Caterina > Caterina's Quotes

“There is a striking resemblance between the act of love and the ministrations of a torturer.”
― Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

“Oh, don't cry, I'm so sorry I cheated so much, but that's the way things are.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.”
― John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman

“I hate the uneducated and the ignorant. I hate the pompous and the phoney. I hate the jealous and the resentful. I hate the crabbed and mean and the petty. I hate all ordinary dull little people who aren't ashamed of being dull and little.”
― John Fowles, The Collector

“Greece is like a mirror. It makes you suffer. Then you learn.'
To live alone?'
To live. With what you are.”
― John Fowles, The Magus

“This must be a real horrorshow film if you're so keen on my viddying it.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“Then, brothers, it came. Oh, bliss, bliss and heaven. I lay all nagoy to the ceiling, my gulliver on my rookers on the pillow, glazzies closed, rot open in bliss, slooshying the sluice of lovely sounds. Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“No he conseguido nada, ni ser malvado ni ser de otro modo; no he conseguido ser ni perverso ni bondadoso; ni canalla ni honrado; ni un héroe..., y ni siquiera un mísero insecto.”
― Fiodor Dostoyevski, Memorias del Subsuelo

“It is so tiring to hate someone you love.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“Choose a life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers... Choose DSY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit crushing game shows, stucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away in the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourself, choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that?”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“She might be a little introverted, livelier of movement than of conversation, neither bashful nor forward, with a soul that seemed submerged, but in a radiant moistness. Opalescent on the surface but translucent in her depths…”
― Vladimir Nabokov, The Enchanter

“Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“Leo en Dostoievski el pasaje que tanto se asemeja a ser desdichado”
― Franz Kafka, The Diaries of Franz Kafka: 1910-1913

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

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”
― St. Augustine

“Obsessions are the only things that matter.”
― Patricia Highsmith

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“Does he love me? Does he love anyone more than me? Does he love me more than I love him? Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short. Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something (love) from our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass!

The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass!”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“In Tereza’s eyes, books were the emblems of a secret brotherhood. For she had but a single weapon against the world of crudity surrounding her: the novels. She had read any number of them, from Fielding to Thomas Mann. They not only offered the possibility of an imaginary escape from a life she found unsatisfying; they also had a meaning for her as physical objects: she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the same significance for her as an elegant cane from the dandy a century ago. It differentiated her from others.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Even at the age of eight she would fall asleep by pressing one hand into the other and making believe she was holding the hand of the man whom she loved, the man of her life. So if in her sleep she pressed Tomas hand with such tenacity, we can understand why: she had been training since childhood.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“All this time he was sitting up in bed and looking at the woman who was lying beside him and holding his hand in her sleep. He felt an ineffable love for her. Her sleep must have been very light at the moment because she opened her eyes and gazed up at him questioningly.

“What are you looking at?” she asked.

He knew that instead of waking her he should lull her back to sleep, so he tried to come up with an answer that would plant the image of a new dream in her mind.

“I’m looking at the stars,” he said.

“Don’t say you’re looking at the stars. That’s a lie. You’re looking down.”

“That’s because we’re on an airplane. The stars are below us.”

“Oh, in an airplane,” said Tereza, squeezing his hand even tighter and falling asleep again. And Tomas knew that Tereza was looking out of the round window of an airplane flying high above the stars.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“When I was small and would leaf through the Old Testament retold for children and illustrated in engravings by Gustave Dore, I saw the Lord God standing on a cloud. He was an old man with eyes, nose, and a long beard, and I would say to myself that if He had a mouth, He had to eat. And if He ate, He had intestines. But that always gave me a fright, because even though I come from a family that was not particularly religious, I felt the idea of a divine intestine to be sacrilegious.
Spontaneously, without any theological training, I, a child, grasped the incompatibility of God and shit... Either/or: either man was created in God's image-- and God has intestines!-- or God lacks intestines and man is not like him...
Shit is a more onerous theological problem than is evil. Since God gave man freedom, we can, if need be, accept the idea that He is not responsible for man's crimes. The responsibility for shit, however, rests entirely with Him, the Creator of man.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's beautiful.”
― Milan Kundera

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches