Marina > Marina's Quotes

“We Greeks are a moody people. Suicide makes sense to us. Putting up Christmas lights after your own daughter does it—that makes no sense. What my yia yia could never understand about America was why everyone pretended to be happy all the time.”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides

“That is what is wrong with cold people. Not that they have ice in their souls - we all have a bit of that - but that they insist every word and deed mirror that ice. They never learn the beauty or value of gesture. The emotional necessity. For them, it is all honesty before kindness, truth before art. Love is art, not truth. It's like painting scenery.”
― Lorrie Moore, Self-Help

“It is like having a book out from the library.
It is like constantly having a book out from the library.”
― Lorrie Moore, Self-Help

“You never know when it will be the last time you'll see your father, or kiss your wife, or play with your little brother, but there's always a last time. If you could remember every last time, you'd never stop grieving.”
― Jonathan Tropper, This is Where I Leave You

“Everyone always wants to know how you can tell when it's true love, and the answer is this: when the pain doesn't fade and the scars don't heal, and it's too damned late.
The tears threaten to return, so I willfully banish all thoughts from my head and take a few more deep breaths. I'm suddenly dizzy from the panic attack I've just suffered, and I close my eyes, resting my head against the warm leather of my steering wheel. Loneliness doesn't exist on any single plane of consciousness. It's generally a low throb, barely audible, like the hum of a Mercedes engine in park, but every so often the demands of the highway call for a burst of acceleration, and the hum becomes a thunderous, elemental roar, and once again you're reminded of what this baby's carrying under the hood.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“You have to look at what you have right in front of you, at what it could be, and stop measuring it against what you've lost. I know this to be wise and true, just as I know that pretty much no one can do it.”
― Jonathan Tropper, This is Where I Leave You

“Sometimes you walk past a pretty girl on the street there's something beyond beauty in her face, something warm and smart and inviting, and in the three seconds you have to look at her, you actually fall in love, and in those moments, you can actually know the taste of her kiss, the feel of her skin against yours, the sound of her laugh, how she'll look at you and make you whole. And then she's gone, and in the five seconds afterwards, you mourn her loss with more sadness than you'll ever admit to. ”
― Jonathan Tropper, How to Talk to a Widower

“At some point, being angry is just another bad habit, like smoking, and you keep poisoning yourself without thinking about it.”
― Jonathan Tropper

“Sometimes it’s heartbreaking to see your siblings as the people they’ve become. Maybe that’s why we all stay away from each other as a matter of course.”
― Jonathon Tropper

“She was smart and funny and vulnerable and just so goddamned beautiful, the kind of beautiful that was worth being shot down over.”
― Jonathan Tropper, How to Talk to a Widower

“Childhood feels so permanent, like it's the entire world, and then one day it's over and you're shoveling wet dirt onto your father's coffin, stunned at the impermanence of everything.”
― Jonathan Tropper, This is Where I Leave You

“I'm not the same person I was. I'm fucked up." I give her a sideways glance. "I am," she says. "You haven't even scratched the surface."

"I find that most people worth knowing are fucked up in some way or another.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“I totally remember what it felt like to be so full…Full of promise, full of dreams, full of shit. Mostly just full of yourself. So full you’re bursting. And then you get out into the world, and people empty you out, little by little, like air from a balloon…You try like hell to fill yourself up with fresh air, from you and from other people. But back then…it was so damn effortless to feel full, you know? All you had to do was breathe”
― Jonathan Tropper

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“When you’re an introvert like me and you’ve been lonely for a while, and then you find someone who understands you, you become really attached to them. It’s a real release.”
― Lana Del Rey

“I was in the winter of my life- and the men I met along the road were my only summer. At night I fell sleep with visions of myself dancing and laughing and crying with them. Three years down the line of being on an endless world tour and memories of them were the only things that sustained me, and my only real happy times. I was a singer, not a very popular one, who once had dreams of becoming a beautiful poet- but upon an unfortunate series of events saw those dreams dashed and divided like a million stars in the night sky that I wished on over and over again- sparkling and broken. But I really didn’t mind because I knew that it takes getting everything you ever wanted and then losing it to know what true freedom is.

When the people I used to know found out what I had been doing, how I had been living- they asked me why. But there’s no use in talking to people who have a home, they have no idea what its like to seek safety in other people, for home to be wherever you lay your head.

I was always an unusual girl, my mother told me that I had a chameleon soul. No moral compass pointing me due north, no fixed personality. Just an inner indecisiveness that was as wide as wavering as the ocean. And if I said that I didn't plan for it to turn out this way I’d be lying- because I was born to be the other woman. I belonged to no one- who belonged to everyone, who had nothing- who wanted everything with a fire for every experience and an obsession for freedom that terrified me to the point that I couldn’t even talk about- and pushed me to a nomadic point of madness that both dazzled and dizzied me.

Every night I used to pray that I’d find my people- and finally I did- on the open road. We have nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nothing we desired anymore- except to make our lives into a work of art.”
― Lana Del Rey

“Κοιτώντας κάτι ελιοκούκουτσα στο σταχτοδοχείο, απομεινάρια κολατσιού του θείου, συλλογίστηκε για πρώτη φορά πως ίσως ήταν μοιραίο να χαθεί στους ωκεανούς από πολεμική αιτία, επειγόταν λοιπόν να ξεμοναχιάσει και να κοιτάξει κατάματα την Όρσα, που κρατούσε ένα δαχτυλιδάκι της δικής του μάνας, ίσως επειδή κάπου το είχε παραπεταμένο χωρίς να έχει πλέον κάποια σημασία γι' αυτήν ή ακριβώς το αντίθετο, επειδή σήμαινε πολλά... Πού είχαμε μείνει, κορίτσι μου; Άντε να κλείσουμε το θέμα, θα της έλεγε, γιατί υπάρχουν και πέντε παιδιά.”
― Ιωάννα Καρυστιάνη, Μικρά Αγγλία

“Τι να έκαναν οι άνθρωποι; Ευτυχώς επινοούσαν άπειρους τρόπους να αντέχουν τα αβάσταχτα, να συνηθίζουν τα δυσβάσταχτα, να συγχωρούν τα αδικαιολόγητα, να να ερμηνεύουν τα απίστευτα, να λένε τα ανείπωτα, κι όλα αυτά για να μη μένουν μόνοι· ήταν ανακούφιση να ξετρυπώνουν κάθε τόσο έναν καλό λόγο για να συνυπάρχουν με τους διαφορετικούς, ότι κι αν πρεσβεύανε.”
― Ιωάννα Καρυστιάνη, Μικρά Αγγλία

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

“Books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“When I look at my room, I see a girl who loves books.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“I never knew I lacked so much confidence until I met you”
― Karuho Shiina, 君に届け 15 [Kimi ni Todoke 15]

“You lack self confidence, think about a lot of things and pick the safest option.”
― Shiina Karuho

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain

“If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“You're a kid... You lack self-confidence, think about a lot of things, and pick the safest option. But is what you've chosen so far really considered a safe option? Because of that, you think you're an adult, but... Don't act as though you really understand.”
― Shiina Karuho

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
― Ernest Hemingway