Samara > Samara's Quotes

“Even though I had a deep conviction that I was good at writing, and that in some way I already was a writer, this conviction was completely independent of my having ever written anything, or being able to imagine ever writing anything, that I thought anyone would like to read.”
― Elif Batuman, The Idiot

“It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown I back, throat to the stars, "more like deer than human being." To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“The only horrible thing in the world is ennui, Dorian. That is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“A small but noteworthy note. I've seen so many young men over the years who think they're running at other young men. They are not. They are running at me.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live”
― Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

“Sixteen years on the streets and you can learn a lot. But all the wrong things, not the things you want to learn. Sixteen years on the streets and you see a lot. But all the wrong sights, not the things you want to see.”
― S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders

“Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. (...) You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“Marianne had the sense that her real life was happening somewhere very far away, happening without her, and she didn't know if she would ever find out where it was or become part of it.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“No one can be independent of other people completely, so why not give up the attempt, she thought, go running in the other direction, depend on people for everything, allow them to depend on you, why not.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“Life is the thing you bring with you inside your own head.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“She believes Marianne lacks ‘warmth’, by which she means the ability to beg for love from people who hate her.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“Her eyes fill up with tears again and she closes them. Even in memory she will find this moment unbearably intense, and she's aware of this now, while it's happening. She has never believed herself fit to be loved by any person. But now she has a new life, of which this is the first moment, and even after many years have passed she will still think: Yes, that was it, the beginning of my life.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“I dreamt a dream tonight.
Mercutio: And so did I.
Romeo: Well, what was yours?
Mercutio: That dreamers often lie.
Romeo: In bed asleep while they do dream things true.”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

“We’re only ever playing fifty percent of a character. The rest is us, and we’re afraid to show people who we really are. We’re afraid of looking foolish if we reveal the full force of our emotions.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“But in Shakespeare's world, passion is irresistible, not embarrassing.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“Make art, make mistakes, and have no regrets.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“People say opposites attract, but Joan had found this to almost never be true. People just couldn’t see the ways they were drawn to exactly who they feared—or hoped—they might be.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Atmosphere

“It isn’t a sadness, but a joy, that we don’t do the same things for the length of our lives.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“To Marx, it seemed foolish not to love as many things as you could.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“He loved the intimacy of being in a tight group of people who had come together, miraculously, for a brief period in time, for the purpose of making art.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow