Tan > Tan's Quotes

“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my eyes and all is born again.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I think hell is something you carry around with you. Not somewhere you go.”
― Neil Gaiman , The Sandman, Vol. 4: Season of Mists

“This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“I certainly believe we all suffer damage, one way or another. How could we not,except in a world of perfect parents, siblings, neighbours, companions? And then there is the question on which so much depends, of how we react to the damage: whether we admit it or repress it,and how this affects our dealings with others.Some admit the damage, and try to mitigate it;some spend their lives trying to help others who are damaged; and there are those whose main concern is to avoid further damage to themselves, at whatever cost. And those are the ones who are ruthless, and the ones to be careful of.”
― Julian Barnes , The Sense of an Ending

“Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment. ”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“These days I just can't seem to say what I mean [...]. I just can't. Every time I try to say something, it misses the point. Either that or I end up saying the opposite of what I mean. The more I try to get it right the more mixed up it gets. Sometimes I can't even remember what I was trying to say in the first place. It's like my body's split in two and one of me is chasing the other me around a big pillar. We're running circles around it. The other me has the right words, but I can never catch her.”
― Haruki Murakami, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 24 Stories

“Every dreamer knows that it is entirely possible to be homesick for a place you've never been to, perhaps more homesick than for familiar ground.”
― Judith Thurman

“We may sit in our library and yet be in all quarters of the earth.”
― John Lubbock, The Pleasures of Life

“It is always sad to leave a place to which one knows one will never return. Such are the melancolies du voyage: perhaps they are one of the most rewarding things about traveling.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Flaubert in Egypt

“As for you girls, you must risk everything for Freedom, and give everything for Passion, loving everything that your hearts and your bodies love. The only thing higher for a girl and more sacred for a young woman than her freedom and her passion should be her desire to make her life into poetry, surrendering everything she has to create a life as beautiful as the dreams that dance in her imagination.”
― Roman Payne

“Every one of a hundred thousand cities around the world had its own special sunset and it was worth going there, just once, if only to see the sun go down.”
― Ryu Murakami, Coin Locker Babies

“This was how it was with travel: one city gives you gifts, another robs you. One gives you the heart’s affections, the other destroys your soul. Cities and countries are as alive, as feeling, as fickle and uncertain as people. Their degrees of love and devotion are as varying as with any human relation. Just as one is good, another is bad.”
― Roman Payne, Cities & Countries

“The value of your travels does not hinge on how many stamps you have in your passport when you get home -- and the slow nuanced experience of a single country is always better than the hurried, superficial experience of forty countries.”
― Rolf Potts, Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel

“Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.”
― Paul Theroux

“I think one travels more usefully when they travel alone, because they reflect more."

(Letter to John Banister, Jr., June 19, 1787)”
― Thomas Jefferson, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Vol 11, January 1787 to August 1787

“We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.”
― anaïs nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 7: 1966-1974

“She waited for the train to pass. Then she said, "I sometimes think that people’s hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what’s at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while.”
― Haruki Murakami, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: Twenty-Four Stories

“Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.”
― Haruki Murakami, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 24 Stories

“These days I just can't seem to say what I mean,' she said. 'I just can't. Every time I try to say something, it misses the point. Either that or I end up saying the opposite of what I mean. The more I try to get it right the more mixed up it gets. Sometimes I can't even remember what I was trying to say in the first place. It's like my body's split in two and one of me is chasing the other me around a big pillar. We're running circles around it. The other me has the right words, but I can never catch her...Do you know what I'm trying to say?' 'Everybody has that kind of feeling sometimes,' I said. 'You can't express yourself the way you want to, and it annoys you.' Obviously this wasn't what she wanted to hear.”
― Haruki Murakami, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: Twenty-Four Stories

“Fairy tales were not my escape from reality as a child; rather, they were my reality -- for mine was a world in which good and evil were not abstract concepts, and like fairy-tale heroines, no magic would save me unless I had the wit and heart and courage to use it widely.”
― Terri Windling

“Classic fairy tales do not deny the existence of heartache and sorrow, but they do deny universal defeat.”
― Greenhaven Press

“Supposing I know of a flower that is absolutely unique, that is nowhere to be found except on my planet, and any minute that flower could accidentally be eaten up by a little lamb, isn't that important? If a person loves a flower that is the only one of its kind on all the millions and millions of stars, then gazing at the night sky is enough to make him happy. He says to himself "My flower is out there somewhere." But if the lamb eats the flower, then suddenly it's as if all the stars had stopped shining. Isn't that important?”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“You are beautiful, but you are empty", he went on. "One could not die for you.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“Grown-ups love figures. When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essentail matters. They never say to you, “What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?” Instead, they demand: “How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?” Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him.

If you were to say to the grown-ups: “I saw a beautiful house made of rosy brick, with geraniums in the windows and doves on the roof,” they would not be able to get an idea of that house at all. You have have to say to them: “I saw a house that cost $20,000.” Then they would exclaim: “Oh, what a pretty house that is!”
― Antoine de Saint Exupéry

“Grown ups never understood anything by themselves. And it is rather tedious to have to explain things to them time and again”
― Antoine de Saint Exupéry, The Little Prince

“My flower is ephemeral," the little prince said to himself, "and she has only four thorns to defend herself against the world. And I have left her on my planet, all alone!"
That was his first moment of regret. But he took courage once more.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“But eyes are blind. You have to look with the heart.”
― Antoine de Saint - Exupery

“If you succeed in judging yourself rightly, then you are indeed a man of true wisdom”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“If you love a flower which happens to be on a star, it is sweet at night to gaze at the sky. All the stars are a riot of flowers.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“One runs the risk of weeping a little, if one lets oneself be tamed...”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry