Jessica > Jessica's Quotes

“Misty frozen rain was whirling around as I left the building and walked back to the shuttle stop. The shuttle was somewhat less overcrowded than usual. I didn't get a seat but I had enough room to take out my Walkman, and occasionally I could see between people's heads out the window, and this made me cheerful. It was weird what was enough to make you feel good or bad, even though your basic life circumstances were the same.”
― Elif Batuman, The Idiot

“I kept thinking about the uneven quality of time--the way it was almost always so empty, and then with no warning came a few days that felt so dense and alive and real that it seemed indisputable that that was what life was, that its real nature had finally been revealed. But then time passed and unthinkably grew dead again, and it turned out that that fullness had been an aberration and might never come back.”
― Elif Batuman, The Idiot

“Even though I had a deep conviction that I was good at writing, and that in some way I already was a writer, this conviction was completely independent of my having ever written anything, or being able to imagine ever writing anything, that I thought anyone would like to read.”
― Elif Batuman, The Idiot

“Most people, the minute they meet you, were sizing you up for some competition for resources. It was as if everyone lived in fear of a shipwreck, where only so many people would fit on the lifeboat, and they were constantly trying to stake out their property and identify dispensable people – people they could get rid of.... Everyone is trying to reassure themselves: I'm not going to get kicked off the boat, they are. They're always separating people into two groups, allies and dispensable people... The number of people who want to understand what you're like instead of trying to figure out whether you get to stay on the boat - it's really limited.”
― Elif Batuman, The Idiot

“It seemed very remarkable that you could travel halfway around the world and still end up looking at some ducks.”
― Elif Batuman, The Idiot

“...real intimacy is a place where there are no mistakes, at least not in the sense you feel. You don't just blow everything with one wrong move. A friendship is a space where you're supposted and free to make mistakes.”
― Elif Batuman, The Idiot

“It was the golden time of year. Every day the leaves grew brighter, the air sharper, the grass more brilliant. The sunsets seemed to expand and melt and stretch for hours, and the brick façades glowed pink, and everything got bluer. How many perfect autumns did a person get?”
― Elif Batuman, Either/Or

“Everything you want right now, everything you want so passionately and think you’ll never get—you will get it someday.” I accidentally met her eyes, and it felt like she was talking to me. “Yes, you will get it,” she said, looking right at me, “but by that time, you won’t want it anymore. That’s how it happens.”
― Elif Batuman, Either/Or

“I sometimes went with Svetlana to Pilates—even though the logistics of mat placement was deeply stressful, in a way that made me feel like I understood the primal conflicts for land that formed the basis of modern history. The room had a maximum occupancy of thirty, which might have been OK if everyone was just sitting there, but not if the idea was to make your body as long as possible and do sweeping motions with your limbs. Svetlana always made us get there early, to secure an advantageous position. Then the people who came later would try to crowd us out, inserting themselves between us, or directly in front of us, blocking our view—not apologetically, but with a self-righteous attitude. If you didn’t defend your space like Svetlana did, sitting up extra straight and doing elaborate stretches, you got hemmed in and couldn’t do the movements. People kept hitting you (or were you hitting them?) and giving you dirty looks.”
― Elif Batuman, Either/Or

“It was the golden time of year. Every day the leaves grew brighter, the air sharper, the grass more brilliant. The sunsets seemed to expand and melt and stretch for hours, and the brick facades glowed pink, and everything blue got bluer. How many perfect autumns did a person get? Why did I seem always to be in the wrong place, listening to the wrong music?”
― Elif Batuman, Either/Or

“Anyway, I didn’t want to be “nurtured” in an “environment” that was set up for me to “excel.” I wanted to do whatever was the most real and rigorous.”
― Elif Batuman, Either/Or

“Music was the only other thing that was layered like that, so much that each new component changed the meaning of the whole. And so much building up and holding back-promising and withholding, and withholding, and withholding. You’re going to die without it. You’re never going to get it. You’re going to die. Here it is.”
― Elif Batuman, Either/Or

“Of course, you couldn’t have a party without alcohol; I understood this now. I understood the reason. The reason was that people were intolerable. But wasn’t there any way around that? Juho was talking about different research into alcoholism that people were doing in Finland. Why was nobody researching the more direct issue of how to make people less intolerable? “It might be a case of having to reduce a big problem we can’t solve to a smaller problem that we can solve,” Juho said.”
― Elif Batuman, Either/Or

“There is no end
To what a living world
Will demand of you.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“The weak can overcome the strong if the weak persist. Persisting isn’t always safe, but it’s often necessary.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“Sometimes writing about a thing makes it easier to stand.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“Once people get the idea that it’s all right to take what you want and destroy the rest, who knows when they’ll stop.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“It seems inevitable that people who can’t read are going to lean more toward judging candidates on the way they look and sound than on what they claim they stand for. Even people who can read and are educated are apt to pay more attention to good looks and seductive lies than they should. And no doubt the new picture ballots on the nets will give Jarret an even greater advantage.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“I’m trying to speak–to write-the truth. I"m trying to be clear. I’m not interested in being fancy, or even original. Clarity and truth will be plenty, if I can only achieve them.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“Life is a bit more difficult for women. More difficult than it is for us, I mean. And you don't need to ask them to explain why or understand it all. You just need to be nice to them.”
― Dolly Alderton, Good Material

“I soon realized that inevitability of every relationship: the things which initially draw you to each other become the exact things that irritate you the most.”
― Dolly Alderton, Good Material

“The questions I would have liked to ask people were: ‘Are you in love? What are you reading?”
― Françoise Sagan, A Certain Smile

“It amused me to think that one can tell the truth when one is drunk and nobody will believe it.”
― Françoise Sagan, Bonjour tristesse

“My love of pleasure seems to be the only consistent side of my character. Is it because I have not read enough?”
― Francoise Sagan, Bonjour Tristesse

“Rejection, I have found, can be the only antidote to delusion”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation

“For a moment I felt joyful, and then I felt completely exhausted.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation

“I could plan to do something and then find myself doing the opposite.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation

“Quitting leads to much less happiness in life than perseverance and hope. Salva Dut”
― Linda Sue Park, A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story

“How could memories feel so close and so far away at the same time?”
― Linda Sue Park, A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story