Tash > Tash's Quotes

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  • #1
    Albert Camus
    “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
    Albert Camus

  • #2
    Lauren Oliver
    “Mama, Mama, help me get home
    I'm out in the woods, I am out on my own.
    I found me a werewolf, a nasty old mutt
    It showed me its teeth and went straight for my gut.

    Mama, Mama, help me get home
    I'm out in the woods, I am out on my own.
    I was stopped by a vampire, a rotting old wreck
    It showed me its teeth and went straight for my neck.

    Mama, Mama, put me to bed
    I won't make it home, I'm already half-dead.
    I met an Invalid, and fell for his art
    He showed me his smile, and went straight for my heart.

    -From "A Child's Walk Home," Nursery Rhymes and Folk Tales”
    Lauren Oliver, Delirium

  • #3
    Sarah Rees Brennan
    “Hark,” he said, his tone very dry. “What stone through yonder window breaks?”
    Kami yelled up at him, “It is the east, and Juliet is a jerk!”
    Jared abandoned Shakespeare and demanded, “What do you think you’re doing?”
    “Throwing a pebble,” said Kami defensively. “Uh… and I’ll pay for the window.”
    Jared vanished and Kami was ready to start shouting again, when he reemerged with the pebble clenched in his fist. “This isn’t a pebble! This is a rock.”
    “It’s possible that your behaviour has inspired some negative feelings that caused me to pick a slightly overlarge pebble,” Kami admitted.”
    Sarah Rees Brennan, Unspoken

  • #4
    Sarah Rees Brennan
    “Jared had his back to the wall, which Kami thought was a reflex when he was uncomfortable. She wanted to shield him. “He was doing some—Zen jogging,” she claimed.
    Jared flicked her an incredulous glance. “Yes,” he said slowly. “Zen jogging. I wasn’t wearing that many clothes because—that’s part of the process. You’re meant to commune with the elements. Normally, I wouldn’t have worn my jeans, but I put them on because I know the English are a modest people.”
    Sarah Rees Brennan, Unspoken

  • #5
    Sarah Rees Brennan
    “She clenched her fist in his T-shirt, put her other arm around those too-broad, too-real shoulders. When he tried to pull away, she held on tight. Kami felt the surrender in his mind a moment before he laid his face in the curve of her neck. The whole world was so real it hurt.

    Kami whispered into Jared's hair, "I'm always on your side.”
    Sarah Rees Brennan, Unspoken

  • #6
    Charles Bukowski
    “what matters most is how well you walk through the fire”
    Charles Bukowski

  • #7
    Timothy Leary
    “Admit it. You aren’t like them. You’re not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the “normal people” as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like “Have a nice day” and “Weather’s awful today, eh?”, you yearn inside to say forbidden things like “Tell me something that makes you cry” or “What do you think deja vu is for?”. Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others…”
    Timothy Leary

  • #8
    Charles Bukowski
    “Beauty is nothing, beauty won’t stay. You don’t know how lucky you are to be ugly, because if people like you, you know it’s for something else.”
    Charles Bukowski, Tales of Ordinary Madness

  • #9
    Deb Caletti
    “We are all a volume on a shelf of a library, a story unto ourselves, never possibly described with one word or even very accurately with thousands. A person is never as quiet or unrestrained as they seem, or as bad or good, as vulnerable or as strong, as sweet or as fiesty; we are thickly layered, page upon lying page, behind simple covers. And love - it is not the book itself, but the binding. It can rip us apart or hold us together.”
    Deb Caletti, Honey, Baby, Sweetheart

  • #10
    Charles Bukowski
    “Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.”
    Charles Bukowski

  • #11
    T.S. Eliot
    “To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.”
    T.S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism

  • #12
    “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
    Harry Crosby, Transit of Venus

  • #13
    T.S. Eliot
    “We shall not cease from exploration
    And the end of all our exploring
    Will be to arrive where we started
    And know the place for the first time.”
    T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

  • #14
    T.S. Eliot
    “Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough.”
    T.S. Eliot

  • #15
    T.S. Eliot
    “We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.”
    T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party

  • #16
    T.S. Eliot
    “I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”
    T.S. Eliot

  • #17
    Charles Bukowski
    “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

  • #18
    Charles Bukowski
    “If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.”
    Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

  • #19
    Charles Bukowski
    “It was like the beginning of life and laughter. It was the real meaning of the sun”
    Charles Bukowski, Factotum

  • #20
    Andrea Gibson
    “I want you to tell me about every person you've ever been in love with. Tell me why you loved them, then tell me why they loved you. Tell me about a day in your life you didn't think you’d live through. Tell me what the word “home” means to you and tell me in a way that I’ll know your mothers name just by the way you describe your bed room when you were 8. See, I wanna know the first time you felt the weight of hate and if that day still trembles beneath your bones. Do you kiss your friends on the cheek? Do you think that anger is a sincere emotion or just the timid motion of a fragile heart trying to beat away its pain? See, I wanna know what you think of your first name. And if you often lie awake at night and imagine your mothers joy when she spoke it for the very first time. I want you tell me all the ways you've been unkind. Tell me all the ways you've been cruel.Do you believe that Mary was really a virgin? Do you believe that Moses really parted the sea? And if you don’t believe in miracles, tell me, how would you explain the miracle of my life to me? And for all the times you've knelt before the temple of yourself, have the prayers you've asked come true? And if they didn't did you feel denied? And if you felt denied, denied by who[m]? I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirror on a day you’re feeling good. I wanna know what you see in the mirror on a day a day you’re feeling bad. I wanna know the first person who ever taught you your beauty could ever be reflected on a lousy piece of glass. If you ever reach enlightenment, will you remember how to laugh? Have you ever been a song? See, I wanna know more than what you do for a living. I wanna know how much of your life you spend just giving. And if you love yourself enough to also receive sometimes. I wanna know if you bleed sometimes through other people’s wounds. And if you dream sometimes that this life is just a balloon that if you wanted to you could pop—but you never would because you’d never want it to stop.”
    Andrea Gibson

  • #21
    Andrea Gibson
    “I could never trust anyone who's well adjusted to a sick society.”
    Andrea Gibson

  • #22
    Andrea Gibson
    “I know you think this world is too dark to even dream in color,
    but I’ve seen flowers bloom at midnight.
    I’ve seen kites fly in gray skies
    and they were real close to looking like the sunrise,
    and sometime it takes the most wounded wings
    the most broken things
    to notice how strong the breeze is,
    how precious the flight.”
    Andrea Gibson

  • #23
    Andrea Gibson
    “I want you to tell me about every person you’ve ever been in love with.
    Tell me why you loved them,
    then tell me why they loved you.

    Tell me about a day in your life you didn’t think you’d live through.
    Tell me what the word home means to you
    and tell me in a way that I’ll know your mother’s name
    just by the way you describe your bedroom
    when you were eight.

    See, I want to know the first time you felt the weight of hate,
    and if that day still trembles beneath your bones.

    Do you prefer to play in puddles of rain
    or bounce in the bellies of snow?
    And if you were to build a snowman,
    would you rip two branches from a tree to build your snowman arms
    or would leave your snowman armless
    for the sake of being harmless to the tree?
    And if you would,
    would you notice how that tree weeps for you
    because your snowman has no arms to hug you
    every time you kiss him on the cheek?

    Do you kiss your friends on the cheek?
    Do you sleep beside them when they’re sad
    even if it makes your lover mad?
    Do you think that anger is a sincere emotion
    or just the timid motion of a fragile heart trying to beat away its pain?

    See, I wanna know what you think of your first name,
    and if you often lie awake at night and imagine your mother’s joy
    when she spoke it for the very first time.

    I want you to tell me all the ways you’ve been unkind.
    Tell me all the ways you’ve been cruel.
    Tell me, knowing I often picture Gandhi at ten years old
    beating up little boys at school.

    If you were walking by a chemical plant
    where smokestacks were filling the sky with dark black clouds
    would you holler “Poison! Poison! Poison!” really loud
    or would you whisper
    “That cloud looks like a fish,
    and that cloud looks like a fairy!”

    Do you believe that Mary was really a virgin?
    Do you believe that Moses really parted the sea?
    And if you don’t believe in miracles, tell me —
    how would you explain the miracle of my life to me?

    See, I wanna know if you believe in any god
    or if you believe in many gods
    or better yet
    what gods believe in you.
    And for all the times that you’ve knelt before the temple of yourself,
    have the prayers you asked come true?
    And if they didn’t, did you feel denied?
    And if you felt denied,
    denied by who?

    I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirror
    on a day you’re feeling good.
    I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirror
    on a day you’re feeling bad.
    I wanna know the first person who taught you your beauty
    could ever be reflected on a lousy piece of glass.

    If you ever reach enlightenment
    will you remember how to laugh?

    Have you ever been a song?
    Would you think less of me
    if I told you I’ve lived my entire life a little off-key?
    And I’m not nearly as smart as my poetry
    I just plagiarize the thoughts of the people around me
    who have learned the wisdom of silence.

    Do you believe that concrete perpetuates violence?
    And if you do —
    I want you to tell me of a meadow
    where my skateboard will soar.

    See, I wanna know more than what you do for a living.
    I wanna know how much of your life you spend just giving,
    and if you love yourself enough to also receive sometimes.
    I wanna know if you bleed sometimes
    from other people’s wounds,
    and if you dream sometimes
    that this life is just a balloon —
    that if you wanted to, you could pop,
    but you never would
    ‘cause you’d never want it to stop.

    If a tree fell in the forest
    and you were the only one there to hear —
    if its fall to the ground didn’t make a sound,
    would you panic in fear that you didn’t exist,
    or would you bask in the bliss of your nothingness?

    And lastly, let me ask you this:

    If you and I went for a walk
    and the entire walk, we didn’t talk —
    do you think eventually, we’d… kiss?

    No, wait.
    That’s asking too much —
    after all,
    this is only our first date.”
    Andrea Gibson

  • #24
    Andrea Gibson
    “For Jenn

    At 12 years old I started bleeding with the moon
    and beating up boys who dreamed of becoming astronauts.
    I fought with my knuckles white as stars,
    and left bruises the shape of Salem.
    There are things we know by heart,
    and things we don't.

    At 13 my friend Jen tried to teach me how to blow rings of smoke.
    I'd watch the nicotine rising from her lips like halos,
    but I could never make dying beautiful.
    The sky didn't fill with colors the night I convinced myself
    veins are kite strings you can only cut free.
    I suppose I love this life,

    in spite of my clenched fist.

    I open my palm and my lifelines look like branches from an Aspen tree,
    and there are songbirds perched on the tips of my fingers,
    and I wonder if Beethoven held his breath
    the first time his fingers touched the keys
    the same way a soldier holds his breath
    the first time his finger clicks the trigger.
    We all have different reasons for forgetting to breathe.

    But my lungs remember
    the day my mother took my hand and placed it on her belly
    and told me the symphony beneath was my baby sister's heartbeat.
    And I knew life would tremble
    like the first tear on a prison guard's hardened cheek,
    like a prayer on a dying man's lips,
    like a vet holding a full bottle of whisky like an empty gun in a war zone…
    just take me just take me

    Sometimes the scales themselves weigh far too much,
    the heaviness of forever balancing blue sky with red blood.
    We were all born on days when too many people died in terrible ways,
    but you still have to call it a birthday.
    You still have to fall for the prettiest girl on the playground at recess
    and hope she knows you can hit a baseball
    further than any boy in the whole third grade

    and I've been running for home
    through the windpipe of a man who sings
    while his hands playing washboard with a spoon
    on a street corner in New Orleans
    where every boarded up window is still painted with the words
    We're Coming Back
    like a promise to the ocean
    that we will always keep moving towards the music,
    the way Basquait slept in a cardboard box to be closer to the rain.

    Beauty, catch me on your tongue.
    Thunder, clap us open.
    The pupils in our eyes were not born to hide beneath their desks.
    Tonight lay us down to rest in the Arizona desert,
    then wake us washing the feet of pregnant women
    who climbed across the border with their bellies aimed towards the sun.
    I know a thousand things louder than a soldier's gun.
    I know the heartbeat of his mother.

    Don't cover your ears, Love.
    Don't cover your ears, Life.
    There is a boy writing poems in Central Park
    and as he writes he moves
    and his bones become the bars of Mandela's jail cell stretching apart,
    and there are men playing chess in the December cold
    who can't tell if the breath rising from the board
    is their opponents or their own,
    and there's a woman on the stairwell of the subway
    swearing she can hear Niagara Falls from her rooftop in Brooklyn,
    and I'm remembering how Niagara Falls is a city overrun
    with strip malls and traffic and vendors
    and one incredibly brave river that makes it all worth it.

    Ya'll, I know this world is far from perfect.
    I am not the type to mistake a streetlight for the moon.
    I know our wounds are deep as the Atlantic.
    But every ocean has a shoreline
    and every shoreline has a tide
    that is constantly returning
    to wake the songbirds in our hands,
    to wake the music in our bones,
    to place one fearless kiss on the mouth of that brave river
    that has to run through the center of our hearts
    to find its way home.”
    Andrea Gibson

  • #25
    Neil Gaiman
    “An Angel who did not so much Fall as Saunter Vaguely Downwards.”
    Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

  • #26
    Mahatma Gandhi
    “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
    Mahatma Gandhi

  • #27
    Friedrich Nietzsche
    “Without music, life would be a mistake.”
    Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

  • #28
    Steve Jobs
    “Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
    Steve Jobs

  • #29
    Pablo Picasso
    “Everything you can imagine is real.”
    Pablo Picasso

  • #30
    Jeff Buckley
    “My kingdom for a kiss upon her shoulder
    It's never over,
    all my riches for her smiles when I slept so soft against her...
    It's never over,
    All my blood for the sweetness of her laughter...
    It's never over,
    She's a tear that hangs inside my soul forever...”
    Jeff Buckley



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