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Strangeness Quotes

Browse 194 quotes about Strangeness.

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Strangeness Quotes

“Well, writing novels is incredibly simple: an author sits down…and writes. Granted, most writers I know are a bit strange. Some, downright weird. But then again, you’d have to be. To spend hundreds and hundreds of hours sitting in front of a computer screen staring at lines of information is pretty tedious. More like a computer programmer. And no matter how cool the Matrix made looking at code seem, computer programmers are even weirder than authors.”

Writing ProcessAuthorsComputer ScienceWeirdnessStrangeness
Author:Christopher Hopper
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“Beware of Strangers As children, they teach us To beware of strangers, To refrain from approaching them. As we grow older we learn That no one is stranger than those We thought we’d known all our lives. As we grow older we learn That a stranger may carry more empathy, And may understand us more deeply. Even feelings of affection from a stranger May be more sincere. And so I ask: can humanity and the strangeness be synonymous? Could we say: I am a stranger; therefore I am? Can we truly feel alive Without strange things Strange encounters without strangers reminding us that our hearts and minds are still beating? They teach us to avoid strangers, And life teaches us that human awareness can only be borne out Of the dagger of strangeness… That life is tasteless When we don’t mix it with strangers… That familiarity is opposed to life! And thus, I loudly declare: A stranger I was born. A stranger I wish to remain! And I ask that you issue my death certificate The day I become familiar. [Original poem published in Arabic on October 29 at ahewar.org]”

IdentityAdventureExperienceFamiliarityHuman ExistenceStrangersWeirdnessStrangenessArabic PoetryArabic Literature
Author:Louis Yako
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“Sometimes, in their wide-eyed, ashamed, fanatical temperament, their humanity spills out in a discomfort that is nearly frightening. But, we all harbor some form of innocent strangeness that we keep to ourselves—our fears, our obsessions, our questionable sanities. They are the reasons why we do things— routes we take, instruments we learn, and CDs we buy. It sounds like honey, but I’m not just being an essayist here. I do believe it. And it’s the truth because today, I’d like to share my strange with you.”

PersonalitySanityCrazinessThe Goodbye SongWeirdnessStrangenessOpening LinesPeculiarity
Book:The Goodbye Song
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“More and more, I have no idea what I think of anything. It’s as if the world were this very strange beast under a big tarp. Writing is a way of poking at the tarp. You can watch what the beast does during the poking and maybe surmise something about the sort of beast it is, but you also don’t want to be too confident in your theories. I really like the fact that, these days, I can’t say what writing is for, what it’s supposed to do, or how it’s supposed to affect us. I just like doing it.”

LifeWritingBooksOpinionsWeirdnessStrangenessOddness
Author:George Saunders
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“I've always seen hidden meanings in everything. Whenever I used to do those puzzles in children's magazines, the ones where you're supposed to find all the hidden pictures, I'd never find the right ones. I'd say I found the griffin, and the Wesselman steam engine, and the missing little finger of the mummy of Tut, and everyone would give me a strange look and say, All you're looking for is a yellow duck. […] work up to the voices of places you can only imagine. Ask where to find the griffin, and the Wesselman steam engine, and the little finger of Tut. I know they're out there, and usually in the strangest of places. And if you find the yellow duck, let me know. That's the one I always miss.”

ImaginationPuzzlesStrangenessPlacesLookingVoicesFindingHidden MeaningsChildren S MagazinesYellow Duck
Book:Still Mostly True: Collected Stories & Drawings
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“He was pale as only one state on Bhast dictated—not lacking color necessarily or vitality, certainly. Fey white was more comparable to a pearl; the color subtle and the luster soft, but still vibrant. In spite of the tragedy that could come with it, it was not a dying state. It was a state of living…sometimes much more brilliantly than people could cope with, including the Fey individuals themselves.”

LifeScienceDeathDyingLivingScience FictionThrillerStrangenessFeyGenetic StateStrange Angels
Book:Darkside
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“I ached abruptly, intolerably, with a longing to go home; not to that hotel, in one of the alleys of Paris, where the concierge barred the way with my unpaid bill; but home, home across the ocean, to things and people I knew and understood; to those things, those places, those people which I would always helplessly, and in whatever bitterness of spirit, love above all else. I had never realized such a sentiment in myself before, and it frightened me. I saw myself, sharply, as a wanderer, an adventurer, rocking through the world, unanchored. I looked at Giovanni's face, which did not help me. He belonged to this strange city, which did not belong to me. I began to see that, while what was happening to me was not so strange as it would have comforted me to believe, yet it was strange beyond belief. It was not really so strange, so unprecedented, though voices deep within me boomed, For shame! For shame! that I should be so abruptly, so hideously entangled with a boy; what was strange was that this was but one tiny aspect of the dreadful human tangle, occurring everywhere, without end, forever.”

