Anja > Anja's Quotes

“After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations.”
― Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance

“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Critic As Artist: With Some Remarks on the Importance of Doing Nothing and Discussing Everything

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“The first thing I learned at school was that some people are idiots; the second thing I learned was that some are even worse.”
― Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul: Memories and the City

“When I was about eight, I decided that the most wonderful thing, next to a human being, was a book.”
― Margaret Walker

“A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.”
― Jean de La Fontaine, Fables

“The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility.”
― Vaclav Havel

“We live for books.”
― Umberto Eco

“The course of true love never did run smooth; But, either it was different in blood,
O cross! too high to be enthrall’d to low.
Or else misgraffed in respect of years,
O spite! too old to be engag’d to young.
Or else it stood upon the choice of friends,
O hell! to choose love by another’s eye.”
― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?”
― Albert Camus

“Every generation loses the Messiah it has failed to deserve.”
― Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen's Union

“And that was when you realized the fire was inside you all the time. And that was the miracle. Just that.”
― Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen's Union

“She reaches down into her bulging tote bag and pulls out a small plastic box with a hinged lid. It contains a round pill box with a threaded lid from which she tips out a vitamin pill, a fish-oil pill, and the enzyme tablet that lets her stomach digest milk. Inside the hinged plastic box she also carries packets of salt, pepper, horseradish, and hand-wipes, a doll size bottle of Tabasco sauce, chlorine pills for treating drinking water, Pepto-Bismol chews, and God knows what else. If you go to a concert, Bina has opera glasses. If you need to sit on the grass, she whips out a towel. Ant traps, a corkscrew, candles and matches, a dog muzzle, a penknife, a tiny aerosol can of freon, a magnifying glass - Landsman has seen everything come out of that overstuffed cowhide at one time or another.”
― Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen's Union

“Just because life's meaningless doesn't mean we can't experience it meaningfully.”
― Glen Duncan, The Last Werewolf

“Once you've stopped loving someone breaking his or her heart's just an unpleasant chore you have to get behind you. My God, you really don't love me anymore, do you? No matter your decency the victim's incredulity's potentially hilarious. You manage not to laugh.”
― Glen Duncan, The Last Werewolf

“Human has always striven to retain the past, to keep it convincing; there's nothing wicked in that. Without it we have no continuity; we have only the moment. And, deprived of the past, the moment - the present - has little meaning, if any.”
― Philip K. Dick, Now Wait for Last Year

“I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list.”
― Susan Sontag

“My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people.”
― Patricia Highsmith

“A childhood without books – that would be no childhood. That would be like being shut out from the enchanted place where you can go and find the rarest kind of joy.”
― Astrid Lindgren

“Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.”
― Neil Gaiman

“There's nothing like deep breaths after laughing that hard. Nothing in the world like a sore stomach for the right reasons.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Don’t speak. Let me think, or, rather, let me try not to think.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“The separation of spirit from matter was a mystery and the union of spirit with matter was a mystery also.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“But sometimes it ain't the strongest wins. And especially when the stronger thinks, because it's stronger, that it ain't got to try to fight.”
― China Miéville, Iron Council

“Your brain is doing some great work when it's laughing.”
― Jon Scieszka, Funny Business

“What you must understand about me is that I’m a deeply unhappy person.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“I don't want to be married just to be married. I can't think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can't talk to, or worse, someone I can't be silent with.”
― Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society