount of infinity, rolling out in all directions from where we stand.

The demands that good people make are upon themselves; Those that bad people make are upon others.

It seems to be very hard for people to live with riddles or to let them live, although one would think that life is so full of riddles as it is that a few more things we cannot answer would make no difference. But perhaps it is just this that is so unendurable, that there are irrational things in our own psyche which upset the conscious mind in its illusory certainties by confronting it with the riddle of its existence.

The happiness of a married man depends on the people he has not married.

To think that only faultless people are worthwhile seems like an incredible exclusion of almost everything of deep value in the human saga. Sometimes I can't believe the narrowness that has been attributed to God in terms of what he would approve and disapprove.

When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.

Virtually no idea is too ridiculous to be accepted, even by very intelligent and highly educated people, if it provides a way for them to feel special and important. Some confuse that feeling with idealism.

One of the greatest difficulties the left faces in reaching out to masses of people in America is its profound disrespect of spirituality and religious life…people on the left need to acknowledge – we need to grapple with – the question of religion.