Pascale > Pascale's Quotes

“In Czech, according to Milan Kundera, litost is a state of agony and torment created by the sudden sight of one's own misery.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“Do you hate people?”

“I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around.”
― Charles Bukowski, Barfly

“The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole goddamned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves.”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“Everything else just kept picking and picking, hacking away. And nothing was interesting, nothing. The people were restrictive and careful, all alike. And I've got to live with these fuckers for the rest of my life, I thought.”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“I opened myself to you only to be skinned alive. The more vulnerable I became, the faster and more deft your knife. Knowing what was happening, still I stayed and let you carve more. That's how much I loved you. That's how much.”
― Rabih Alameddine, I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters

“Was I the only person who was distracted by this future without a chance?”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“I didn’t particularly want money. I didn’t know what I wanted. Yes, I did. I wanted someplace to hide out, someplace where one didn’t have to do anything. The thought of being something didn’t only appall me, it sickened me. The thought of being a lawyer or a councilman or an engineer, anything like that, seemed impossible to me. To get married, to have children, to get trapped in the family structure. To go someplace to work every day and to return. It was impossible. To do things, simple things, to be part of family picnics, Christmas, the 4th of July, Labor Day, Mother’s Day … was a man born just to endure those things and then die? I would rather be a dishwasher, return alone to a tiny room and drink myself to sleep.”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“Paris is like a whore. From a distance she seems ravishing, you can't wait until you have her in your arms. And five minutes later you feel empty, disgusted with yourself. You feel tricked.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“The moonlight came in with the sounds of the city: juke boxes, automobiles, curses, dogs barking, radios … We were all in it together.”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“I walked around the block twice, passed 200 people and failed to see a human being.”
― Charles Bukowski, Tales of Ordinary Madness

“لكنني تركت مقعدي بينهم وجئت أكتب في ناحية، ومن مكاني أستطيع أن أرى مقعدي الفارغ في مكانه المناسب، موجود بينهم أكثر مما كنت أنا.”
― غسان كنفاني, رسائل غسان كنفاني إلى غادة السمان

“The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
― Robert Frost

“His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest. There was no doubt that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and the desire for new experiences; yet it was not a simple but rather a very complex passion.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“What do you do all day?
I just stay in bed.
That's awful.
No, it's nice. I like it.”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“The only relationship that can make both partners happy is one in which sentimentality has no place and neither partner makes any claim on the life and freedom of the other.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
― Steve Jobs

“For seven years I went about, day and night, with only one thing on my mind – her.
Were there a Christian so faithful to his God as I was to her we would all be Jesus
Christs today.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Madman

“Sometimes you make up your mind about something without knowing why, and your decision persists by the power of inertia. Every year it gets harder to change.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“There are times when those eyes inside your brain stare back at you.”
― Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“As long as that spark of passion is missing there is no human significance in the performance.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“Promise me you'll never forget me because if I thought you would, I'd never leave.”
― A.A. Milne

“Tomas did not realize at the time that metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“I walked down the memory lane this afternoon,
The streets have changed now after the storm;
the ruins and the residues are cleared...
But the madness in the air still remains;
Every path I took had the same old smell,
Everything once again seemed like those early youth days under the mellow sun, with you.”
― Preetilata kumari

“I like men who have a future and women who have a past.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Noah, however, was a son of a bitch of a captain who ran a very tight ship. Only pairs of the best and the brightest were allowed to climb the plank—perpetuate the species, repopulate the planet, and all that Nazi nonsense. Would Noah have allowed a lesbian zebra aboard, an unmarried hedgehog, a limping lemur?”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.”
― Mark Twain, The Diaries of Adam & Eve: Translated by Mark Twain