Alex > Alex's Quotes

“No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison:
We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage:
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too,
Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out;
And take upon's the mystery of things,
As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out,
In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones,
That ebb and flow by the moon.”
― William Shakespeare, The Tragedy Of King Lear (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition)

“Hell is—other people!”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit

“The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!”
― William Wordsworth

“A pretty sight, a lady with a book.”
― Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

“Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you've felt that way.”
― Charles Bukowski

“I am out with lanterns, looking for myself.”
― Emily Dickinson

“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.
It is up to you to give [life] a meaning.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“Although she was newly single and happier than she'd been in years, a small part of her was still ready to die, and still enjoyed telling lies.”
― Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

“and at one point she held my hand and asked what I was thinking, and I told her that you had once been a dolphin in the Banana River, that you had saved me from drowning, that it had felt too Disney to ever say out loud but that I wanted her to know me, I wanted to tell her more, to blow it wide open, and I nearly told her my real name, but I was too startled by her face, her faint smile, the way she nodded her head. I could tell she thought I was crazy, or making shit up, and I suppose I don't blame her. I stared at the deep, dark, dolphin-free Hudson, a real river with a swift current, and thought about trying again.”
― Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

“What the hell does liberty mean anyhow? It's just a word like house or table or any other word. Only it's a special kind of word. A guy says house and he can point to a house to prove it. But a guy says come on let's fight for liberty and he can't show you liberty. He can't prove the thing he is talking about so how in the hell can he be telling you to fight for it?”
― Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun

“It wasn’t my day. My week. My month. My year. My life. God damn it.”
― Charles Bukowski, Pulp: Charles Bukowski's Final Hardboiled Noir Comedy – Lady Death, Aliens, and the Absurd

“Well, the rain had stopped but the pain was still there.”
― Charles Bukowski, Pulp: Charles Bukowski's Final Hardboiled Noir Comedy – Lady Death, Aliens, and the Absurd

“I decided to stay in bed until noon. Maybe by then half the world would be dead and it would only be half as hard to take.”
― Charles Bukowski, Pulp: Charles Bukowski's Final Hardboiled Noir Comedy – Lady Death, Aliens, and the Absurd

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.”
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

“Eleanor looked up, surprised; the little girl was sliding back in her chair, sullenly refusing her milk, while her father frowned and her brother giggled and her mother said calmly, 'She wants her cup of stars.'

Indeed yes, Eleanor thought; indeed, so do I; a cup of stars, of course.

'Her little cup,' the mother was explaining, smiling apologetically at the waitress, who was thunderstruck at the thought that the mill's good country milk was not rich enough for the little girl. 'It has stars in the bottom, and she always drinks her milk from it at home. She calls it her cup of stars because she can see the stars while she drinks her milk.' The waitress nodded, unconvinced, and the mother told the little girl, 'You'll have your milk from your cup of stars tonight when we get home. But just for now, just to be a very good little girl, will you take a little milk from this glass?'

Don't do it, Eleanor told the little girl; insist on your cup of stars; once they have trapped you into being like everyone else you will never see your cup of stars again; don't do it; and the little girl glanced at her, and smiled a little subtle, dimpling, wholly comprehending smile, and shook her head stubbornly at the glass. Brave girl, Eleanor thought; wise, brave girl.”
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

“That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.”
― Emily Dickinson

“I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there ’s a pair of us—don’t tell!
They ’d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!”
― Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.”
― William Wordsworth, I Wander'd Lonely as a Cloud

“The music in my heart I bore
Long after it was heard no more.”
― William Wordsworth, Great Narrative Poems of the Romantic Age

“The important thing is not what they think of me, but what I think of them”
― Queen Victoria