Reham Hamad > Reham's Quotes

“…there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there. It is hard for me to make sense on any given level. Myself is fabricated, an aberration. I am a noncontingent human being. My personality is sketchy and unformed, my heartlessness goes deep and is persistent. My conscience, my pity, my hopes disappeared a long time ago (probably at Harvard) if they ever did exist. There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it, I have now surpassed. I still, though, hold on to one single bleak truth: no one is safe, nothing is redeemed. Yet I am blameless. Each model of human behavior must be assumed to have some validity. Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do? My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this—and I have countless times, in just about every act I’ve committed—and coming face-to-face with these truths, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself, no new understanding can be extracted from my telling. There has been no reason for me to tell you any of this. This confession has meant nothing….”
― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

“I would never be part of anything. I would never really belong anywhere, and I knew it, and all my life would be the same, trying to belong, and failing. Always something would go wrong. I am a stranger and I always will be, and after all I didn’t really care.”
― Jean Rhys, Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography

“What cannot be said above all must not be silenced but written.”
― Jacques Derrida

“How can another see into me, into my most secret self, without my being able to see in there myself? And without my being able to see him in me. And if my secret self, that which can be revealed only to the other, to the wholly other, to God if you wish, is a secret that I will never reflect on, that I will never know or experience or possess as my own, then what sense is there in saying that it is my secret, or in saying more generally that a secret belongs, that it is proper to or belongs to some one, or to some other who remains someone. It's perhaps there that we find the secret of secrecy. Namely, that it is not a matter of knowing and that it is there for no one. A secret doesn't belong, it can never be said to be at home or in its place. The question of the self: who am I not in the sense of who am I but rather who is this I that can say who? What is the- I and what becomes of responsibility once the identity of the I trembles in secret?”
― Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death

“In general, I try and distinguish between what one calls the Future and “l’avenir” [the ‘to come]. The future is that which – tomorrow, later, next century – will be. There is a future which is predictable, programmed, scheduled, foreseeable. But there is a future, l’avenir (to come) which refers to someone who comes whose arrival is totally unexpected. For me, that is the real future. That which is totally unpredictable. The Other who comes without my being able to anticipate their arrival. So if there is a real future, beyond the other known future, it is l’avenir in that it is the coming of the Other when I am completely unable to foresee their arrival.”
― Jacques Derrida

“أنا من أهوى ومن أهوى أنا
نـــــحن روحان حللنا بدنا
فــــــإذا أبصرتني أبصرته
وإذا أبصــــــــرته كان أنـــا
روحه روحي وروحي روحه
من رأى روحين حلا بدنـــا”
― الحسين بن منصور الحلاج

“رأَيتُ ربّي بعين قلبِ فقلتُ من أنت قال أنت
فليس للأين منك أينٌ و ليس أين بحيثُ أنت
و ليس للوهم منك وهمٌ فيعلم الوهم أين أنت
أنت الذي حُزْتَ كل أين بنحو لا أينَ فأينَ أنت
و في فنائي فنا فنائي و في فنائي وجدت أنت”
― الحسين بن منصور الحلاج

“روحه روحي وروحي روحه إن يشا شئتُ وإن شئتُ يشـا”
― الحلاج

“الوحدة أن يكون المرء في مكان وكل من يحب في مكان آخر !”
― عزالدين شكري فشير , عناق عند جسر بروكلين

“الأشياء الحقيقة تحدث دون موعد ودون نظام، ودون منطق، كالموت، كالظلم، كالعجز.”
― عزالدين شكري فشير, عناق عند جسر بروكلين

“ربما في آخر العمر نلتقي، وربما في عمر آخر، زمن آخر.”
― عزالدين شكري فشير, عناق عند جسر بروكلين

“لا أحد يظل للأبد. كلنا ميتون، ميتة أو أخرى، ما الفارق لدى الموتى ؟”
― عزالدين شكري فشير, عناق عند جسر بروكلين

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Do you hate people?”

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

“I've never been lonely. I've been in a room -- I've felt suicidal. I've been depressed. I've felt awful -- awful beyond all -- but I never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me...or that any number of people could enter that room. In other words, loneliness is something I've never been bothered with because I've always had this terrible itch for solitude. It's being at a party, or at a stadium full of people cheering for something, that I might feel loneliness. I'll quote Ibsen, "The strongest men are the most alone." I've never thought, "Well, some beautiful blonde will come in here and give me a fuck-job, rub my balls, and I'll feel good." No, that won't help. You know the typical crowd, "Wow, it's Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there?" Well, yeah. Because there's nothing out there. It's stupidity. Stupid people mingling with stupid people. Let them stupidify themselves. I've never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. I hid in bars, because I didn't want to hide in factories. That's all. Sorry for all the millions, but I've never been lonely. I like myself. I'm the best form of entertainment I have. Let's drink more wine!”
― Charles Bukowski

“Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you've felt that way.”
― Charles Bukowski

“We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”
― Charles Bukowski

“My ambition is handicapped by laziness”
― Charles Bukowski, Factotum

“You have to die a few times before you can really
live.”
― Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last

“there are worse things
than being alone
but it often takes
decades to realize this
and most often when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than too late”
― Charles Bukowski

“An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Real loneliness is not necessarily limited to when you are alone.”
― Charles Bukowski

“there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock.

people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.

people just are not good to each other
one on one.

the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.

we are afraid.

our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners.

it hasn't told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.

or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone

untouched
unspoken to

watering a plant.”
― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell

“If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you've still got a soul left to lose”
― Charles Bukowski and Carl Weissner

“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”
― Charles Bukowski

“I wanted the whole world or nothing.”
― Charles Bukowski, Post Office

“I felt like crying but nothing came out. it was just a sort of sad sickness, sick sad, when you can't feel any worse. I think you know it. I think everybody knows it now and then. but I think I have known it pretty often, too often.”
― Charles Bukowski, Tales of Ordinary Madness

“There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going to let anybody see you.”
― Charles Bukowski

“A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never entirely recover.”
― Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last