A Quote by John Boyne

Unless you're very boring, I think most people who've lived long enough have something in their past which will never go away. — © John Boyne
Unless you're very boring, I think most people who've lived long enough have something in their past which will never go away.
Unless you're very boring, I think most people who've lived long enough have something in their past which will never go away. As a writer, my interest has become in writing about much more emotional, personal topics. I'm trying to reach into subjects I have never written about before.
You look worldwide for the great leaders, and they're pretty thin on the ground, and of course the problem is unless you're squeaky, squeaky clean, something is going to come out of the cupboard. Most people aren't squeaky clean. Most people have fallen by the wayside once or twice in their lives, and because the world is so transparent now, I think they're very fearful of running for office. It's a huge shame, because often people who have really lived and are amazing people can be brought down by a past indiscretion.
I don't read my reviews. Unless I'm unfortunate enough to catch something by accident, which happens, and it's always a bad review. Always, it's amazing. I will be sitting in a café, and I will open a random paper right to the page of the review.... And then you're sucked in and go home and never want to go out again.
My conjecture is that most people will refuse to let go, even when their lives have become boring (at least in comparisons with possible lives lived by new generations). If this happens, there will eventually be no room for new generations. A kind of collective irrationality will lead to a bleak life for the last generation that decides to stay around. Unless we put and end to the human race (through global warming, for example), before this happens, individual egoism will block the path to a better world.
I lived long enough in a society where freedom of speech was nonexistent, and I know what kind of misery that creates - starting with the fact that life becomes very boring for people who just try to survive, and are quiet, and try not to buck the system. And, of course, it can be devastating for people who try to speak against it.
I'm kind of a boring person. People think I get to travel the world and I rap or whatever, but I'm pretty boring. My life is pretty crazy enough, and when I'm not on the road or doing something, I'm kind of boring.
It's not enough to have a dream, Unless you're willing to pursue it. It's not enough to know what's right, Unless you're strong enough to do it. It's not enough to learn the truth, Unless you also learn to live it. It's not enough to reach for love, Unless you care enough to give it Men who are resolved to find a way for themselves will always find opportunities enough; and if they do not find them, they will make them.
It's daunting to go back through the past, to read tweets and come across Facebook profiles of people who have passed away. It stirs up memories you never actually shared online or never will share online. It was a very emotional process.
I blame myself for not often enough seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. Somewhere in his journals, Dostoyevky remarks that a writer can begin anywhere, at the most commonplace thing, scratch around in it long enough, pry and dig away long enough, and lo!, soon he will hit upon the marvelous.
If I do something for a public space, it's not something that I have in my head and go, "Oh that's a good location. I should put it here." That for me never exists. When I see the site, then I have an idea that is new and I would never do unless it's there. It's the space or the people there, which will give me the idea.
I will carry on acting as long as I have breath and as long as I have energy and as long as I can remember my lines. Those are the basic things you need to be an actor. I'll never retire unless something happens to me and I can't do it well. If I can't do it well I don't want to see the public to see me wasting away in front of them.
This is something I realized after stepping away from women's fashion for the last five years. When you are inside, it is such a tiny group of people who think that this is the most important thing in the world. But when you get a little bit of distance, someone will say to you something like, "Don't you think that shoe is blah?" And I will be like, "What shoe? I don't know what you're talking about." It is very, very inside.
To attain something desired is to discover how vain it is; and…though we live all our lives in expectation of better things, we often at the same time long regretfully for what is past. The present, on the other hand, is regarded as something quite temporary and serving only as the road to our goal. That is why most men discover when they look back on their life that they have the whole time been living ad interim, and are surprised to see that which they let go by so unregarded and unenjoyed was precisely their life, was precisely in expectation of which they lived.
Most Muggles lived in a world defined by the limits of what you could do with cars and telephones. Even though Muggle physics explicitly permitted possibilities like molecular nanotechnology or the Penrose process for extracting energy from black holes, most people filed that away in the same section of their brain that stored fairy tales and history books, well away from their personal realities: Long ago and far away, ever so long ago.
Countries don't go out of business....The infrastructure doesn't go away, the productivity of the people doesn't go away, the natural resources don’t go away. And so their assets always exceed their liabilities, which is the technical reason for bankruptcy. And that's very different from a company.
The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little; attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough.
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