Aleksandar > Aleksandar's Quotes

“I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

“It's important to achieve balance in sandwiches, because who really knows how to achieve it in life? Life is messy, difficult, occasionally great but mostly upsetting and out of your control. But you can always make a good sandwich, and a good sandwich will make you happy!”
― Tyler Kord, A Super Upsetting Cookbook About Sandwiches

“Things are sweeter when they're lost. I know--because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot, and when I got it it turned to dust in my hand.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

“Here's to alcohol, the rose colored glasses of life.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

“I don’t want just words. If that’s all you have for me, you’d better go”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

“A woman should be able to kiss a man beautifully and romantically without any desire to be either his wife or his mistress.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

“I shall go on shining as a brilliantly meaningless figure in a meaningless world.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

“I don't care about truth. I want some happiness.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

“You are everything good and straight and fine and true—and I see that so clearly now, in the way you’ve carried yourself and listened to your own heart. You’ve changed me more than you know, and will always be a part of everything I am. That’s one thing I’ve learned from this. No one you love is ever truly lost.”
― Paula McLain, The Paris Wife

“Not everyone out in a storm wants to be saved”
― Paula McLain, The Paris Wife

“I don't fear death; I fear remaining silent in the face of injustice. I am young and I want to live. But I say to those who would eliminate my voice: I am ready, wherever and whenever you might strike. You can cut down the flower, but nothing can stop the coming of the spring.”
― Malalai Joya, Raising My Voice

“Death might appear to destroy the meaning in our lives, but in fact it is the very source of our creativity. As Kafka said, “The meaning of life is that it ends.” Death is the engine that keeps us running, giving us the motivation to achieve, learn, love, and create.”
― Caitlin Doughty, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory

“The fear of death is why we build cathedrals, have children, declare war, and watch cat videos online at three a.m.”
― Caitlin Doughty, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory

“In many ways, women are death's natural companions. Every time a woman gives birth, she is creating not only a life, but a death. Samuel Beckett wrote that women "give birth astride of a grave." Mother Nature is indeed a real mother, creating and destroying in a constant loop.”
― Caitlin Doughty, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory

“Buddhist say that thoughts are like drops of water on the brain; when you reinforce the same thought, it will etch a new stream into your consciousness, like water eroding the side of a mountain. Scientist confirm this bit of folk wisdom: our neurons break connections and form new pathways all the time. Even if you've been programmed to fear death, that particular pathway isn't set in stone. Each of us is responsible for seeking out new knowledge and creating mental circuits.”
― Caitlin Doughty, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory

“All I know is this: nobody's very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

“There is no time machine except the human being.”
― Georgi Gospodinov, Time Shelter

“Now the last person who remembered me as a child is gone, I told myself. And only then did I burst into sobs, like a child.”
― Georgi Gospodinov, Time Shelter

“He has no friends, no living relatives. No one to call. If we are not in someone else’s memory, do we even exist at all?”
― Georgi Gospodinov, Time Shelter

“I'm getting old. Exiled ever further from the Rome of childhood in the distant empty provinces of old age, from which there is no return. And Rome no longer answers my letters. Somewhere the past exists as a house or a street that you've left for a short while, for five minutes, and you've found yourself in a strange city. It's been written that the past is a foreign country. Nonsense. The past is my home country. The future is a foreign country, full of strange faces, I won't set foot there.

Let me go back home... my mother told me not to be late.”
― Georgi Gospodinov, Time Shelter

“The things I do not dare to do will transform into stories.”
― Georgi Gospodinov, Time Shelter

“For six years, you showed Pero reverence and admiration. So Pero, a sociopath, didn’t want to extinguish the rare flame of respect that illuminated his worthless ego,” Brian explained. “Killing you would have made him feel less powerful, not more.”
― Kenan Trebincevic, The Bosnia List: A Memoir of War, Exile, and Return

“It was all absurd, without reason or meaning. People who didn't know each other were going to kill each other over a hill none of them cared about”
― Karl Marlantes, Matterhorn

“Victory in combat is like sex with a prostitute. For a moment you forget everything in the sudden physical rush, but then you have to pay your money to the woman showing you the door. You see the dirt on the walls and your sorry image in the mirror.”
― Karl Marlantes, Matterhorn

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“There are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely-or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“It's most dangerous nowadays for a husband to pay any attention to his wife in public. It always makes people think that he beats her when they are alone. The world has grown so suspicious of anything that looks like a happy married life.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“We’ve worked with a number of companies similar to yours, and we’ve found that these three challenges come up again and again as by far the most troubling. Is that what you’re seeing too, or would you add something else to the list?”
― Matthew Dixon, The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation

“There’s only two places anyone can find peace—the woods and the grave.”
― Kristopher Triana, Gone to See the River Man