All Charles Yu Quotes
- You want to tell a story? Grow a heart. Grow two. Now, with the second heart, smash the first one into bits. Gross, right? A… Any
- This is what you have to ask yourself: Do you want to be good, or just seem good? Do you want to be good to… Always Sometimes
- Within a science fictional space, memory and regret are, when taken together, the set of necessary and sufficient elements required to produce a time machine. Elements
- I was headed for an entire life spent alone, pitying myself for not being more, ignoring all those people who actually ask me to be… Actually Ask
- Worry was my mother's mechanic, her mechanism for engaging with the machinery of living. Worry was an anchor for her, a hook, something to clutch… Anchor
- I don't know how, or whether it is even possible to predict what the world will look like the next day. I simply have to… Close
- It's like all technology: either not powerful enough or too powerful. It will never do exactly what you want it to do. All
- Sometimes when I'm brushing my teeth, I'll look at the mirror and I swear my reflection seems kind of disappointed. I realized a couple of… Ago
- For the past several years, I have gone to sleep every night in this same little pocket, the most uneventful piece of time I could… Absolutely
- Most people I know live their lives moving in a constant forward direction, the whole time looking backward. Backward
- I don't miss him anymore. Most of the time, anyway. I want to. I wish I could but unfortunately, it's true: time does heal. It… Anymore
- I had forgotten: this is what it feels like to live in time. The lurching forward, the sensation of falling of a cliff into darkness,… Abruptly
- I am transcribing a book that I have, in a sense, not yet written, and in another sense, have always written, and in another sense,… Always Writing
- Life is, to some extent, an extended dialogue with your future self about how exactly you are going to let yourself down over the coming… Coming
- There is a sense in which I am pretty sure this makes no sense. I don't know where this is going. I don't know how… Ends
- All of her heart, a meaningless phrase, but correct and precise, too. She used her heart to love him, not her head, and not her… All
- You can only go to places that you will let yourself go. Funny
- Maybe we spend most of our decades being someone else, avoiding ourselves, maybe a man is only himself, his true self, for a few days… Avoiding
- What is this called, what I am doing, to myself, to my life, this wallowing, this pondering, this rolling over and over in the same… Anything Different
- At some point in your life, this statement will be true: tomorrow you will lose everything forever. Everything Forever
- This, then, is my choice: I can allow the events of my life to happen to me. Or I can take those very same actions… Action
- How do you convince someone to change, to stop being afraid of himself? How do you convince yourself not to be so scared all the… Afraid
- How many times have I failed before? How many times have I stood here like this, in front of my own image, in front of… Convince
- Enjoy the elastic present, which can accommodate as little or as much as you want to put in there. Stretch it out, live inside of… Accommodate
- Sometimes at night I worry about TAMMY. I worry that she might get tired of it all. Tired of running at sixty-six terahertz, tired of… All