Best 17 quotes of Douglas Kennedy on MyQuotes

Because there is no meaning to be found in the arbitrary nature of things., It's all random. Just as space is blue. And birds fly through it.

But what we can never do is change the story that has made us what we are. It's a story completely dictated by the accumulation of life's manifold complexities—its capacity for astonishment and horror, for sanguinity and hopelessness, for pellucid light and the most profound darkness. We are what has happened to us.

If there is an abiding theme in 'The Pursuit of Happiness,' it is the idea that you come into the world already shaped by other people's past histories.

I've been known to write on the Underground in London and on the subway in New York. I have two or three cafes in Paris that I go into. I find a corner with a little shade, and I can work.

Success is a very fragile veneer. I get wary of people who embrace celebrity. It ruins people.

The decision to write full time was made when I was twenty-eight years old and had just had two small plays accepted for BBC Radio.

The only time you truly become an adult is when you finally forgive your parents for being just as flawed as everyone else.

There were moments when I felt seriously unhinged; when I was convinced that I would never, ever recover from what had happened, when it was absolutely clear to me that life from this point on would be constant agony.

Tragedy is one of the larger prices we pay for being alive. No one ever sidesteps tragedy. It is always there, shadowing us.

We all talk about how much we hate lies. Yet we prefer, so often, to be lied to....because it allows us to dodge all those painful truths we'd rather not hear.

We all want to fix things. Just as we all believe that so much in life can be rectified. Mend fences, build bridges, reach out, engage in mutual healing.

We can rarely tell others what we really think about them--not just because it would so wound them, but also because it would so wound ourselves.

We don't like admitting this, but it is a key component of human existence: the fact that life has the potential for things both wondrous and horrific.

With a novel, no matter where I am in it, I'm fretting about it. Every time I write a book, it starts with great forward momentum. Then there seems to be a period where it slows down a bit, and other things intervene. Then I gain momentum.

Words matter, words have import.

This means that time shrinks with the accumulation of years. Or, at least, that's the perception. And all perception is, by its own nature, open to individual interpretation. The empirical fact is that time does not elongate or shrink. A day will always have twenty-four hours, a wee seven days, a year three-hundred and sixty-five days. What does change is our awareness of its speed - and its increasing preciousness as commodity.

We try so hard to put our mark on things, we like to tell ourselves that what we do has import or will last. But the truth is, we're all just passing through. So little survives us. And when we're gone, it's simply the memory of others that keeps our time here alive. And when they're gone... That's why - when I go - I'm asking that my dust gets tossed on the water. Because ends up floating away.