Top 90 Jonathan Carroll Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “If it was as logical as that, I wouldn’t continue to feel as bad as I do. I know what you’re saying, and you’re absolutely right in a way. But logic and rationality only go so far. Then you know what happens? Ha! Then your heart adds its two cents and everything reasonable goes right-out-the-window.”

— Jonathan Carroll

52. “Your boyfriend had a dream about potatoes and you’re asking me to interpret it? I’m just old. Being old doesn’t mean you know more; it means you ate enough fiber.”

— Jonathan Carroll

53. “Sometimes happiness is like the sound of a plane overhead. You look up to see it but the plane’s not there. No matter where you look you can’t find it on the sky, although the sound is still there and growing louder. You get a little frantic searching. At the same time you’re thinking, this is stupid. But you keep looking and if you do finally see it, you feel absolved. Most of my life I’d been looking for happiness in the wrong parts of the sky.”

— Jonathan Carroll

54. “In the end, each of us has only one story to tell. It takes a lifetime to live that story but sometimes less than an hour to tell it. The.”

— Jonathan Carroll

55. “Pilot had never seen this particular ghost before. Head resting on paws, he mildly wondered what it was doing here. Dogs see ghosts about as often as people see cats. They’re there but they’re no big deal.”

— Jonathan Carroll

56. “Old people are often impatient, but for what?”

— Jonathan Carroll

57. “Old age arrives like the first days of fall. One afternoon you look up, or smell something in the air, and know instinctively things have changed. I suppose the same thing is true about our own death. Suddenly it’s near enough that we can smell it.”

— Jonathan Carroll

58. “Everyone coming out of a perfume store is smelling the back of their hand.”

— Jonathan Carroll

59. “A monster is not a monster if it doesn’t scare you.”

— Jonathan Carroll

60. “Coffee on an airplane always smells bad. Whenever it is served, suddenly the whole cabin stinks of it.”

— Jonathan Carroll

61. “Chaos doesn’t do, it undoes.”

— Jonathan Carroll

62. “Time doesn’t fly, it steals. Like some skilled pickpocket or magician, it gets you to look the other way and when you do, it ruthlessly steals your essential things – memories, great moments that end much too soon, the lives of those you love. It knows how to trick you and then steal you blind.”

— Jonathan Carroll

63. “Ive never seen myself as a fantasy writer-ever.”

— Jonathan Carroll

64. “I had always liked blind dates. If nothing else, it was an interesting way of discovering what people thought of you.”

— Jonathan Carroll

65. “There’s almost always a point in a book where something happens that triggers the rest of the plot.”

— Jonathan Carroll

66. “Night keeps its own sounds to itself because most of them come from the other side of silence.”

— Jonathan Carroll

67. “The Viennese wash everything. Where else in the world does the government hire public servants to wash public telephone booths and the glass over traffic lights? Every time I see someone doing these things, I smile like a child.”

— Jonathan Carroll

68. “At a Boston signing, someone from the audience asked why I was so obsessed with furniture in my books. The question rattled around in my head. I had no idea that I was obsessed with furniture.”

— Jonathan Carroll

69. “I’ve noticed most people are at their best during the day, in the light. Night fascinates you with its mystery and potential, but it’s ominous too because things are easily hidden or lost in the dark, especially control. Most species I’ve encountered are powerless there. No matter where that dark is – inside or out – you are all at its mercy. It’s harder to lose things and easier to find them, including yourself, in the light.”

— Jonathan Carroll

70. “I write about what interests me. It’s very dangerous when you try to satisfy an audience.”

— Jonathan Carroll

71. “Very often I’ll find out at the end of a book what I put in at the beginning. A sort of process of elimination and discovery in one.”

— Jonathan Carroll

72. “I find you write with one person in mind. Usually for me that one person is my wife, because she’s my most severe critic and understands best what I’m trying to do.”

— Jonathan Carroll

73. “If I don’t feel like writing today or for a few days, I don’t. And I don’t think about it. It is not an obligation-it is the greatest privilege.”

— Jonathan Carroll

74. “Far more disturbing than any spook house at an amusement park is a ride through the old hometown if you’ve been away for years.”

— Jonathan Carroll

75. “I know a lot of artists. The greatest loves of all their lives are their creations. Unfortunately most of us don’t have that kind of talent, so we have to make do with falling in love with real people.”

— Jonathan Carroll

76. “I started a short story but it was so dreary that even my pen threw up.”

— Jonathan Carroll

77. “When I was younger, I had a girlfriend. She was like a thousand-dollar perfume – unique, gorgeous, but then gone much too soon.”

— Jonathan Carroll

78. “One of the joys of being a dog is that they have no concept of the word “future.” Everything is right now, and if right now happens to be a warm floor and a full stomach, then life is good.”

— Jonathan Carroll

79. “BUYING A PAIR OF shoes is one of the most optimistic acts I know, next to falling in love. I like nothing better than to see an old man wearing a brand new pair of brogues or cap-toed oxfords, preferably jaunty orange-brown, unscuffed, heels unworn. We want to be here tomorrow, but buying new shoes, like falling in love, says I plan on being here tomorrow.”

— Jonathan Carroll

80. “The Angel of Death was nothing special to look at: it had manifested itself today as a plate of someone’s finished meal of bacon and eggs. Egg yolk was smeared across the white plate. Inside this smear were scattered bread crumbs.”

— Jonathan Carroll

81. “At eight you’re dead serious about what the world owes you: Civilization starts in your own room and moves out from there.”

— Jonathan Carroll

82. “The world can be divided between people who can get a waiter’s attention and those who can’t.”

— Jonathan Carroll

83. “A wish is a dream come true. Since dreams are never clear, they invariably disappoint.”

— Jonathan Carroll

84. “Behind the chain-link fence the skeleton of the structure, floodlit from all sides, looked very much like a rocket ship on its launchpad. The lights, so harsh and intense, refused to admit darkness was behind them, beyond them. But the beams quickly disappeared once they flooded out past the museum and into the Alpine night. You would think so much candlepower could shine well up into the sky, but it can bully the night only so far, which is not far at all.”

— Jonathan Carroll

85. “It’s easy to believe in yourself when you’re lying, because you’re talking about someone else.”

— Jonathan Carroll

86. “Loving’s not the question – living is. Love builds the house, but then you got to furnish it.”

— Jonathan Carroll

87. “When I was in college, I was the editor of the literary magazine and insisted neither the editors nor the writers be specifically identified-only our student numbers appeared on the title page. I love that idea and still do.”

— Jonathan Carroll

88. “Some people are more forgiving when they understand a situation, while others become even more furious once they see the whole picture.”

— Jonathan Carroll

89. “Sure, he’s an ass, but remember, I have to live in their house. Anyway, that’s how you treat people like that: Make ’em know how dumb they are, and they go away feeling a little less pleased with themselves.”

— Jonathan Carroll

90. “Old age arrives like the first days of fall. One afternoon you look up, or smell something in the air, and know instinctively things have changed.”

— Jonathan Carroll

91. “Someone made the point somewhere that we must learn to distinguish between the occult and the religious, between magic and true spirituality. The two do sometimes come together – saints do have magical powers, sure, But they don’t exploit these powers, and more important, they consider them only by-products of their real concern, which is spiritual development.”

— Jonathan Carroll