Allison > Allison's Quotes

“Because a place can do many things against you, and if it’s your home or if it was your home at one time, you still love it. That’s how it works.”
― Cristina Henriquez, The Book of Unknown Americans

“English was such a dense, tight language. So many hard letters, like miniature walls. Not open with vowels the way Spanish was. Our throats open, our mouths open, our hearts open. In English, the sounds were closed. They thudded to the floor. And yet, there was something magnificent about it. Profesora Shields explained that in English there was no usted, no tu. There was only one word—you. It applied to all people. No one more distant or more familiar. You. They. Me. I. Us. We. There were no words that changed from feminine to masculine and back again depending on the speaker. A person was from New York. Not a woman from New York, not a man from New York. Simply a person.”
― Cristina Henriquez, The Book of Unknown Americans

“The truth was that I didn’t know which I was. I wasn’t allowed to claim the thing I felt and I didn’t feel the thing I was supposed to claim.”
― Cristina Henriquez, The Book of Unknown Americans

“I know some people here think we’re trying to take over, but we just want to be a part of it. We want to have our stake. This is our home, too.”
― Cristina Henriquez, The Book of Unknown Americans

“I understood how easily and how quickly things could be snatched away.”
― Cristina Henriquez, The Book of Unknown Americans

“I wanted her to have the full, long life that every parent promises his or her child by the simple act of bringing that child into the world.”
― Cristina Henriquez, The Book of Unknown Americans

“You have to believe that you’re entitled to happiness.”
― Cristina Henriquez, The Book of Unknown Americans

“When someone dies, it doesn't leave a hole, and that's the agony.”
― Cristina Henriquez, The Book of Unknown Americans

“I came from México, but there’s a lot of people here who, when they hear that, they think I crawled out of hell.”
― Cristina Henriquez, The Book of Unknown Americans

“EVERYTHING I HAVE TODAY, I FOUGHT FOR MYSELF. I WILL FIGHT FOR WHAT I DON’T HAVE. I WILL CHANGE FATE I DON’T POSSESS. MY FATE IS UP TO ME AND NOT THE HEAVENS!”
― Mò Xiāng Tóngxiù, 天官赐福 [Tiān Guān Cì Fú]

“I could not say with certainty whether what he did was right or wrong, but no matter what, i'm willing to shoulder all the consequences with him”
― Mò Xiāng Tóngxiù, 魔道祖师 [Mó Dào Zǔ Shī]

“If I could, I would have you use me as your stepping stone, the bridge you take apart after crossing, the corpse bones you need to trample to climb up, the sinner who deserved the butchering of a million knives. But I know you wouldn't allow it.”
― Mò Xiāng Tóngxiù, 天官赐福 [Tiān Guān Cì Fú]

“Mine was the unbearable jealousy a cultured pearl must feel toward a genuine one. Or can there be such a thing in this world as a man who is jealous of the woman who loves him, precisely because of her love?”
― Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask

“When a boy… discovers that he is more given into introspection and consciousness of self than other boys his age, he easily falls into the error of believing it is because he is more mature than they. This was certainly a mistake in my case. Rather, it was because the other boys had no such need of understanding themselves as I had: they could be their natural selves, whereas I was to play a part, a fact that would require considerable understanding and study. So it was not my maturity but my sense of uneasiness, my uncertainty that was forcing me to gain control over my consciousness. Because such consciousness was simply a steppingstone to aberration and my present thinking was nothing but uncertain and haphazard guesswork.”
― Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask

“For a long time I had not approached the forbidden fruit called happiness, but it was now tempting me with a melancholy persistence. I felt as though Sonoko were an abyss above which I stood poised.”
― Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask

“My blind adoration of Omi was devoid of any element of conscious criticism, and still less did I have anything like a moral viewpoint where he was concern. Whenever I tried to capture the amorphous mass of my adoration within the confines of analysis, it would already have disappeared. If there be such a thing as love that has neither duration nor progress, this was precisely my emotion. The eyes through which I saw Omi were always those of a 'first glance' or, if I may say so, of the 'primeval glance'. It was purely an unconscious attitude on my part, a ceaselesseffort to protect my fourteen-yesr-old purity from the process of erosion.

Could this have been love? Grant it to be one form of love, for even though at first glance it seemed to retain its pristine form forever, simply repeating that form over and over again, it too had its own unique sort of debasement and decay. And it was a debasement more evil than that of any normal kind of love. Indeed, of all the kinds of decay in this world, decadent purity is the most malignant.

Nevertheless, in my unrequited love for Omi, in this the first love I encountered in life, I seemed like a baby bird keeping its truly innocent animal lusts hidden under its wing. I was being tempted, not by the desire of possession, but simply by unadorned temptation itself.

To say the least, while at school, particularly during a boring class, I could not take my eyes off Omi's profile. What more could I have done when I did not know that to love is both to seek and to be sought? For me love was nothing but a dialogue of little riddles, with no answers given. As for my spirit of adoration, I never even imagined it to be a thing that required some sort of answer.”
― Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask

“There are many types of love in this world, Feliciano. Some are quiet, and comfortable, and smoulder softly. Some blaze brightly and fade fast. But some - and this is very rare - some burn forever. They change everything you ever thought you were, and at the same time, make you more yourself than you could ever be alone. Not everyone finds it. True, not everyone wants it. But if you do find it, or if it finds you, the whole world changes, and you realise that the true purpose of your being was simply to have been in that person’s life, and them in yours.”
― George DeValier, Auf Wiedersehen, Sweetheart

“Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness.

Everything passes.

That is the one and only thing that I have thought resembled a truth in the society of human beings where I have dwelled up to now as in a burning hell.

Everything passes.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“I thought, “I want to die. I want to die more than ever before. There’s no chance now of a recovery. No matter what sort of thing I do, no matter what I do, it’s sure to be a failure, just a final coating applied to my shame. That dream of going on bicycles to see a waterfall framed in summer leaves—it was not for the likes of me. All that can happen now is that one foul, humiliating sin will be piled on another, and my sufferings will become only the more acute. I want to die. I must die. Living itself is the source of sin.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“As long as I can make them laugh, it doesn’t matter how, I’ll be alright. If I succeed in that, the human beings probably won’t mind it too much if I remain outside their lives. The one thing I must avoid is becoming offensive in their eyes: I shall be nothing, the wind, the sky.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“The thought of dying has never bothered me, but getting hurt, losing blood, becoming crippled and the like—no thanks.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“I could believe in hell, but it was impossible for me to believe in the existence of heaven.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“What I wanted was to die among strangers, untroubled, beneath a cloudless sky. And yet my desire differed from the sentiments of that ancient Greek who wanted to die under the brilliant sun. What I wanted was some natural, spontaneous suicide. I wanted a death like that of a fox, not yet well versed in cunning, that walks carelessly along a mountain path and is shot by a hunter because of its own stupidity…”
― Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask

“That's what the world is , after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“It is not that the meaning cannot be explained. But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“I am nothing. I’m like someone who’s been thrown into the ocean at night, floating all alone. I reach out, but no one is there. I call out, but no one answers. I have no connection to anything.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“It didn’t matter where we ended up, I thought then, because every place I had ever been with him had been a home.”
― Pajtim Statovci, Crossing

“It's the first thing people notice,' she says despondently. 'Difference. As if it's a crime.”
― Pajtim Statovci, Tiranan sydän

“This life is worth nothing at all; only the next life is worth something.”
― Pajtim Statovci, Crossing