Claire > Claire's Quotes

“What is it my dear?"

Ah, how can we bear it?"

Bear what?"

This. For so short a time. How can we sleep this time away?"

We can be quiet together, and pretend - since it is only the beginning - that we have all the time in the world."

And every day we shall have less. And then none."

Would you rather, therefore, have had nothing at all?"

No. This is where I have always been coming to. Since my time began. And when I go away from here, this will be the mid-point, to which everything ran, before, and from which everything will run. But now, my love, we are here, we are now, and those other times are running elsewhere.”
― A.S. Byatt, Possession

“No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.”
― A.S. Byatt, Possession

“What literature can and should do is change the people who teach the people who don't read the books.”
― A.S. Byatt

“The individual appears for an instant, joins the community of thought, modifies it and dies; but the species, that dies not, reaps the fruit of his ephemeral existence.”
― A.S. Byatt, Possession

“Ice burns, and it is hard to the warm-skinned to distinguish one
sensation, fire, from the other, frost.”
― A.S. Byatt, Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice

“Only write to me, write to me, I love to see the hop and skip and sudden starts of your ink.”
― A.S. Byatt, Possession

“Coherence and closure are deep human desires that are presently unfashionable. But they are always both frightening and enchantingly desirable. "Falling in love," characteristically, combs the appearances of the word, and of the particular lover's history, out of a random tangle and into a coherent plot.”
― A.S. Byatt, Possession

“Julian was good at being in love. But he was clever enough to know that what he really liked about being in love was the state of unconsummated tension... One had to believe that these lovely creatures were, in potentia, the longed for intimate friend from whom nothing need be hidden, by whom everything would be understood, forgiven and admired. But Julian was clever and observant enough to see that love was at its most intense before it was reciprocated.”
― A.S. Byatt

“Lists are a form of power.”
― A.S. Byatt, The Virgin in the Garden

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

“I have been here five days. I have decided on a place to eat in at midday, a place to eat in at night, a place to have my drink in after dinner. I have arranged my little life.”
― Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight

“There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up, holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship's, smooths and contains the rocker. It's an inside kind--wrapped tight like skin. Then there is the loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down. It is alive. On its own. A dry and spreading thing that makes the sound of one's own feet going seem to come from a far-off place.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“Finally he said that if men drink the blood of God yet they do not understand the seriousness of what they do. He said that men wish to be serious but they do not understand how to be so. Between their acts and their ceremonies lies the world and in this world the storms blow and the trees twist in the wind and all the animals that God has made go to and fro yet this world men do not see. They see the acts of their own hands or they see that which they name and call out to one another but the world between is invisible to them”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing

“The wisdom of God devised a way for the love of God to deliver sinners from the wrath of God while not compromising the righteousness of God.”
― John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist

“Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter.”
― Francis Chan, Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God

“[Y]ou have to stop loving and pursuing Christ in order to sin. When you are pursuing love, running toward Christ, you do not have opportunity to wonder, *Am I doing this right?* or *Did I serve enough this week?* When you are running toward Christ, you are freed up to serve, love, and give thanks without guilt, worry or fear. As long as you are running, you're safe.”
― Francis Chan, Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God

“Joy is something that we have to choose and then work for.”
― Francis Chan, Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God

“Romance is the glamour which turns the dust of everyday life into a golden haze. ”
― Elinor Glyn

“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”
― Emily Dickinson, Selected Letters

“Aye, you're neither one thing nor yet quite t'other. Pity, but there 'tis.”
― Eloise Jarvis McGraw

“Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.”
― Voltaire

“But God doesn't call us to be comfortable. He calls us to trust Him so completely that we are unafraid to put ourselves in situations where we will be in trouble if He doesn't come through.”
― francis chan, Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness

“At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough.”
― Toni Morrison

“Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.”
― Corrie Ten Boom, Clippings from My Notebook

“Taking one’s chances is like taking a bath, because sometimes you end up feeling comfortable and warm, and sometimes there is something terrible lurking around that you cannot see until it is too late and you can do nothing else but scream and cling to a plastic duck.”
― Lemony Snicket

“Wisdom is oft-times nearer when we stoop
Than when we soar.”
― William Wordsworth, The Excursion 1814