Ece > Ece's Quotes

“What is pertinent is the calmness of beauty, its sense of restraint. It is as though the land knows of its own beauty, its own greatness, and feels no need to shout it.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day

“I can't even say I made my own mistakes. Really - one has to ask oneself - what dignity is there in that?”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day

“I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;
For now hath time made me his numbering clock:
My thoughts are minutes; and with sighs they jar
Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch,
Whereto my finger, like a dial's point,
Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.
Now sir, the sound that tells what hour it is
Are clamorous groans, which strike upon my heart,
Which is the bell: so sighs and tears and groans
Show minutes, times, and hours.”
― William Shakespeare, Richard II

“You may my glories and my state depose,
But not my griefs; still am I king of those.”
― William Shakespeare, Richard II

“O that I were a mockery king of snow
Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke
To melt myself away in water drops!”
― William Shakespeare, Richard II

“She leans forward.
Tightens her grip on the pencil.
Lowers her head further.
The words evade her grasp.
Words that have lost lips,
words that have lost tongue and tooth-root,
words that have lost throat and breath remain out of reach.
Like unbodied apparitions, their forms elude touch.”
― Han Kang, Greek Lessons

“The sadness of the human body. The human body, with its many indented, tender, vulnerable parts. I realized something with armpits. The chest.The groin. A body born to embrace someone, to desire to embrace someone.
I should have embraced you as hard as I could, at least once before that period of our lives passed us by.
It wouldn't have hurt or harmed me to do so.
I would have withstood it, survived it.”
― Han Kang, Greek Lessons

“In the part that argues everything has within it that which harms it, he uses the example of how the inflammation of the eye ruins the eye and blinds it, and how rust ruins iron and completely shatters it. Why, then, isn't the human soul, which is analogous to such things, ruined by its foolish, bad attributes?”
― Han Kang, Greek Lessons

“Words grow a little more distant from the body.
Emotions that had saturated them,
like heavy layers of shadow,
like stench and nausea,
like something viscous, fall away.
Like titles that, long under water, have lost their adhesiveness.
Like a part of one's flesh that has rotted wihtout one's knowing.”
― Han Kang, Greek Lessons

“All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.”
― Samuel Beckett

“I love order. It's my dream. A world where all would be silent and still, and each thing in its last place, under the last dust.”
― Samuel Beckett, Endgame

“let us say before i go any further, that i forgive nobody. i wish them all an atrocious life in the fires of icy hell and in the execrable generations to come.”
― Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies

“Life is habit. Or rather life is a succession of habits.”
― Samuel Beckett, Proust

“Pozzo: I don't seem to be able...(long hesitation) to depart.
Estragon: Such is life.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“Not one person in a hundred knows how to be silent and listen, no, nor even to conceive what such a thing means. Yet only then can you detect, beyond the fatuous clamour, the silence of which the universe is made.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

“Words and images run riot in my head, pursuing, flying, clashing, merging, endlessly. But beyond this tumult there is a great calm, and a great indifference, never really to be troubled by anything again.”
― Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies

“ESTRAGON
What am I to say?
VLADIMIR
Say, I am happy.
ESTRAGON
I am happy.
VLADIMIR
So am I.
ESTRAGON
So am I.
VLADIMIR
We are happy.
ESTRAGON
We are happy. (Silence.) What do we do now, now that we are happy?”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“It is the role of objects to restore silence”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy / Malone Dies / The Unnamable

“VLADIMIR: What do they say?
ESTRAGON: They talk about their lives.
VLADIMIR: To have lived is not enough for them.
ESTRAGON: They have to talk about it.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“The only sin is the sin of being born”
― Samuel Beckett

“Ever Tried. Ever Failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
― Samuel Beckett

“If there is one question I dread, to which I have never been able to invent a satisfactory reply, it is the question what am I doing.”
― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

“To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.”
― Samuel Beckett

“Let us not waste our time in idle discourse! Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed….To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late!”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“Go on failing. Go on. Only next time, try to fail better.
”
― Samuel Beckett

“Dear incomprehension, it’s thanks to you I’ll be myself, in the end.”
― Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable

“I thought much about myself. That is to say I often took a quick look at myself, closed my eyes, forgot, began again.”
― Samuel Beckett, Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable

“My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.”
― Emily Jane Brontë , Wuthering Heights