Top 100 David Arnold Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “Beck’s smile is intense and sincere, a smile with, not a smile at. Mom used to say you could tell a lot by the way a person treats the innocent, and Walt is nothing if not innocence personified.”

— David Arnold

52. “I wish wishing were enough, but it’s not.”

— David Arnold

53. “I am not me, I said to the ocean, to the old feet, to the face in the mirror. And it was true. In the dream, the reflection staring back at me was not my own. It was my mother’s.”

— David Arnold

54. “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

55. “It’s okay.” I say again. Because if I keep saying it, maybe it will be true. It’s okay it’s okay it’s okay it’s okay.”

— David Arnold

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

— David Arnold

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

— David Arnold

58. “He wraps an arm around me, and I swear we were once a single unit, a supercontinent divided millions of years ago – like my fifth grade science project – now reunited into some kaleidoscopic New Pangea. “I’m Madagascar,” I say, sleepily. “You’re what?” “I’m Madagascar. And you’re Africa.” He squeezes my shoulder, and – I think he gets it. I bet he does.”

— David Arnold

59. “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

60. “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

61. “Look at you,” I whisper, smiling, crying. “Lovely.”

— David Arnold

62. “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

63. “Sometimes, things are more embarrassing when you’re alone. I guess when no one’s around to hear your stupidity, you’re forced to bear the brunt of it.”

— David Arnold

64. “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

65. “You know–I think my best course of action is to just let the ridiculousness of that sentence marinate.”

— David Arnold

66. “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

67. “Our past tenses last way longer than our present ones.”

— David Arnold

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

— David Arnold

69. “I swear, the longer I live, the less things make sense.”

— David Arnold

70. “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

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

— David Arnold

72. “It was beauty and discord at once. Nature unleashing her global psyche.”

— David Arnold

73. “Why are my medical mysteries Reasons? I’m glad you asked. I’ve developed a theory I like to call the Pain Principle. The gist of it is this: pain makes people who they are.”

— David Arnold

74. “The truth is, reasons are hard. I’m standing on a whole stack of them right now, with barely a notion of how I got up here.”

— David Arnold

75. “I smile at Beck, a wide-eyed, can-you-believe-the-awesomeness-that-is-Walt sort of smile. He’s wearing the same one. “I think we’ll all remember the rendezvouski.”

— David Arnold

76. “I’m already jealous of myself five minutes ago. Because you can’t un-know a honky-tonk.”

— David Arnold

77. “Don’t underestimate the value of friends.”

— David Arnold

78. “Because this is my life, the only one I get. And if it’s a choice between a life Albilitoled, or a life full of Life... well, that’s not really a choice at all.”

— David Arnold

79. “Like a Siren, it tempts me with whispered promises of the ever-elusive Normal Life.”

— David Arnold

80. “Maybe instead of portals to other worlds, all we needed were portals to other times.”

— David Arnold

81. “Sinking into fiction: the if-only of if-onlys.”

— David Arnold

82. “He’d done more than give her a story – he’d given her life inside the story.”

— David Arnold

83. “Do so with gusto, because my God, there’s nothing sorrier than a gusto-less existence.”

— David Arnold

84. “In the background Bowie sings of lawmen and cavemen, sailors fighting in dance halls, and I wish he were here now, in this kitchen with me, and I would hold his hand and together we would talk of life – on Mars, or otherwise.”

— David Arnold

85. “Whenever Kit got down about being born in a world where Flies ate humans, he reminded himself that even in the world before Flies, things made little sense.”

— David Arnold

86. “I cry because I’ve never smiled like that, not once in my life. I cry because I love. For some reason, I always have.”

— David Arnold

87. “Pain makes people who they are.”

— David Arnold

88. “There are times when talking just pushes out the tears.”

— David Arnold

89. “Music was more than subjective; it was erratic. It was the ship on the horizon that one sailor saw, the other sailor didn’t.”

— David Arnold

90. “That’s the thing about life – you don’t know how long you have until you’re dead, and by then, you don’t know much of anything at all.”

— David Arnold

91. “Strange, how a person could create something they didn’t understand. But maybe that was what made art great: Who cares where it comes from, so long as it comes from you?”

— David Arnold

92. “She never said so out loud, but some things speak loud enough on their own.”

— David Arnold

93. “Sometimes being with gets overlooked I think.”

— David Arnold

94. “We are, each of us, hopeless hopers.”

— David Arnold

95. “I sat there frozen, wondering if this icy truth could ever melt, if the madness of the world could ever be cured.”

— David Arnold

96. “They understood that lasting pain could only be dealt at the root.”

— David Arnold

97. “The longer you hold onto an apology, the harder it is to give.”

— David Arnold

98. “My Reasons may be hard, but my Objectives are quite simple.”

— David Arnold

99. “I see a million miles of life, a million lives in one, a million headaches, heartaches, brainaches, a million ingredients in her eyes.”

— David Arnold

100. “A real apology cost something, because you had to stand there like an idiot and say it out loud for the world to hear – I’M SORRY. And the world, as always, would respond with a resounding, ‘Yes. Yes, you are.”

— David Arnold