Top 100 David Arnold Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “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

2. “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

3. “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. “Later in life, it would occur to me that this was the ultimate dichotomy: for a person to want what’s best but draw from their worst.”

— 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. “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

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

— David Arnold

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

— David Arnold

9. “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

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

— 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. “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

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

— David Arnold

17. “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

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

— David Arnold

19. “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

20. “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

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

— David Arnold

22. “Sometimes a thing doesn’t seem real until we say it out loud.”

— David Arnold

23. “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

24. “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

25. “Till we’re old-new.”

— David Arnold

26. “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

27. “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

28. “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

29. “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

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

— David Arnold

31. “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

32. “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

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

— David Arnold

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

— David Arnold

35. “And as simple as it sounds, I think understanding who you are – and not who you are not – is the most important thing of all Important Things.”

— David Arnold

36. “He prays his dwindling faith is faith enough.”

— David Arnold

37. “So I float in silence, watching the final touches of this perfect moonrise, and in a moment of heavenly revelation, it occurs to me that detours are not without purpose. They provide safe passage to a destination, avoiding pitfalls in the process.”

— David Arnold

38. “Help is help to anyone, Mary. Even if they don’t know they’re asking for it.” I said that made a whole lot of sense, because it did. And it still does. Here’s the thing, Iz: my mom needs help right now. And I know it, even if she doesn’t.”

— David Arnold

39. “I’m a Picasso, not a Vermeer.”

— David Arnold

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

— David Arnold

41. “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

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

— David Arnold

43. “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

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

— David Arnold

45. “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

46. “Peer pressure is one thing, but when your dad’s the pusher, it’s something else entirely.”

— David Arnold

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

— David Arnold

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

— David Arnold

49. “Be a kid of honesty. Wave it like a banner for all to see... Be a kid who loves surprises... Be curious, but content. Be loyal, but independent. Be kind. To everyone. Treat every day like you’re making waffles... Live your effing life. Do it with gusto... Know yourself. Love yourself. Be a good friend. Be a kid of hope and substance. Be a kid of appetite.”

— David Arnold

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

— David Arnold