Anthony Doerr Quotes

If you see somebody running down the street naked every single day, you stop looking up.

Every desire bears its death in its very gratification. Curiosity languishes under repeated stimulants, and novelties cease to excite and surprise, until at length we cannot wonder even at a miracle.

Habituation puts to sleep the eye of our judgment.

Familiarity so dulls the edge of perception as to make us least acquainted with things forming part of our daily life.

There is a strong tendency to get used to and accept very bad things that would be shocking if seen with fresh eyes.

A shocking occurrence ceases to be shocking when it occurs daily.

Your life is the same wherever you go.

All objects lose by too familiar a view.

My philosophy is familiarity breeds contempt.

If you do the same thing too often, it gets to be the only thing you can do.

You do not notice changes in what is always before you.

Oh, there's nothing like getting used to things.

When you do anything too long, you either wear it out or lose interest.

I don't get hyped when I see stars now because it's like second nature to me.

I'm around my father all of the time, so the things that people see as distracting are things I've seen for years on a daily basis. It's second nature to me.

I've been here for 19 years, so West Ham fans are bored with seeing me. It's like my wife, who changes the wallpaper every three years because she gets tired of it.

Life is a continuous cycle of once-terrifying things becoming normal.

Like all familiar objects, it had become invisible.

The only thing that should astonish us is that anything can yet astonish us.

Only in sex the noise sometimes stops. I say "sometimes". If you have become habitual in sex also, as husbands and wives become, then it never stops. The whole act becomes automatic and the mind goes on its own. Then sex also is a boredom.

The mind becomes accustomed to things by the habitual sight of them, and neither wonders nor inquires about the reasons for things it sees all the time.

Once thoroughly our own, the knowledge ceases to give us pleasure.

When we have an experience -- hearing a particular sonata, making love with a particular person, watching the sun set from a particular window of a particular room -- on successive occasions, we quickly begin to adapt to it, and the experience yields less pleasure each time. Psychologists call this habituation, economists call it declining marginal utility, and the rest of us call it marriage

Why did becoming accustomed to something have to render its pleasures stale.

The shock of photographed atrocities wears off with repeated viewings, just as the surprise and bemusement felt the first time one sees a pornographic movie wear off after one sees a few more.