Barbara Bagatin > Barbara's Quotes

“Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book. The reader's recognition in himself of what the book says is the proof of the book's truth.”
― Marcel Proust, Time Regained

“You have to be the bravest person in the world to go out every day, being yourself when no one likes who you are.”
― Matthew Dicks, Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend

“No medicine cures what happiness cannot.”
― Gabriel García Márquez

“I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop.”
― Bohumil Hrabal

“Life is a beautiful magnificent thing, even to a jellyfish.”
― Charles Chaplin

“I think I’m greedy, but I’m not greedy for money - I think that can be a burden - I’m greedy for an exciting life.”
― David Hockney

“The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“We must love one another or die”
― W.H. Auden

“Never tire yourself more than necessary, even if you have to found a culture on the fatigue of your bones.”
― Antonin Artaud

“There is in every madman
a misunderstood genius
whose idea
shining in his head
frightened people
and for whom delirium was the only solution
to the strangulation
that life had prepared for him.”
― Antonin Artaud

“I would like to write a Book which would drive men mad, which would be like an open door leading them where they would never have consented to go, in short, a door that opens onto reality.”
― Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings

“Cats are connoisseurs of comfort.”
― James Herriot, James Herriot's Cat Stories

“Reading is a bit like hallucinating.”
― Nathan Filer, The Shock of the Fall

“What's terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.”
― Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

“Give the children love, more love and still more love – and the common sense will come by itself.”
― Astrid Lindgren

“Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.”
― Doris Lessing

“A word after a word after a word is power.”
― Margaret Atwood

“War is what happens when language fails.”
― Margaret Atwood

“Books don't need batteries.”
― Nadine Gordimer

“What is the purpose of writing? For me personally, it is really to explain the mystery of life, and the mystery of life includes, of course, the personal, the political, the forces that make us what we are while there's another force from inside battling to make us something else.”
― Nadine Gordimer

“What a pity every child couldn't learn to read under a willow tree...”
― Elizabeth George Speare, The Witch of Blackbird Pond

“There is no escape if love is not there," Hannah had said. Had Hannah known when she herself had not even suspected? It was not escape that she had dreamed about, it was love.”
― Elizabeth George Speare, The Witch of Blackbird Pond

“Anyone can be a barbarian; it requires a terrible effort to remain a civilized man.”
― Leonard Woolf

“Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”
― William Blake

“The future has an ancient heart.”
― Carlo Levi

“beware, white man, of the friendly forest,
of the painted desert, beware of the singing water
lest you find your mother
and she pounce and devour you”
― Jaime De Angulo, Home Among the Swinging Stars: Collected Poems of Jaime de Angulo

“Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It's splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”
― L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“It's not what the world holds for you. It's what you bring to it.”
― Kevin Sullivan

“True friends are always together in spirit.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables