TC > TC's Quotes

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”
― Rumi

“One of the inescapable encumbrances of leading an interesting life is that there have to be moments when you almost lose it.”
― Jimmy Buffett, A Pirate Looks at Fifty

“I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
― Anton Chekhov

“If ever my life can be of any use to you, come and claim it.”
― Anton Chekhov

“There are a great many opinions in this world, and a good half of them are professed by people who have never been in trouble."

(The Mill)”
― Anton Chekhov, The Portable Chekhov

“The task of a writer is not to solve the problem but to state the problem correctly.”
― Chekhov, Anton Chekhov, Anton

“One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”
― Henry Miller

“Apparently I lack some particular perversion which today's employer is seeking. ”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d”
― Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard

“Summer grasses,
All that remains
Of soldiers' dreams”
― Bashō

“No matter where your interest lies, you will not be able to accomplish anything unless you bring your deepest devotion to it.”
― Matsuo Bashô

“Nothing in the cry
of cicadas suggests they
are about to die”
― Matsuo Bashō

“You get a tattoo like this and a ’do like this, and wear a shirt where the tattoo shows, and you walk into a room of people and feel the animosity, the disapproval, the how-dare-you. You can feel it coming off them like heat off a stove. And the thing I want to ask them is, how have I deserved this, what have I done that so offends you? I have not asked you to cut your hair this way. I have not asked you what you thought of it, or to approve it. So why do you feel this way towards me? If you can’t get past my 'too—my tattoo—and my 'do—the way I got my hair cut—it’s only because you have decided there are certain things that can be done with hair and certain things that cannot be done with hair. And certain of them are right and proper and decent, and the rest indicate a warped, degenerate nature; therefore I am warped and degenerate. 'Cause I got my hair cut a different way, man? You gonna really live your life like that? What’s wrong with you?”
― Harry Crews, Getting Naked with Harry Crews: Interviews

“It's easier to bleed than sweat, Mr. Motes.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood

“That ain't me, that ain't my face. It wasn't even me when I was trying to be that face. I wasn't even really me them; I was just being the way I looked, the way people wanted.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

“These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which as they kiss consume. The sweetest honey
Is loathsome in his own deliciousness
And in the taste confounds the appetite.
Therefore love moderately; long love doth so;
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

“It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.”
― John Steinbeck, شرق بهشت

“As if you were on fire from within.

The moon lives in the lining of your skin.”
― Pablo Neruda

“Savor the imminent weirdness of the day.”
― Charles Baxter, Gryphon: New and Selected Stories

“People change and forget to tell each other.”
― Lillian Hellman

“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”
― 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

“what matters most is how well you walk through the fire”
― Charles Bukowski

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

“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

“[Kids] don't remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are.”
― Jim Henson, It's Not Easy Being Green: And Other Things to Consider

“It's been a prevalent notion. Fallen sparks. Fragments of vessels broken at the Creation. And someday, somehow, before the end, a gathering back to home. A messenger from the Kingdom, arriving at the last moment. But I tell you there is no such message, no such home -- only the millions of last moments . . . nothing more. Our history is an aggregate of last moments.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

“Is it possible that existence is our exile and nothingness our home?”
― Emil Cioran, Tears and Saints

“Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the gate:
‘To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods,

‘And for the tender mother
Who dandled him to rest,
And for the wife who nurses
His baby at her breast,
And for the holy maidens
Who feed the eternal flame,
To save them from false Sextus
That wrought the deed of shame?

‘Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul,
With all the speed ye may;
I, with two more to help me,
Will hold the foe in play.
In yon strait path a thousand
May well be stopped by three.
Now who will stand on either hand,
And keep the bridge with me?

Then out spake Spurius Lartius;
A Ramnian proud was he:
‘Lo, I will stand at thy right hand,
And keep the bridge with thee.’
And out spake strong Herminius;
Of Titian blood was he:
‘I will abide on thy left side,
And keep the bridge with thee.’

‘Horatius,’ quoth the Consul,
‘As thou sayest, so let it be.’
And straight against that great array
Forth went the dauntless Three.
For Romans in Rome’s quarrel
Spared neither land nor gold,
Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life,
In the brave days of old.

Then none was for a party;
Then all were for the state;
Then the great man helped the poor,
And the poor man loved the great:
Then lands were fairly portioned;
Then spoils were fairly sold:
The Romans were like brothers
In the brave days of old.

Now Roman is to Roman
More hateful than a foe,
And the Tribunes beard the high,
And the Fathers grind the low.
As we wax hot in faction,
In battle we wax cold:
Wherefore men fight not as they fought
In the brave days of old.”
― Thomas Babington Macaulay, Horatius