Alice > Alice's Quotes

“Name one hero who was happy."
I considered. Heracles went mad and killed his family; Theseus lost his bride and father; Jason's children and new wife were murdered by his old; Bellerophon killed the Chimera but was crippled by the fall from Pegasus' back.
"You can't." He was sitting up now, leaning forward.
"I can't."
"I know. They never let you be famous AND happy." He lifted an eyebrow. "I'll tell you a secret."
"Tell me." I loved it when he was like this.
"I'm going to be the first." He took my palm and held it to his. "Swear it."
"Why me?"
"Because you're the reason. Swear it."
"I swear it," I said, lost in the high color of his cheeks, the flame in his eyes.
"I swear it," he echoed.
We sat like that a moment, hands touching. He grinned.
"I feel like I could eat the world raw.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“Tears are shed in my heart like the rain on the town.

(Il pleure dans mon coeur
Comme il pleut sur la ville.)”
― Paul Verlaine, Romances sans paroles

“Come back, come back, dear friend, only friend, come back. I promise to be good.
If I was short with you, I was either kidding or just being stubborn; I regret all this more than I can express. Come back and all is forgotten. It is unbearable to think you took my joke seriously. I have been crying for two days straight. Come back. Be brave, dear friend. All is not lost. You only need to come back. We will live here once again, bravely, patiently. I’m begging you. You know it is for your own good. Come back, all of your things are here. I hope you now know that our last conversation wasn’t real. That awful moment. But you, when I waved to you to get off the boat, why didn’t you come? To have lived together for two years and to have come to that! What will you do? If you don’t want to come back here, would you want me to come to you?

Yes, I was wrong.

Tell me you haven’t forgotten me.

You couldn’t.

I always have you with me.

Listen, tell me: should we not live together anymore?
Be brave. Write immediately.
I can’t stay here much longer.
Listen to your heart.
Now, tell me if I should come join you.
My life is yours.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, I Promise to Be Good: The Letters of Arthur Rimbaud

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“If you're in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“I don't care what you do to me, but I don't want you to hurt me. I've had enough hurt already in my life. More than enough. Now I want to be happy.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“People leave strange little memories of themselves behind when they die.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“So what’s wrong if there happens to be one guy in the world who enjoys trying to understand you?”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Our faces were no more than ten inches apart but she was lightyears away from me.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“You take delight not in a city's seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours.”
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

“You reach a moment in life when, among the people you have known, the dead outnumber the living. And the mind refuses to accept more faces, more expressions: on every new face you encounter, it prints the old forms, for each one it finds the most suitable mask.”
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“As we go through life we gradually discover who we are, but the more we discover, the more we lose ourselves.”
― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“Some things in life are too complicated to explain in any language.”
― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“Still, being able to feel pain was good, he thought. It's when you can't even feel pain anymore that you're in real trouble.”
― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“No matter how honestly you open up to someone, there are still things you cannot reveal.”
― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“We survived. You and I. And those who survive have a duty. Our duty is to do our best to keep on living. Even if our lives are not perfect.”
― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“The right words always seemed to come too late.”
― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“Hearts are made to be broken.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“When you really want love, you will find it waiting for you.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis