Liam Schindelka > Liam's Quotes

“As soon as you begin to think, you can no longer love life”
― Ágota Kristóf, The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie: Three Novels

“No book, no matter how sad, can be as sad as a life.”
― Ágota Kristóf, The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie: Three Novels

“You don't want to fight the enemy anymore?"
"I don't want to fight anyone. I have no enemies. I want to go home.”
― Ágota Kristof, The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie: Three Novels

“I don’t think. I can’t allow myself the luxury. I’ve lived with fear since I was a child”
― Ágota Kristóf, The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie: Three Novels

“JUDAS: Why ... didn't you make me good enough ... so that you could've loved me?”
― Stephen Adly Guirgis, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot

“You remember too much,
my mother said to me recently.
Why hold onto all that? And I said,
Where can I put it down?”
― Anne Carson, Glass, Irony and God

“& so what–if my feathers
are burning. I
never asked for flight.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“No parent should have to bury a child ... No mother should have to bury a son. Mothers are not meant to bury sons. It is not in the natural order of things.
I buried my son. In a potter's field. In a field of Blood. In empty, acrid silence. There was no funeral. There were no mourners. His friends all absent. His father dead. His sisters refusing to attend. I discovered his body alone, I dug his grave alone, I placed him in a hole, and covered him with dirt and rock alone. I was not able to finish burying him before sundown, and I'm not sure if that affected his fate ...
I begrudge God none of this. I do not curse him or bemoan my lot. And though my heart keeps beating only to keep breaking--I do not question why.
I remember the morning my son was born as if it was yesterday. The moment the midwife placed him in my arms, I was infused with a love beyond all measure and understanding. I remember holding my son, and looking over at my own mother and saying, "Now I understand why the sun comes up at day and the stars come out at night. I understand why rain falls gently. Now I understand you, Mother" ...
I loved my son every day of his life, and I will love him ferociously long after I've stopped breathing. I am a simple woman. I am not bright or learn-ed. I do not read. I do not write. My opinions are not solicited. My voice is not important ... On the day of my son's birth I was infused with a love beyond all measure and understanding ... The world tells me that God is in Heaven and that my son is in Hell. I tell the world the one true thing I know: If my son is in Hell, then there is no Heaven--because if my son sits in Hell, there is no God.”
― Stephen Adly Guirgis, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot

“Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.”
― Anne Carson (Translator), Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides

“Maybe we pray on our knees because god only listens when we’re this close to the devil.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“They say nothing lasts forever but they're just scared it will last longer than they can love it.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“I miss you more than I remember you.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you've been ruined.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Too much joy, I swear, is lost in our desperation to keep it.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“What were you before you met me?"
"I think I was drowning"
"And what are you now?"
"Water”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“When does a war end? When can I say your name and have it mean only your name and not what you left behind?”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”
― Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

“Tonight I can write the saddest lines
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.”
― Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

“so I wait for you like a lonely house
till you will see me again and live in me.
Till then my windows ache.”
― Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

“The descent into Hell is easy”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“Let me rage before I die.”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“Do the gods light this fire in our hearts or does each man's mad desire become his god?”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“Who has not asked himself at some time or other: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?”
― Clarice Lispector, A Hora da Estrela

“All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name.”
― André Breton, Mad Love

“HUMAN BEINGS MAKE LIFE SO INTERESTING. DO YOU KNOW, THAT IN A UNIVERSE SO FULL OF WONDERS, THEY HAVE MANAGED TO INVENT BOREDOM. (Death)”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

“God said: GOD MADE YOU. GOD DOES NOT CARE IF YOU ARE "GUILTY" OR NOT. I said: I CARE IF I AM GUILTY! I CARE IF I AM GUILTY!... God was silent. Everything was SILENT.”
― Frank Bidart, Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965-2016

“To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

“How can a man of consciousness have the slightest respect for himself”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“I don't believe in God. Can you understand that? Look around you man. Cant you see? The clamor and din of those in torment has to be the sound most pleasing to his ear. And I loathe these discussions. The argument of the village atheist whose single passion is to revile endlessly that which he denies the existence of in the first place. Your fellowship is a fellowship of pain and nothing more. And if that pain were actually collective instead of simply reiterative then the sheer weight of it would drag the world from the walls of the universe and send it crashing and burning through whatever night it might yet be capable of engendering until it was not even ash. And justice? Brotherhood? Eternal life? Good god, man. Show me a religion that prepares one for death. For nothingness. There's a church I might enter. Yours prepares one only for more life. For dreams and illusions and lies. If you could banish the fear of death from men's hearts they wouldnt live a day. Who would want this nightmare if not for fear of the next? The shadow of the axe hangs over every joy. Every road ends in death. Or worse. Every friendship. Every love. Torment, betrayal, loss, suffering, pain, age, indignity, and hideous lingering illness. All with a single conclusion. For you and for every one and everything that you have chosen to care for. There's the true brotherhood. The true fellowship. And everyone is a member for life. You tell me that my brother is my salvation? My salvation? Well then damn him. Damn him in every shape and form and guise. Do I see myself in him? Yes. I do. And what I see sickens me. Do you understand me? Can you understand me?”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Sunset Limited

“The history of mankind is the history of our misunderstandings with god, for he doesn't understand us, and we don't understand him.”
― José Saramago, Caim