Mai > Mai's Quotes

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“He's a wallflower. You see things. You keep quiet about them. And you understand.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“So, I guess we are who we are for alot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.”
― Zadie Smith, White Teeth

“I'm not running away. But this is one corner of one country on one continent on one planet that's a corner of a galaxy that's a corner of a universe that is forever growing and shrinking and creating and destroying and never remaining the same for a single millisecond, and there is so much, so much, to see, Amy. Because it goes so fast. I'm not running away from things, I am running to them. Before they flare and fade forever.”
― Chris Chibnall

“The past may or may not be a foreign country. It may morph or lie still, but its capital is always Regret, and what flushes through it is the grand canal of unfledged desires that feed into an archipelago of tiny might-have-beens that never really happened but aren't unreal for not happening and might still happen though we fear they never will. And I thought of Ole Brit holding back so much, as we all do when we look back to see that the roads we've left behind or not taken have all but vanished. Regret is how we hope to back into our real lives once we find the will, the blind drive and courage, to trade in the life we're given for the life that bears our name and ours only. Regret is how we look forward to things we've long lost yet never really had. Regret is hope without conviction, I said. We're torn between regret, which is the price to pay for things not done, and remorse, which is the cost for having done them. Between one and the other, time plays all its cozy little tricks.”
― André Aciman, Enigma Variations

“You will never see me surrender, never see me cry, but you will often see me walk away. Turn around and just leave, without looking back.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Empty Roads & Broken Bottles: in search for The Great Perhaps

“Forget the past, it's gone, but glance back occasionally to remind yourself where you came from and where you are going.”
― Chloe Thurlow, A Girl's Adventures

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.”
― John Greenleaf Whittier

“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”
― Rudyard Kipling

“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.”
― Italo Calvino, The Uses of Literature

“For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.”
― Annie Dillard, The Living

“She had always wanted words, she loved them; grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.”
― Rumi

“I believe that words are strong, that they can overwhelm what we fear when fear seems more awful than life is good.”
― Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

“He liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his head.”
― John Green, An Abundance of Katherines

“We live and breathe words.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince

“I believe in the magic and authority of words.”
― René Char

“Because even the smallest of words can be the ones to hurt you, or save you.”
― Natsuki Takaya

“How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words.”
― David Foster Wallace, The Pale King

“Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn't be any of this.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“It is not that the meaning cannot be explained. But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“A Word is Dead

A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.

I say it just
Begins to live
That day.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

“Reading is that fruitful miracle of a communication in the midst of solitude.”
― Proust-M

“All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“I like libraries. It makes me feel comfortable and secure to have walls of words, beautiful and wise, all around me. I always feel better when I can see that there is something to hold back the shadows.”
― Roger Zelazny, Nine Princes in Amber

“I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine.”
― Emily Dickinson