LoveHomeLonelinessLongingHomosexualityStrangenessHomesickness
Book:Giovanni’s Room
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“The walls that hold my prison pent soul closed with an eternal thud. A destructive bent blossomed in the desert of my ebbing passion. I am a lonely man with no skeleton key that will allow me to escape a static penitentiary and enter a world where joy reigns. My strangeness sentenced me forever to be alone. Stranded alone, I must bear the mental lashings associated with a penal life. My relegated daily vigil consists of dragging around ankle chains and enduring a penitence period hobbled to punitive labor. There is no relief in sight; no chance exists to receive a stay of execution from self-punishment arising from a criminal spree of failure. My crazed-eyed preoccupation is to stand on my tippy toes in a private cellblock and stare down at the starkness of my picked over bones.”

FailureLonelyIsolationUnhappinessAlonenessStrangenessImprisonedSelf Punishment
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
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“The doctor loved his wife and child. They were the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to him in his life--especially his daughter for whom his love bordered on obsession. For them, he would have gladly given up his life. Indeed, he had often imagined doing so, and the deaths he had endured for them in his mind seemed the sweetest deaths imaginable. At the same time, however, he would often come home from work and, seeing his wife and daughter there, think to himself, These people are, finally, separate human beings, with whom I have no connection. They were something other, something of which he had no true knowledge, something that existed in a place far away from the doctor himself. And whenever he felt this way, the thought would cross his mind that he himself had chosen neither of these people on his own--which did not prevent him from loving them unconditionally, without the slightest reservation. This was, for the doctor, a great paradox, an insoluble contradiction, a gigantic trap that had been set for him in his life.”

LoveChoicesFree WillStrangeness
Book:The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
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“That reminds me why I gave up Dungeons and Dragons. There were too many monsters. Back in the old days you could go around a dungeon without meeting much more than a few orcs and lizard men, but then everyone started inventing monsters and pretty soon it was a case of bugger the magic sword, what you really need to be the complete adventurer was the Marcus L. Rowland fifteen-volume guide to Monsters and the ability to read very, very fast, because if you couldn’t recognize them from the outside you pretty soon got the chance to try looking at them from the wrong side of their tonsils.”

ReadingResearchDifficultyMonstersStrangenessDungeons And Dragons
Book:Alien Christmas
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“There is something wonderful in being a stranger, in being foreign, something to be relished, something as alluring as sweets. It is good not to be able to understand a language, not to know the customs, to glide like a spirit among others who are distant and unrecognizable. Then a particular kind of wisdom awakens—an ability to surmise, to grasp the things that aren't obvious. Cleverness and acumen come about. A person who is a stranger gains a new point of view, becomes, whether he likes it or not, a particular type of sage. Who was it who convinced us that being comfortable and familiar was so great? Only foreigners can truly understand the way things work.”

StrangenessForeignness
Book:The Books of Jacob
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“My husband is nervous about a lot of things down here, like the monstrous size of the fire ants and the quality of the gasoline, because half the time the gas stations are out, the nozzles bundled up in black garbage bags, or the credit card readers don't work or the attendant is a shirtless man with a hip flask tucked into the waistband of his shorts. I keep trying to explain that this is a place with its own laws.”

AnxietyFloridaAntsStrangenessNervousnessSpousesGas StationsHusbandsFire Ants
Book:State of Paradise
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“चलो इक बार फिर से अजनबी बन जाएँ हम दोनों। न मैं तुम से कोई उम्मीद रखूँ दिल-नवाज़ी की। न तुम मेरी तरफ़ देखो ग़लत-अंदाज़ नज़रों से। न मेरे दिल की धड़कन लड़खड़ाए मेरी बातों से। न ज़ाहिर हो तुम्हारी कश्मकश का राज़ नज़रों से। तुम्हें भी कोई उलझन रोकती है पेश-क़दमी से। मुझे भी लोग कहते हैं कि ये जल्वे पराए हैं। मिरे हमराह भी रुस्वाइयाँ हैं मेरे माज़ी की। तुम्हारे साथ भी गुज़री हुई रातों के साए हैं। तआ'रुफ़ रोग हो जाए तो उस का भूलना बेहतर। तअ'ल्लुक़ बोझ बन जाए तो उस को तोड़ना अच्छा। वो अफ़्साना जिसे अंजाम तक लाना न हो मुमकिन उसे इक ख़ूबसूरत मोड़ दे कर छोड़ना अच्छा। चलो इक बार फिर से अजनबी बन जाएँ हम दोनों।”

DivorceAbandonmentStrangenessUnfulfilled Love
Author:Sahir Ludhianvi
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“A place outside time. This is the phrase I overhear my husband using as he tries to describe Florida to his father over the phone. His father lives in a high-rise condo in New Jersey, and he is concerned that we are still down here. On the news, there is constant talk about Florida’s post-pandemic spiral. Speculation about whether the state is experiencing an ecological and spiritual succession. There is talk about militias creeping out of the swamp. There is talk of vandals. There is talk of literal highway robbery. (Our Cro-Magnon governor denies any of this is happening, even though there are reports that some of these forces are amassing in his name.) For the time being, I can ghostwrite my books and shop specials at the grocery and take my niece to the water park, but no one knows how much longer this version of our world will last. “Sometimes I can’t believe a place like this exists,” my husband says as we speed down a gleaming white limestone road that cuts through a palm forest, or ride an airboat around a swollen lake. Florida has a past, as all places do, but these days everyone is uncertain about its future.”

PastTimeFuturePandemicFloridaStrangenessCovid
Book:State of Paradise
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“But all the story of the night told over, / And all their minds transfigured so together, / More witnesseth than fancy’s images, / And grows to something of great constancy; / But, howsoever, strange and admirable”

LoveNightDreamsEndStrangeness
Book:Midsummer-night's dream. Love's labor's lost. Merchant of Venice. As you like it. All's well that ends well. Taming of the shrew
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“অদ্ভুত আঁধার এক এসেছে এ-পৃথিবীতে আজ, যারা অন্ধ সবচেয়ে বেশি আজ চোখে দেখে তারা; যাদের হৃদয়ে কোনো প্রেম নেই—প্রীতি নেই—করুণার আলোড়ন নেই পৃথিবী অচল আজ তাদের সুপরামর্শ ছাড়া। যাদের গভীর আস্থা আছে আজো মানুষের প্রতি এখনো যাদের কাছে স্বাভাবিক ব'লে মনে হয় মহৎ সত্য বা রীতি, কিংবা শিল্প অথবা সাধনা শকুন ও শেয়ালের খাদ্য আজ তাদের হৃদয়। A strange darkness has come upon the world today. They who are most blind now see, Those whose hearts lack love, lack warmth, lack pity's stirrings, Without their fine advice, the world today dare not make a move. They who yet possess an abiding faith in man, To whom still now high truths or age-old customs, Or industry or austere effort all seem natural, Their hearts are victuals for the vulture and the jackal. Translated by: Clinton B. Seely”

DarknessStrangeness
Book:বনলতা সেন
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“She would think with a kind of despair: What am I, in God's name—some kind of abomination?' And this thought would fill her with a very great anguish, because, loving much, her love seemed to her sacred. She could not endure that the slur of those words should come anywhere near her love. So now night after night she must pace up and down, beating her mind against a blind problem, beating her spirit against a blank wall—the impregnable wall of non-comprehension: 'Why am I as I am—and what am I?' Her mind would recoil while her spirit grew faint. A great darkness would seem to descend on her spirit—there would be no light wherewith to lighten that darkness. She would think of Martin, for now surely she loved just as he had loved—it all seemed like madness. She would think of her father, of his comfortable words: 'Don't be foolish, there's nothing strange about you.' Oh, but he must have been pitifully mistaken—he had died still very pitifully mistaken. She would think yet again of her curious childhood, going over each detail in an effort to remember. But after a little her thoughts must plunge forward once more, right into her grievous present. With a shock she would realize how completely this coming of love had blinded her vision; she had stared at the glory of it so long that not until now had she seen its black shadow. Then would come the most poignant suffering of all, the deepest, the final humiliation. Protection—she could never offer protection to the creature she loved: 'Could you marry me, Stephen?' She could neither protect nor defend nor honour by loving; her hands were completely empty. She who would gladly have given her life, must go empty-handed to love, like a beggar. She could only debase what she longed to exalt, defile what she longed to keep pure and untarnished.”

LoveMarriageSexualityProtectionLgbtqHomosexualityStrangenessLesbians
Book:The Well Of Loneliness
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