amara > amara's Quotes

“There is an uneasy moment most military personnel recognize, when they come too close to ‘the enemy’ and what was a homogeneous mass breaks apart, like cells pulling away under a microscope, revealing that all along it was made up of individual humans just like them.”
― Elly Conway, Argylle

“The world is too wonderful not to write it all down.”
― Elly Conway, Argylle

“Dying was easy. Living was so much harder—that was the most important lesson Altan had ever taught her.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God

“Power dictates acceptability,”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“Supernatural is a word for anything that doesn't fit your present understanding of the world.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“It was easy to kiss someone when it didn’t matter; it was more difficult when it might be meaningful.”
― Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mexican Gothic

“Noemí’s father said she cared too much about her looks and parties to take school seriously, as if a woman could not do two things at once.”
― Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mexican Gothic

“...she was trapped between competing desires, a desire for a more meaningful connection and the desire to never change. She wished for eternal youth and endless merriment.”
― Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mexican Gothic

“One could construct a hundred different narratives, it didn’t make them true.”
― Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mexican Gothic

“How nice -- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.

Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee. I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-five

“All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned to a pillar of salt. So it goes. People aren't supposed to look back. I'm certainly not going to do it anymore.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Do not forgive and do not forget. But don not hide yourself away as I have, nor vent your anger as your father does... do no harm to those who do not seek to harm you. But be watchful. When the time comes you will know what to do.”
― Miriam Feinberg Vamosh, Ahoti: A Story of Tamar

“If you want to understand any woman you must first ask about her mother and then listen carefully. Stories about food show a strong connection. Wistful silences demonstrate unfinished business. The more a daughter knows about the details of her mother's life - without flinching or whining - the stronger the daughter.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“Egypt loved the lotus because it never dies. It is the same for people who are loved.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“Women give thanks- for repose and restoration, for the knowledge that life comes from between our legs, and that life costs blood.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“...things get broken, and sometimes they get repaired, and in most cases, you realize that no matter what gets damaged, life rearranges itself to compensate for your loss, sometimes wonderfully.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“The axiom of equality states that x always equals x: it assumes that if you have a conceptual thing named x, that it must always be equivalent to itself, that it has a uniqueness about it, that it is in possession of something so irreducible that we must assume it is absolutely, unchangeably equivalent to itself for all time, that its very elementalness can never be altered. But it is impossible to prove. Always, absolutes, nevers: these are the words, as much as numbers, that make up the world of mathematics. Not everyone liked the axiom of equality––Dr. Li had once called it coy and twee, a fan dance of an axiom––but he had always appreciated how elusive it was, how the beauty of the equation itself would always be frustrated by the attempts to prove it. It was the kind of axiom that could drive you mad, that could consume you, that could easily become an entire life.

But now he knows for certain how true the axiom is, because he himself––his very life––has proven it. The person I was will always be the person I am, he realizes. The context may have changed: he may be in this apartment, and he may have a job that he enjoys and that pays him well, and he may have parents and friends he loves. He may be respected; in court, he may even be feared. But fundamentally, he is the same person, a person who inspires disgust, a person meant to be hated.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“She knew that the suffering of women started in the suffering of men, that the bondages of one became the bondages of the other.”
― Etaf Rum, A Woman Is No Man