the Muse > the Muse's Quotes

“If you ever find yourself in the wrong story, leave.”
― Mo Willems, Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs

“A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.”
― Ezra Pound

“Hustlers of the world, there is one mark you cannot beat: the mark inside.”
― William S. Burroughs

“Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted”
― William S. Burroughs

“It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But a half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

“People think dreams aren't real just because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes.”
― Neil Gaiman

“Αηδίες—ο χρόνος έγινε για να κυλάει,
οι έρωτες για να τελειώνουν,
η ζωή για να πηγαίνει στο διάολο
κι εγώ για να διασχίζω το Άπειρο με το μεγάλο διασκελισμό ενός μαθηματικού υπολογισμού,
μονάχα όποιος τα διψάει όλα
μπορεί να με προφτάσει,
ό,τι ζήσαμε
χάνεται,
γκρεμίζεται μέσα στο σάπιο οισοφάγο του χρόνου
και μόνο καμμιά φορά,
τις νύχτες,
θλιβερό γερασμένο μηρυκαστικό τ’ αναμασάει η ξεδοντιασμένη μνήμη,
όσα δε ζήσαμε
αυτά μας ανήκουν—”
― Τάσος Λειβαδίτης, 25η Ραψωδία της Οδύσσειας

“Κανείς όμως δεν πρόκειται να σου αποκαταστήσει τα χρόνια σου, κανείς δεν θα σου τα επιστρέψει. Η ζωή θα ακολουθήσει το δρόμο που άρχισε και δεν πρόκειται ούτε να αναστρέψει, αλλ’ ούτε και να περιορίσει την πορεία της. Δεν θα κάνει θόρυβο, δεν θα σου θυμίσει πόσο γρήγορη είναι. Θα γλιστρήσει σιωπηλή· δεν πρόκειται να γίνει μεγαλύτερη με βασιλικές διαταγές ή λαϊκές επιδοκιμασίες. Όπως άρχισε την πρώτη μέρα, έτσι θα εξακολουθήσει· πουθενά δεν θα αλλάξει τη διαδρομή της, πουθενά δεν θα καθυστερήσει. Και τελικά ποιο θα είναι το αποτέλεσμα; Εσύ θα έχεις απορροφηθεί από τις ασχολίες σου και η ζωή θα προχωρεί ακάθεκτη· και κάπου στο μεταξύ θα έρθει ο θάνατος, για τον οποίον, είτε το θέλεις είτε όχι, θα πρέπει να βρεις κάποιον ελεύθερο χρόνο.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It

“Someday she might replace whatever of her had gone away by some prosthetic device, a dress of a certain color, a phrase in a letter, another lover. ”
― Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

“Once they have you asking the wrong questions. They don't have to worry about the answers.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

“I am having a hallucination now, I don't need drugs for that.”
― Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

“Is it just this miserable fucking city, too many faces, making us crazy? Are we seeing some wholesale return of the dead?”
“You’d prefer retail?”
― Thomas Pynchon, Bleeding Edge

“Rule Forty-two. All persons more than a mile high to leave the court.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“You're thinking about something, and it makes you forget to talk.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“Who said anything about slicing you up? ... I just wanted to carve a little Z on your forehead-- nothing serious.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

“No, this is not a good town for psychedelic drugs. Reality itself is too twisted.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

“There is no intensity of love or feeling that does not involve the risk of crippling hurt. It is a duty to take this risk, to love and feel without defense or reserve.”
― William S. Burroughs

“Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.”
― William S. Burroughs

“There is nothing more provocative than minding your own business.”
― William S. Burroughs, The Place of Dead Roads

“I am a cage, in search of a bird.”
― Franz Kafka

“I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.”
― Franz Kafka

“All language is but a poor translation.”
― Franz Kafka

“He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.”
― Franz Kafka

“That's what the world is , after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else. If it had been possible, he would have settled the matter otherwise, and without bloodshed. He doesn’t boast of his own death or of others’. But he doesn’t repent. He suffers and keeps his mouth shut; if anything, others then exploit him, making him a myth, while he, the man worthy of esteem, was only a poor creature who reacted with dignity and courage in an event bigger than he was.”
― Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality

“I have a very strong feeling that the opposite of love is not hate - it's apathy. It's not giving a damn.”
― Leo Buscaglia, Living, Loving & Learning

“Hell is—other people!”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit

“I don't advise a haircut, man. All hairdressers are in the employment of the government. Hairs are your aerials. They pick up signals from the cosmos, and transmit them directly into the brain. This is the reason bald-headed men are uptight.”
― Bruce Robinson, Withnail and I: the Original Screenplay

“We've gone on holiday by mistake”
― Bruce Robinson, Withnail and I: the Original Screenplay

“there are very few who can think, but every man wants to have an opinion; and what remains but to take it ready-made from others, instead of forming opinions for himself?”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The Art of Always Being Right