Heidi > Heidi's Quotes

“If you are trying to transform a brutalized society into one where people can live in dignity and hope, you begin with the empowering of the most powerless. You build from the ground up.”
― Adrienne Rich

“You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it.”
― Adrienne Rich

“If you had better sense you’d have learned by now that nothing thrives so well as wickedness”
― Kathleen Winsor, Forever Amber

“I'm tired of living unable to love anyone. I don't have a single friend - not one. And, worst of all, I can't even love myself. Why is that? Why can't I love myself? It's because I can't love anyone else. A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else. Do you understand what I am saying? A person who is incapable of loving another cannot properly love himself.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“I am nothing. I’m like someone who’s been thrown into the ocean at night, floating all alone. I reach out, but no one is there. I call out, but no one answers. I have no connection to anything.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“As if to build a fence around the fatal emptiness inside her, she had to create a sunny person that she became. But if you peeled away the ornamental egos that she had built, there was only an abbys of nothingness and the intense thirst that came with it. Though she tried to forget it, the nothingness would visit her periodically - on a lonely rainy afternoon, or at dawn when she woke up from a nightmare. What she needed at such times was to be held by someone, anyone.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“The moon had been observing the earth close-up longer than anyone. It must have witnessed all of the phenomena occurring - and all of the acts carried out - on this earth. But the moon remained silent; it told no stories. All it did was embrace the heavy past with a cool, measured detachment. On the moon there was neither air nor wind. Its vacuum was perfect for preserving memories unscathed. No one could unlock the heart of the moon. Aomame raised her glass to the moon and asked, “Have you gone to bed with someone in your arms lately?”
The moon did not answer.
“Do you have any friends?” she asked.
The moon did not answer.
“Don’t you get tired of always playing it cool?”
The moon did not answer.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“If you say I hide things because I'm shy, that can't be right. I've finally realized it's for a different reason-- that I don't want to see the darkness that lies in my heart”
― Natsuo Kirino, Real World

“A woman who does not know herself has no choice other than to live with other people’s evaluations. But no one can adapt perfectly to public opinion. And herein lies the source of their destruction.”
― Natsuo Kirino, Grotesque

“In order to induce the process of decay, water is necessary. I think that, in the case of women, men are the water.”
― Natsuo Kirino, Grotesque

“My talent was the uncompromising ability to feel spite.”
― Natsuo Kirino, Grotesque

“Men live by rules they've made for themselves. And among those rules is one specifying that women are merely commodities for men to possess. A daughter belongs to her father, a wife to her husband. A woman's own desires present obstacles for men and are best ignored.”
― Natsuo Kirino, Grotesque

“The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.”
― Voltaire

“Be silent or let thy words be worth more than silence.”
― Pythagoras

“As long as Man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.”
― Pythagoras

“Do not say a little in many words, but a great deal in few!”
― pythagoras

“The oldest, shortest words— "yes" and "no"— are those which require the most thought.”
― Pythagoras

“In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.”
― Pythagoras

“Above all things, respect yourself.”
― Pythagoras

“You should make great things, not promising great things.”
― Pythagoras

“Practice justice in word and deed, and do not get in the habit of acting thoughtlessly about anything.”
― Pythagoras

“Cleaning is considered a vital part of the training process in all traditional Japanese disciplines and is a required practice for any novice. It is accorded spiritual significance. Purifying an unclean place is believed to purify the mind.”
― Mineko Iwasaki, Geisha, a Life

“It wasn't so much that I was afraid of the place itself, but I was afraid of the creatures who masqueraded as people.”
― Natsuo Kirino, Real World

“I'm this superphilosophical kind of person. Stuck in a prison of abstract ideas and overpowering emotions, I have this personality that makes it really hard to survive.”
― Natsuo Kirino, Real World

“Kids lose their trust in the parents they love, but still accept them, so they end up not trusting themselves anymore.”
― Natsuo Kirino, Real World

“I'd be smiling and chatting away, and my mind would be floating around somewhere else, like a balloon with a broken string.”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“The point is, not to resist the flow. You go up when you're supposed to go up and down when you're supposed to go down. When you're supposed to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. When you're supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom. When there's no flow, stay still. If you resist the flow, everything dries up. If everything dries up, the world is darkness.”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“It goes on, this world, stupid and brutal.
But I do not.
I do not.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Revolution

“My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

“I find that those men who are personally most polite to women, who call them angels and all that, cherish in secret the greatest contempt for them.”
― Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch