Roberta Dombrowski > Roberta's Quotes

“Some women choose to follow men, and some women choose to follow their dreams. If you're wondering which way to go, remember that your career will never wake up and tell you that it doesn't love you anymore.”
― Lady Gaga

“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

“I’m aware that there is a bigger, far more complicated world out there than I’d ever realized, and just like the students at Beijing University, I’ve glimpsed it only fleetingly, peripherally. I’ve sensed the vast expanse of my own ignorance now. I feel antsy and constricted and a deep, almost sexual yearning for velocity, for some sort of raw, transcendent experience that I cannot even begin to articulate.”
― Susan Jane Gilman, Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven

“The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter.”
― Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die

“People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves.”
― Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die

“If you are never alone, you cannot know yourself.”
― Paulo Coelho, Manuscript Found in Accra

“Don't try to be useful. Try to be yourself: that is enough & that makes all the difference.”
― Paulo Coelho, Manuscript Found in Accra

“Some people feel like they don't deserve love. They walk away quietly into empty spaces, trying to close the gaps of the past.”
― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

“So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”
― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

“The core of mans' spirit comes from new experiences.”
― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

“The sea's only gifts are harsh blows, and occasionally the chance to feel strong. Now I don't know much about the sea, but I do know that that's the way it is here. And I also know how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong. To measure yourself at least once. To find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions. Facing the blind death stone alone, with nothing to help you but your hands and your own head.”
― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

“When someone leaves, its because someone else is about to arrive- I'll find love again.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Zahir

“We always have the necessary resources to face the storms that life throws at us, but most of the time,those resources are locked up in the depths of our heart and we waste an enormous amount of time trying to find them.By the time we've found them,we already been defeated by adversity.”
― Paulo Coelho, Like the Flowing River

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

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“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

“Is there no way out of the mind?”
― Sylvia Plath

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

“I like people too much or not at all. I've got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.
You leave the same impression
Of something beautiful, but annihilating.”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel: The Restored Edition

“The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn't thought about it.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“How we need another soul to cling to.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I couldn’t see the point of getting up. I had nothing to look forward to.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“What would you do if you weren't afraid?”
― Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“Do you hate people?”

“I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around.”
― Charles Bukowski, Barfly

“If, after spending time with a person, you feel as though you've lost a quart of plasma, avoid that person in the future.”
― William S. Burroughs

“The only real battle in life is between hanging on and letting go.”
― Shannon L. Alder