Eva Steepe > Eva's Quotes

“The questions that undermine our faith don’t arrive through deep meditation and diligent study. They pop up like soldiers from a fox-hole, ready to shoot you down before you even have the time to realize you’re dead.”
― Stephan Eirik Clark, Sweetness #9

“There is only one age for anyone. I was and am, will always be fifty-eight. But you. Be careful what age you end up. It sticks to you. It seals you shut. The age you choose is like glue, it sets around you.”
― Milena Michiko Flašar, I Called Him Necktie

“I am thinking of beauty again, how some things are hunted because we have deemed them beautiful. If, relative to the history of our planet, an individual life is so short, a blink of an eye, as they say, then to be gorgeous, even from the day you're born to the day you die, is to be gorgeous only briefly. Like right now, how the sun is coming on, low behind the elms, and I can't tell the difference between a sunset and a sunrise. The world, reddening, appears the same to me--and I lose track of east and west. The colors this morning have the frayed tint of something already leaving. I think of the time Trev and I sat on the toolshed roof, watching the sun sink. I wasn't so much surprised by its effect--how, in a few crushed minutes, it changes the way things are seen, including ourselves--but that it was ever mine to see. Because the sunset, like survival, exists only on the verge of its own disappearing. To be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“I am thinking of beauty again, how some things are hunted because we have deemed them beautiful. If, relative to the history of our planet, an individual life is so short, a blink, as they say, then to be gorgeous, even from the day you're born to the day you die, is to be gorgeous only briefly.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“In the age of Instagram and Snapchat, I think a memory is the most private thing.”
― Miriam Parker, The Shortest Way Home

“What have we become to each other if not what we’ve done to each other?”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“We try to preserve life, even when we know it has no chance of enduring its body. We feed it, keep it comfortable, bathe it, medicate it, caress it, even sing to it. We tend to these basic functions not because we are brave or selfless but because, like breath, it is the most fundamental act of our species: to sustain the body until time leaves it behind.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“It's not fair that the word laughter is trapped inside slaughter. We'll have to cut it open, you and I, like a newborn lifted, red and trembling, from the just-shot doe.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“I grounded myself by breathing into my scarf. Memories darted around the brown trees, thousands of them edging up on me. The past for me was 100 percent sad, the way that sometimes weather sites say it's 100 percent humidity outside, but it's still not raining.”
― Molly Dektar, The Ash Family

“The more knowledge you have, the more you can love," he said. "Love comes from understanding, not from ignorance.”
― Molly Dektar, The Ash Family

“Illness, I think, is holding unto an illusion. The loneliness while you're holding onto it.”
― Milena Michiko Flašar

“History is a mirror and we’re all just older versions of ourselves; children disguised as adults.”
― Alice Feeney, Sometimes I Lie

“History doesn’t record the intricacies of women’s relationships with one another; they’re not to be uncovered.”
― Sarah Penner, The Lost Apothecary

“All that matters is who you love.”
― Jojo Moyes, The Girl You Left Behind

“Memory...is a wild and private place to which we only return by accident, as in a dream or song.”
― Julia Fine, The Upstairs House

“Summertime, I think, is a collective unconscious. We all remember the notes that made up the song of the ice cream man; we all know what it feels like to brand our thighs on a playground slide that's heated up like a knife in a fire; we all have lain on our backs with our eyes closed and our hearts beating across the surface of our lids, hoping that this day will stretch just a little longer than the last one, when in fact it's all going in the other direction.”
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

“Time is an optical illusion- never quite as soild or strong as we think it is”
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

“Life sometimes gets so bogged down in the details, you forget you are living it. There is always another appointment to be met, another bill to pay, another symptom presenting, another uneventful day to be notched onto the wooden wall. We have synchronized our watches, studied our calendars, existed in minutes, and completely forgotten to step back and see what we've accomplished.”
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

“People who are most afraid of their dreams convince themselves they don't dream at all.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“What a frightening thing is the human, a mass of gauges and dials and registers, and we can only read a few and those perhaps not accurately.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“When two people meet, each one is changed by the other so you've got two new people.”
― John Steinbeck

“I wish someone had just told me the truth right up front, as soon as I was old enough to understand it. I wish someone had just said: “Here’s the deal, Wade. You’re something called a ‘human being.’ That’s a really smart kind of animal. Like every other animal on this planet, we’re descended from a single-celled organism that lived millions of years ago. This happened by a process called evolution, and you’ll learn more about it But trust me, that’s really how we all got here. There’s proof of it everywhere, buried in the rocks. That story you heard? About how we were all created by a super-powerful dude named God who lives up in the sky? Total bullshit. The whole God thing is actually an ancient fairy tale that people have been telling one another for thousands of years. We made it all up. Like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. “Oh, and by the way … there’s no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny. Also bullshit. Sorry, kid Deal with it.”
― Ernest Cline, Ready Player One

“That was when I realized, as terrifying and painful as reality can be, it’s also the only place where you can find true happiness. Because reality is real.”
― Ernest Cline, Ready Player One

“And sometimes, when you think you've finally reached the end of the game, suddenly you find yourself standing at the start of a whole new level. A level that you've never seen before.

And the only thing you can do is keep right on playing. Because the game that is your life still isn't over yet. And there's no telling how far you might be able to get, what you might discover, or who you might meet when you get there.”
― Ernest Cline, Ready Player Two

“Life was like that, full of quicksilver changes. Joy reappeared as unexpectedly as sunlight”
― Kristin Hannah , The Great Alone

“A life is the gradual approach, through an infinite number of compromises, to a preconceived goal, to an ideal, a dream or vision which may never be completely realized”
― Frederick Philip Grove, Settlers of the Marsh

“I’m glad we don’t know everything.” “You’re glad?” “That we don’t know all the answers, that we can’t explain it all, like space. Maybe we’re not supposed to know all the answers. Questions are good. They’re better than answers. If you want to know more about life, how we work, how we progress, it’s questions that are important. That’s what pushes and stretches our intellect. I think questions make us feel less lonely and more connected. It’s not always about knowing. I appreciate not knowing. Not knowing is human. That’s how it should be, like space. It’s unsolvable, and it’s dark,” I say, “but not entirely.”
― Iain Reid, I'm Thinking of Ending Things

“The meaning of my existence is that life has addressed a question to me. Or, conversely, I myself am a question which is addressed to the world, and I must communicate my answer, for otherwise I am dependent upon the world's answer.”
― Iain Reid, I'm Thinking of Ending Things

“A memory is its own thing each time it's recalled. It's not absolute. Stories based on actual events often share more with fiction than fact. Both fictions and memories are recalled and retold. They're both forms of stories. Stories are the way we learn. Stories are how we understand each other. But reality happens only once.”
― Iain Reid, I'm Thinking of Ending Things

“Seeing someone with their parents is a tangible reminder that we're all composites.”
― Iain Reid, I'm Thinking of Ending Things