Charissa Shepherd > Charissa's Quotes

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
― C.S. Lewis

“A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.”
― C.S. Lewis

“It's true that adventures are good for people even when they are very young. Adventures can get in a person's blood even if he doesn't remember having them. ”
― Eva Ibbotson, The Secret of Platform 13

“Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.”
― Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky and Other Poems

“Everybody gets hurt. Sometimes a big hurt, sometimes a little hurt. But the person who's suffered a lot isn't especially strong. And the person who's been hurt a little isn't especially weak. What's important is being able to get over it.”
― Sakura Tsukuba

“Spending time with the ones who are dear to you is like being in a dream, is it not?”
― Sakura Tsukuba, Land of the Blindfolded, Vol. 3

“If I write a book I do it mostly for myself for the child in me and for the adult in me. The criterion for my children’s books is: If I were a child would I like it That’s very egotistical but it’s the same thing with my books for adults. I wouldn’t do a book if I didn’t want to partake and share. With a book I can do both: I give and I share.”
― Tomi Ungerer

“Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.”
― Henry James

“I know all about endings. It is beginnings that elude me.”
― Marion Zimmer Bradley, Marion Zimmer Bradley's Ancestors of Avalon

“Wall Street had been doing business with pieces of paper; and now someone asked for a dollar, and it was discovered that the dollar had been mislaid.”
― Upton Sinclair

“A large section of the idling classes of England get their incomes by believing that Jesus was born of a virgin and that Jonah swallowed a whale; and with the progress of science they were naturally finding this more and more difficult. A school of ingenious Bible-twisters arose, to invent symbolical and literary meanings for fairy tales, in order that people who no longer believed could continue with good conscience to collect the salaries of belief.”
― Upton Sinclair, Mammonart: An Essay in Economic Interpretation

“They use everything about the hog except the squeal.”
― Upton Sinclair, The Jungle

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
― Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked

“When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits - islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

“If it is very painful for you to criticize your friends, you are safe in doing it. But if you take the slightest pleasure in it, that is the time to hold your tongue”
― Alice Miller

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
― Carl Sagan

“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.”
― Martha Graham

“The artist must be blind to distinction between 'recognized' or 'unrecognized' conventions of form, deaf to the transitory teaching and demands of his particular age.”
― Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

“The artist must be blind to "recognized" and "unrecognized" form, deaf to the teachings and desires of his time. His open eyes must be directed to his inner life and his ears must be constantly attuned to the voice of inner necessity.”
― Wassily Kandinsky

“Being taken seriously means missing out on the chance to be frivolous, promiscuous, and irrelevant. The desire to be taken seriously is precisely what compels people to follow the tried and true paths of knowledge production around which I would like to map a few detours.”
― J. Jack Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure

“This is a story of art without markets, drama without a script, narrative without progress. The queer art of failure turns on the impossible, the improbable, the unlikely, and the unremarkable. It quietly loses, and in losing it imagines other goals for life, for love, for art, and for being.”
― J. Jack Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure

“But what about the secret I bear?" I asked.
"Tell it to the world," he advised.
And that is what I am doing.”
― Emile Habiby

“Unfortunately, so many whites have trampled people of color as we ran away from our whiteness that many people of color are highly suspect when whites demonstrate an interest in their culture and participate in traditional ceremonies and practices or wear their cultural symbols and dress.”
― Shelly Tochluk, Witnessing Whiteness: The Need to Talk About Race and How to Do It

“regardless of the false nature of racial categories, the concept of race holds great social force. Our society uses race in spite of some people’s disavowal and often treats us differentially as a result. Race has truly gotten under our skin, into our psyche, and lingers within the layers of our unconscious. To begin honestly, we must discuss what may be the most challenging aspect of any discussion of race. We must deal with the terms racist, racism, and systemic white supremacy. We must also confront the fact that some people might ask us to associate those words with our speech and actions.”
― Shelly Tochluk, Witnessing Whiteness: The Need to Talk About Race and How to Do It

“making a decision isn't about knowing every potential consequence. It's about knowing what you want and chasing a path that takes you in that direction”
― Malinda Lo, Huntress

“She sounds like someone who spends a lot of time in libraries, which are the best sorts of people.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

“You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“In order to rise
From its own ashes
A phoenix
First
Must
Burn.”
― Octavia Butler, Parable of the Talents

“All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
is Change.

God
is Change.”
― Octavia E. Butler