Claire > Claire's Quotes

“Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.”
― Sigmund Freud

“Across the broad continent of a woman's life falls the shadow of a sword. On one side all is correct, definite, orderly; the paths are straight, the trees regular, the sun shaded; escorted by gentlemen, protected by policemen, wedded and buried by clergymen, she has only to walk demurely from cradle to grave and no one will touch a hair of her head. But on the other side all is confusion. Nothing follows a regular course. The paths wind between bogs and precipices; the trees roar and rock and fall in ruin.”
― Virginia Woolf

“I have no place left to live but in my own heart.”
― Anne Enright, The Gathering

“Books. Cats. Life is good.”
― T.S. Eliot

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.”
― Jane Austen, Jane Austen's Letters

“Never laugh at live dragons.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”
― Stephen King

“There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
― Anaïs Nin

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”
― Anais Nin

“But luxury has never appealed to me, I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands.”
― Daphne du Maurier

“I am haunted by humans.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”
― Anais Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

“Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.”
― sylvia plath

“If I cannot be better than them, I will become so much worse.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“but for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.”
― Jane Austen

“Why are women... so much more interesting to men than men are to women?”
― Virginia Woolf

“People who claim that they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us... It's people who claim that they're good, or any way better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of.”
― Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)”
― Sylvia Plath

“In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.”
― Terry Pratchett

“Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”
― Margaret Atwood

“Yes, I was infatuated with you: I am still. No one has ever heightened such a keen capacity of physical sensation in me. I cut you out because I couldn't stand being a passing fancy. Before I give my body, I must give my thoughts, my mind, my dreams. And you weren't having any of those.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“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

“Ah! There is nothing like staying at home, for real comfort.”
― Jane Austen

“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.”
― Anais Nin

“I desire the things which will destroy me in the end.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath