Liz > Liz's Quotes

“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“I paint flowers so they will not die.”
― Frida Kahlo

“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)”
― Sylvia Plath

“He was talking about the sign that said 'THE COMPLICATED FUTILITY OF IGNORANCE.'
'All knew was that I didn't want my daughter or anybody's child to see a message that negative every time she comes into the library,' he said. 'And then I found out it was you who was responsible for it.'
'What's so negative about it?' I said.
'What could be a more negative word than "futility"?' he said.
'"Ignorance,"' I said.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus

“But we were in love,
or at least I believed myself completely to be.
I craved [her] presence for no other reason than to have it.
It was certainly friendship too.
This intimate companionship
with someone who knew me in a way that no one else did.
It was a heighten state of friendship.
Maybe it was also a bit of infatuation.
But what I knew for sure was that it was also love.
Maybe love was some combination of friendship and infatuation.
A deeply felt affection accompanied by a certain sort of awe.
And by gratitude.
And by a desire for a lifetime of togetherness.”
― Chinelo Okparanta, Under the Udala Trees

“Maybe love was some combination of friendship and infatuation. A deeply felt affection accompanied by a certain sort of awe. And by gratitude. And by a desire for a lifetime of togetherness.”
― Chinelo Okparanta, Under the Udala Trees

“- Why me?
- That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?
- Yes.
- Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five

“How embarrassing to be human.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“I had to laugh like hell”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus

“I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.”
― Angela Y. Davis

“It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like "Poo-tee-weet?”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“It is time for me to be dead for a little while - and then live again.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“so whatever you want to do, just do it...Making a damn fool of yourself is absolutely essential.”
― Gloria Steinem

“He was the crazy one who had painted himself black and defeated the world.

She was the book thief without the words.

Trust me, though, the words were on their way, and when they arrived, Liesel would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out like rain.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Bien sûr je te ferai mal. Bien sûr tu me feras mal. Bien sûr nous aurons mal. Mais ça, c’est la condition de l’existence. Se faire printemps, c’est prendre le risque de l’hiver. Se faire présent, c’est prendre le risque de l’absence… C’est à mon risque de peine que je connais ma joie.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”
― Audre Lorde

“She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.”
― J.D. Salinger

“Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life.”
― Betty Smith

“A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it.”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

“She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“Do I dare Disturb the universe?”
― T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land, Prufrock and Other Poems

“We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.”
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone's heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark.”
― Raymond Carver

“I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“There's something to be said for hunger: at least it lets you know you're still alive.”
― Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

“I guess mercy is a muscle like any other. You got to exercise it, or it just cramp right up.”
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

“The conversation of kisses. Subtle, engrossing, fearless, transforming.”
― Alice Munro, Runaway: Stories

“Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

“The first sentence of every novel should be: Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human.”
― Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion