Bastian > Bastian's Quotes

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.”
― Bernard M. Baruch

“You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”
― Dr. Seuss

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
― Mae West

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”
― Stephen King

“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.”
― Stephen King

“The scariest moment is always just before you start.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“If you liked being a teenager, there's something really wrong with you.”
― Stephen King

“Books were escape. Books were freedom.”
― Stephen King, Finders Keepers

“No. I was going to say his work changed my life, but that’s not right. I don’t think a teenager has much of a life to change. I just turned eighteen last month. I guess what I mean is his work changed my heart.”
― Stephen King, Finders Keepers

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“I changed it. I had to. Do you know why?" She studied him, her eyes grave. "Because that was then and this is now. Because the past is gone, even though it defines the present.”
― Stephen King, Doctor Sleep

“Death was no less a miracle than birth.”
― Stephen King, Doctor Sleep

“A life without love is like a tree without fruit.”
― Stephen King, Doctor Sleep

“What we see as risk and foolhardiness on the outside can seem more like a constant cohesive drive on the inside that holds to priorities that cannot be discerned by others because they reside in a far too private chamber of personal experience to be shared easily. To dare everything is not necessarily to travel off, but often the opposite, to have faith in a foundation you have discovered in life and which, though it is difficult to describe, even to yourself, you refuse to relinquish.”
― David Whyte, The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship

“There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso

“Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

“We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.”
― Ursula K. LeGuin

“To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

“Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.”
― Ursula K. LeGuin, The Tombs of Atuan

“Only in silence the word,
Only in dark the light,
Only in dying life:
Bright the hawk's flight
On the empty sky.

—The Creation of Éa”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. Or wonder who, after all, you are.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore

“Do nothing because it is righteous or praiseworthy or noble to do so; do nothing because it seems good to do so; do only that which you must do and which you cannot do in any other way.”
― Ursula K. LeGuin, The Farthest Shore