Top 40 Nathan Lowell Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Damn it, Jimmy, I’m an accountant – not a fishermen.”

— Nathan Lowell

2. “I prefer to make my mistakes on purpose rather than by accident.”

— Nathan Lowell

3. “I made a mental note to figure out some way to stop making mental notes and start making real notes. That way I might be able to delegate a few of them, and even remember what they were.”

— Nathan Lowell

4. “Just a bunch of people who happen to work in the same place. No unity. No interdependence. It becomes easy to beat up on each other. Easy to have a ‘what’s in it for me’ attitude.”

— Nathan Lowell

5. “As soon as you think you know what’s going on, that’s the first sign that you haven’t a clue.”

— Nathan Lowell

6. “Still, there was a better solution lurking in my hind brain. I just needed to pretend I wasn’t looking for it so it would come out.”

— Nathan Lowell

7. “Ms. Fortuner said, “Is the coffee any good here?” He grinned at her.”

— Nathan Lowell

8. “When you work for yourself? The boss is a jerk. Try not to let it bother you.”

— Nathan Lowell

9. “Snakes don’t think like that. To miss their shed skins they’d have to be aware in the same way people were. They’d have to recognize that the old skin just didn’t fit any more and that to miss it would be negating the value of the new one. They’d have to understand that the new skin couldn’t have come into being without the old skin going before and being cast aside.”

— Nathan Lowell

10. “I really felt like it was coming together and I regretted that feeling with every step. If experience taught me anything, it was that feeling like I had things under control was usually the first symptom of a complete and utter lack of understanding. It was a lesson I thought I had learned well, but which continued to show me new variations with every iteration.”

— Nathan Lowell

11. “If experience taught me anything, it was that feeling like I had things under control was usually the first symptom of a complete and utter lack of understanding.”

— Nathan Lowell

12. “Reputations are tough. Once you blow it, it’s really hard to get it back. You don’t even have to really be what the reputation says you are. Once enough people believe it, you’re stuck digging your way out of a hole you may not have made to begin with.”

— Nathan Lowell

13. “Intellectual understanding doesn’t obviate emotional pain,” I said.”

— Nathan Lowell

14. “My father always told me that chasing after everything I wanted was a fool’s game, but that wanting everything I had would bring me happiness.”

— Nathan Lowell

15. “Ms. Arellone and Ms. Maloney were still debating decor, and I waited to see who would win. In a test of stubbornness between either of them and a rock, I’d bet on the rock to lose. We.”

— Nathan Lowell

16. “Friends are the people who pick you because they want to. They accept you for who you are, not what your relationship with them might be.”

— Nathan Lowell

17. “I’m looking for a ship,” Pip said. “Did you check the docks?” she asked. “Maybe your other pants? Where did you see it last?”

— Nathan Lowell

18. “Yo ho ho, Mr. Pall. I think it’s time we kicked a few butts, took a few risks, and called the cat rude names.” “We.”

— Nathan Lowell

19. “She proceeded with a rather credible and sharply focused verbal flensing that included commentary on parentage, unlikely applications of bodily parts, and ended with imprecations of toxic levels of insectile infestation of certain body cavities.”

— Nathan Lowell

20. “You obviously have mistaken me for somebody with a clue. Unfortunately, I don’t even know where to buy a clue, and if I had one, I’m sure it would be to a different puzzle.”

— Nathan Lowell

21. “We can live in fear, or not.”

— Nathan Lowell

22. “I’ve seen you work. I don’t buy it. I’m not even gonna rent it for the weekend.”

— Nathan Lowell

23. “Even with all the technology, information, and communications that they had, it still came down to men and women in frail boats doing hard, dirty work over long hours in an environment that would kill them if they weren’t both careful and lucky.”

— Nathan Lowell

24. “Your reality shifted just enough for you to question what you thought you knew.”

— Nathan Lowell

25. “Yeah. Well, I sometime embroider the truth a little.” “Embroider? I’ve seen less needlework on twelfth-century tapestries.”

— Nathan Lowell

26. “What I do know is that worrying about it keeps me from doing the things I can do. If I can compartmentalize that by saying ‘Trust Iris,’ that’s good enough for me.”

— Nathan Lowell

27. “Could I have a cup of coffee?” Natalya asked. Louisa nodded. “Of course. Now? With dinner? Or after?” “Yes,” said Natalya. “That would be lovely.”

— Nathan Lowell

28. “Self-interest has derailed more societies than any natural disaster. Other than – perhaps – plague.”

— Nathan Lowell

29. “Sometimes you needed to be an outsider to really appreciate how things worked.”

— Nathan Lowell

30. “Have you pinned him down?” “You ever try to rivet gelatin?”

— Nathan Lowell

31. “I call on the Guardian of the South to bless her with the fire of life, to keep her passion alive even as she enters the autumn of her days.”

— Nathan Lowell

32. “When it comes to the administration, don’t attribute to malice that which can be completely explained by stupidity.”

— Nathan Lowell

33. “Shoe-string operations. Poor people have the least but pay the most.”

— Nathan Lowell

34. “Interrobang?” “Technically a question mark superimposed on an exclamation point?”

— Nathan Lowell

35. “Our biggest challenges as teachers involve getting students to unlearn the things they think they know.”

— Nathan Lowell

36. “We put names to things we don’t understand and tend to avoid the things with no names. It makes them no less real because we don’t believe in them.”

— Nathan Lowell

37. “He nodded with the devilish grin of a ten-year-old who knows he has a frog in his pocket but nobody else suspects.”

— Nathan Lowell

38. “I think order depends more on preparation than control.”

— Nathan Lowell

39. “Hard to get anybody to learn something when their paycheck depends on ignorance.”

— Nathan Lowell

40. “She has ambition by the bucket but she wants somebody else to carry the pail.”

— Nathan Lowell

41. “She smiled. It was not a pretty smile. It did not make her weather worn face light up. The bones of the earth were her teeth, her breath was the wind, the fires of the earth were alight in her eyes, and her blood pumped with the strength of the sea.”

— Nathan Lowell

42. “Natalya sighed and considered what she’d wear. She closed her own door and pondered her wardrobe. She popped open her gravtrunk and pulled down a tab in the top, revealing a collection of weapons. “Accessories,” she said. “This calls for the proper accessories.”

— Nathan Lowell

43. “Why?” “Because we make the best use of a limited resource by helping those at the bottom to move up,” she said. “Not by giving those at the top more advantages.”

— Nathan Lowell

44. “Your home is full of joy, Sadie. And joy isn’t neat.”

— Nathan Lowell