Top 100 David Arnold Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “People say home is where the heart is, but I think maybe home is the heart. Not a place or a time, but an organ, pumping life into my life.”

— David Arnold

2. “I am a collection of oddities, a circus of neurons and electrons: my heart is the ringmaster, my soul is the trapeze artist, and the world is my audience. It sounds strange because it is, and it is, because I am strange.”

— David Arnold

4. “When you were born, you cried while the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries while you rejoice.”

— David Arnold

5. “The good guys aren’t all good, the bad guys aren’t all bad and any character wholly one or the other shouldn’t exist at all.”

— David Arnold

6. “You ever have the feeling you lost something important, only to discover it was never there to begin with?”

— David Arnold

7. “I’m feeling reckless – or honest, maybe. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference.”

— David Arnold

8. “We are all part of the same story, each of us different chapters. We may not have the power to choose setting or plot, but we can choose what kind of character we want to be.”

— David Arnold

9. “Life, it seems, delivers the best punch lines only after we’ve forgotten we were part of a joke.”

— David Arnold

10. “I think nostalgia is just a soul’s way of missing a thing, and like long-distance love, nostalgia grows deeper with time until the reality of what a thing actually was gets blurred to the point you miss the idea of the thing more than the thing itself. I like the idea of hot cocoa more than drinking it.”

— David Arnold

11. “I have limited experience, but I know this: moments of connection with another human being are patently rare. But rarer still are those who can recognize such a connection when they see one.”

— David Arnold

12. “It’s no accident, the memories that last. They are survivors.”

— David Arnold

13. “Sometimes it’s nice to feel small, to know you are far from the first.”

— David Arnold

14. “Everything sounds better on vinyl. It’s not a trend. It’s a fact.”

— David Arnold

15. “I act like I don’t care, but I do. I always have. And my God, what wouldn’t I give to put the pieces together?”

— David Arnold

16. “Every great character, Iz, be it on page or screen, is multidimensional. The good guys aren’t all good, the bad guys aren’t all bad, and any character wholly one or the other shouldn’t exist at all. Remember this when I describe the antics that follow, for though I am not a villain, I am not immune to villainy.”

— David Arnold

17. “I romanticize my past and I romanticize my future; right now is always the bleakest moment of my life.”

— David Arnold

18. “Sometimes you tell the truth, and things are better for it. Other times truth hangs in the air like a fog, clouding the pretty lies.”

— David Arnold

19. “But in a world consumed by Flies, kids were adults and adults were nowhere. How long you’d been alive only meant something when life itself wasn’t a luxury.”

— David Arnold

20. “I was a little younger than most in my class – Mom said this gave me an edge. I’d finish school sooner, discover the world first, and maybe find whatever great thing I was meant for.”

— David Arnold

21. “Till we’re old-new.”

— David Arnold

22. “I have this theory about teachers, and what separates the good ones from the bad: it’s not that good teachers don’t think about quitting; it’s that they never look like they’ve already quit.”

— David Arnold

23. “My heart was so full, I thought it might explode into the ether, creating some bizarre new solar system whose inhabitants ate only love, drank only hope, and breathed only joy. What a substantial galaxy that would be.”

— David Arnold

24. “But I also know that sometimes – not always, but in the best of cases – innocence lost can be knowledge gained, and I think this is one of those times.”

— David Arnold

25. “There are many places I would like to live, and many times in which I would like to live, and I think listening to music that was composed in a time or place I’ve never lived is the closest I can get to making that happen.”

— David Arnold

26. “I cry because I love. For some reason, I always have.”

— David Arnold

27. “I often thought the most unfair thing about having Moebius wasn’t Moebius at all, but other people’s inability to define me by anything else.”

— David Arnold

28. “Sometimes Kit would look at the veins in his own hands and think, All these little rivers flowing through my body, keeping me alive. Thank you, little rivers. Thank you.”

— David Arnold

29. “I was lovely once, but he never loved me once.”

— David Arnold

30. “Even in a world where Fly exterminates Human, this has not changed: that one person might find beauty in another.”

— David Arnold

31. “But that’s the personality of change, isn’t it? When it’s slow, it’s called growth; when it’s fast, it’s change.”

— David Arnold

32. “Sometimes you walk into a room one person, and when you come out the other side, you’re someone else altogether.”

— David Arnold

33. “And I’m sick of things the way they are, my many oddities, my limited depth perception, as if it’s not bad enough I only see half the world, but it always seems to be the wrong half.”

— David Arnold

34. “Memories are as infinite as the horizon.”

— David Arnold

35. “After reading a few more entries, something occurred to her. A trend. The more ambitious Lives – the ones that stretched the boundaries of their power – generally ended in trauma, disaster, or grief. Whereas those Lives who understood and respected their power were generally fulfilled.”

— David Arnold

36. “Home is hard. Harder than Reasons. It’s more a storage unit for your life and its collections. It’s more than an address, or even the house you grew up in. People say home is where the heart is, but I think maybe home is the heart. Not a place or a time, but an organ, pumping life into my life. There may be more mosquitos and stepmothers than I imagined, but it’s still my heart. My home.”

— David Arnold

37. “Some books are songs like that, the ones you go back to, make playlists of, put on repeat.”

— David Arnold

38. “What would I tell her? The truth, I hope. That in my longing for originality and relational honesty and a hundred other I-don’t-know-whats, this action, while strange and socially awkward, makes more sense than just about anything else in my world. And even though it’s cryptic and more than a little odd, sometimes cryptic and odd are better than lying down for the Man.”

— David Arnold

39. “But listening was about more than hearing; it was about when and where you put yourself in the story.”

— David Arnold

40. “I think Mad saw in books what I saw in art: the weightless beauty of the universe.”

— David Arnold

41. “I lowered my voice, because as I’d learned some time ago, a whisper was louder than a scream.”

— David Arnold

42. “I have asked the stars many questions. This is the first time they’ve answered.”

— David Arnold

43. “How to be human, it seemed, was an infinite ocean in which Kit had only yet dipped the corner of a toenail.”

— David Arnold

44. “I wish wishing were enough, but it’s not. Sometimes you need a thing.”

— David Arnold

45. “We sit there, just being together, not speaking or even looking at each other, and it feels quietly tectonic, the kind of moment that might move a mountain if it were let outside.”

— David Arnold

46. “Exactly why I don’t have a boyfriend,” I whisper, turning to the window. Because you’ve referenced The Lord of the Rings twice before lunch, or because you’re talking to yourself? I have to admit, I’ve got me there.”

— David Arnold

47. “Yes, Mom but how does the music get from that needle” – I pointed my chubby little finger to the record player -“to my heart.” My earliest memories of music had nothing to do with listening, and everything in the world to do with feeling. – Mim, Mosquitoland.”

— David Arnold

48. “It occurred to her that this was true friendship: a person in your life who was willing to walk through strange doors into dark places, so long as they could walk there with you.”

— David Arnold

49. “Have a vision, unclouded by fear.”

— David Arnold

50. “Quiet observers tend to be loud thinkers.”

— David Arnold