Mak V. > Mak's Quotes

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford and you are not that young anymore”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“I often wonder what I'd do if there weren't any books in the world.”
― James Baldwin , Giovanni’s Room

“Somebody," said Jacques, "your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour--and in the oddest places!--for the lack of it.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“Better never means better for everyone... It always means worse, for some.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.”
― Marilyn Monroe

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“Love him,’ said Jacques, with vehemence, ‘love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters? And how long, at the best, can it last, since you are both men and still have everywhere to go? Only five minutes, I assure you, only five minutes, and most of that, helas! in the dark. And if you think of them as dirty, then they will be dirty— they will be dirty because you will be giving nothing, you will be despising your flesh and his. But you can make your time together anything but dirty, you can give each other something which will make both of you better—forever—if you will not be ashamed, if you will only not play it safe.’ He paused, watching me, and then looked down to his cognac. ‘You play it safe long enough,’ he said, in a different tone, ‘and you’ll end up trapped in your own dirty body, forever and forever and forever—like me.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“I don't want to die without any scars.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“This is your life and its ending one moment at a time.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“I am Jack's complete lack of surprise. I am Jack's Broken Heart.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“Without pain, without sacrifice we would have nothing. Like the first monkey shot into space.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“It's very hard to keep personal prejudice out of a thing like this. And no matter where you run into it, prejudice obscures the truth.”
― Reginald Rose, Twelve Angry Men

“Facts may be colored by the personalities of the people who present them.”
― Reginald Rose, Twelve Angry Men

“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

“The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“Colour is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“People confuse thinking with knowing, they let themselves confuse the two.”
― Claudia Piñeiro, Elena Knows

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“I love people. Everybody. I love them, I think, as a stamp collector loves his collection. Every story, every incident, every bit of conversation is raw material for me. My love's not impersonal yet not wholly subjective either. I would like to be everyone, a cripple, a dying man, a whore, and then come back to write about my thoughts, my emotions, as that person. But I am not omniscient. I have to live my life, and it is the only one I'll ever have. And you cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all the time...”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“When they asked me what I wanted to be I said I didn’t know.
"Oh, sure you know," the photographer said.
"She wants," said Jay Cee wittily, "to be everything.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar