k i k a > k i k a's Quotes

“I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“You're lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddam phenomenal world.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“Reading is not just a pastime or a luxury – but a precondition of democratic life.”
― Judith Butler, Who’s Afraid of Gender?

“The books that the world calls immoral books are books that show the world its own shame.”
― Oscar Wilde, Only Dull People Are Brilliant at Breakfast

“He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“He might as well plant an oak in a flowerpot, and expect it to thrive, as imagine he can restore her to vigour in the soil of his shallow cares!”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“Treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends; they wound those who resort to them worse than their enemies.”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“You give but little when you give of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

“So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“People can't, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“Do not start. Do not blush. Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women do like women.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe. Of course it’s important to know what’s right and what’s wrong. Individual errors in judgment can usually be corrected. As long as you have the courage to admit mistakes, things can be turned around. But intolerant, narrow minds with no imagination are like parasites that transform the host, change form, and continue to thrive. They’re a lost cause, and I don’t want anyone like that coming in here.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.”
― Jack Kerouac

“There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road: The Original Scroll

“My aunt once said that the world would never find peace until men fell at their women's feet and asked for forgiveness. ”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“[...]the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“Things outside you are projections of what's inside you, and what's inside you is a projection of what's outside. So when you step into the labyrinth outside you, at the same time you're stepping into the labyrinth inside.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality. It is as final as the mountains: a fact. There it is. When you realize it you cannot complain.”
― William S. Burroughs, Queer

“Anything that can be accomplished chemically can be accomplished in other ways.”
― William S. Burroughs, Queer

“Like many people who have nothing to do, he was very resentful of any claims on his time.”
― William S. Burroughs, Queer