Ioana Stefanova > Ioana's Quotes

“There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“The marks humans leave are too often scars.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is. Most people love you for who you pretend to be. To keep their love, you keep pretending - performing. You get to love your pretence. It's true, we're locked in an image, an act - and the sad thing is, people get so used to their image, they grow attached to their masks. They love their chains. They forget all about who they really are. And if you try to remind them, they hate you for it, they feel like you're trying to steal their most precious possession.”
― Jim Morrison

“there are worse things
than being alone
but it often takes
decades to realize this
and most often when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than too late”
― Charles Bukowski

“Do you hate people?”

“I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around.”
― Charles Bukowski, Barfly

“And he uncovered in us a curious need: that we each secretly wanted him to remember us the most. It was strange, both vital and flawed, until I realised that maybe the need to be remembered is stronger than the need to remember.”
― Sarah Winman, When God Was a Rabbit

“Memories no matter how small or inconsequential are the pages that define us.”
― Sarah Winman, When God Was a Rabbit

“Nothing stays forgotten for long, Elly. Sometimes we simply have to remind the world that we're special and that we're still here.”
― Sarah Winman, When God Was a Rabbit

“Truth, as he always said, was overrated, nobody ever won prizes for telling the truth.”
― Sarah Winman, When God Was a Rabbit

“Things happen. To everyone. No one escapes.”
― Sarah Winman, When God Was a Rabbit

“You had to translate his actions, for they were seldom accompanied by words, because his world was a quiet world; a disconnected, factured space; a puzzle that made him phone me at 3am, asking me for the last piece of the border, so he could fill in the sky.”
― Sarah Winman, When God Was a Rabbit

“I divide my life into two parts. Not really a Before and After, more as if they are bookends, holding together flaccid years of empty musings, years of late adolescent or the twentysomething whose coat of adulthood simply does not fit.”
― Sarah Winman, When God Was a Rabbit

“You see, that's who you are, Joe. All these things. That's the person I know, and through him is the way you'll know me, because connected to all these things are moments, and for so many of them, I was there. And that's the thing that hurts so much...

You see, you were the only person who knew everything. Because you were there. You were my witness. And you make sense of the fucked-up mess I become every now and then. And I could at least look at you and think, at least he knows why I am the way I am. There were reasons. But I can't do that anymore and I feel so lonely.”
― Sarah Winman, When God Was a Rabbit

“The first thing we need to find,' said Mr Golan, 'is a reason to live'.
...
'Without a reason, why bother? Existence needs purpose: to be able to endure the pain of life with dignity; to give us a reason to continue. The meaning must enter our hearts, not out heads. We must understand the meaning of our suffering.”
― Sarah Winman, When God Was a Rabbit

“I just want my friend back, I have become forgettable”
― Sarah Winman, When God Was a Rabbit

“We were solitary and apart. Slept during the day, uncurled at dusk like evening primroses; fragrant and lush. We never wanted to conquer the world, only our fears. We didn't keep in touch. Somewhere, though, our memories had.”
― Sarah Winman, When God Was a Rabbit

“No amount of self-sufficiency could dispel the craving he still felt for that person we no longer talked about; that person who'd taken him apart and left a piece missing that none of us could find.”
― Sarah Winman, When God Was a Rabbit

“And from that moment, I watched her. Watched her with different coloured eyes, until the raging energy that coursed through my body finally revealed itself and gave itself a name: envy. For I knew already that something had taken me from me, and had replaced itself with a desperate longing for a time before; a time before fear, a time before shame. And now that knowledge had a voice, and it was a voice that rose from the depths of my years and howled into the night sky like a wounded animal longing for home.”
― Sarah Winman, When God Was a Rabbit

“I wondered if all women did with other women was lie and hug.”
― Sarah Winman, When God Was a Rabbit

“I am here but I am not yours.”
― Sarah Winman, When God Was a Rabbit

“Everyone had a story of grief. Everyone else's was worse than yours.”
― Sarah Winman, When God Was a Rabbit

“Shut up, Arthur,' said my mother, and he zipped his mouth shut like an infuriating child.

Ginger started to laugh. Not at anything in particular, but just because Ginger was stoned.”
― Sarah Winman, When God Was a Rabbit

“never stop playing”
― Sarah Winman, When God Was a Rabbit

“It was left to Nancy and me to pick up the pieces that my brother had become; to resurrect his shrunken spirit and pull his pale tear-stained face from beneath his pillow and give sense to a world that had given him none; he loved, yet he wasn't loved back.”
― Sarah Winman, When God Was a Rabbit

“I thought that probably I was worth more when I was younger.”
― Sarah Winman, When God Was a Rabbit

“He started to do that, started to inform me of everything; the inconsequential, the meaningful; conversations that ended in a cul-de-sac of unanswerable rhetoric. i think it was because I knew everything about him, had read it all - the beautiful, the sordid, the all of his book. I had been his editor for 5 years, and now it seemed, had become his editor away from the printed page.”
― Sarah Winman, When God Was a Rabbit

“You said I could be anything I wanted when I was older', I said.
She smiled and said, 'And you can be. But it's not very easy to become Jewish.'
'I know,' I said forlornly, 'I need a number.'
And she suddenly stopped smiling.”
― Sarah Winman, When God Was a Rabbit

“May you live every day of your life.”
― Jonathan Swift

“I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”
― L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“May I see you again?" he asked. There was an endearing nervousness in his voice.

I smiled. "Sure."

"Tomorrow?" he asked.

"Patience, grasshopper," I counseled. "You don't want to seem overeager.

"Right, that's why I said tomorrow," he said. "I want to see you again tonight. But I'm willing to wait all night and much of tomorrow." I rolled my eyes. "I'm serious," he said.

"You don't even know me," I said. I grabbed the book from the center console. "How about I call you when I finish this?"

"But you don't even have my phone number," he said.

"I strongly suspect you wrote it in this book."

He broke out into that goofy smile. "And you say we don't know each other.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars