Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Vincent H. O'Neil

Quote by Vincent H. O'Neil

Work

A Pause in the Perpetual Rotation

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Vincent H. O'Neil

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Vincent H. O'Neil. more

You May Also Like

“Marilla looked at her with a tenderness that would never have been suffered to reveal itself in any clearer light than that soft mingling of fireshine and shadow. The lesson of a love that should display itself easily in spoken word and open look was one Marilla could never learn. But she had learned to love this slim, gray-eyed girl with an affection all the deeper and stronger from its very undemonstrativeness. Her love made her afraid of being unduly indulgent, indeed. She had an uneasy feeling that it was rather sinful to set one's heart so intensely on any human creature as she had hers set on Anne, and perhaps she performed a sort of unconscious penance for this by being stricter and more critical than if the girl had been less dear to her.”

“It's sort of self-congratulatory to be the person who walks around pitying other people. I don't do that very much. I just know that there are plenty of people who are in terrible trouble and can't get out. And so I'm impatient with those who think that it's easy for people to get out of trouble. I think there are some people who really need a lot of help.”

“For something to become normal, it has to be made familiar, but at the same time it's worth accepting that there's something about the way we decide what's normal that has more to do with our own subjectivity, and that's something that no amount of exposure or empathy can necessarily undo.”

“Here’s how I see it. You can break people up into three groups. The pre-midnight crowd, which is your average stiff. Saddled by their spouse, kids, and American idealism, easy to peg and rather uninteresting. Then, there’s the after-midnight crowd which is pretty interesting. They’re the people who can talk about the dark side, but not really go there, maybe they danced with it in college. But they still know how to have some fun. Then there’s the after 4am crowd that really opens your eyes to the world. You want empathy for people? Smoke a joint with two hookers who drive over two hours at 4.30 in the morning just to earn a living. Say what you want about morality, but that’s as real as it gets. All of sudden, 9-to-5 doesn’t seem so bad. Neither does the grumpy neighbor or that a-hole cousin. Plus, it’s quite liberating. You can say whatever you want. It’s all on the table. There’s nothing you can say that’s going to offend the underworld. What can be more extreme than the reality these two girls live?”

“He had complicated our task of being pleasant dinner companions by mentioning famine, something that Americans had never known. The word could only conjure otherworldly landscapes of the skeletal dead, which was not the spectral image we wanted to present, for what one should never do was to require other people to imagine they were just like one of us. Spiritual teleportation unsettled most people, who, if they thought of others at all, preferred to think that others were just like them or could be just like them.”