Shaikha > Shaikha's Quotes

“Watch out for intellect,
because it knows so much it knows nothing
and leaves you hanging upside down,
mouthing knowledge as your heart
falls out of your mouth.”
― Anne Sexton, The Complete Poems

“I cannot understand why my arm is not a lilac tree.”
― Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers

“Perhaps man has a hundred senses, and when he dies only the five senses that we know perish with him, and the other ninety-five remain alive.”
― Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“I am rooted, but I flow.”
― Virginia Woolf

“What will happen to us?" I asked. "There will always be us," he answered.”
― Patti Smith, Just Kids

“We went our separate ways, but within walking distance of one another.”
― Patti Smith, Just Kids

“Why can't I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply.”
― Patti Smith, Just Kids

“What is the soul? What color is it? I suspected my soul, being mischievous, might slip away while I was dreaming and fail to return. I did my best not to fall asleep, to keep it inside of me where it belonged.”
― Patti Smith, Just Kids

“Don't touch me! Don't question me! Don't speak to me! Stay with me!”
― Samuel Beckett

“Vladimir: Did I ever leave you?
Estragon: You let me go.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“I use the words you taught me. If they don't mean anything any more, teach me others. Or let me be silent.”
― Samuel Beckett, Endgame

“A great writer is, so to speak, a second government in his country. And for that reason no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn

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

“With me, the present is forever and forever is always shifting, flowing, melting. This second is life. And when it is gone it is dead. But you can’t start over with each new second. You have to judge by what is dead. It’s like quicksand…hopeless from the start. A story, a picture, can renew sensation a little, but not enough, not enough. Nothing is real except the present, and already, I feel the weight of centuries smothering me. Some girl a hundred years ago lived as I do. And she is dead. I am the present, but I know I, too, will pass. The high moment, the burning flash, come and are gone, continuous quicksand. And I don’t want to die.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Once, I saw a bee drown in honey, and I understood.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco

“I imagined myself as Frida to Diego, both muse and maker. I dreamed of meeting an artist to love and support and work with side by side.”
― patti smith, Just Kids

“I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Estella with the love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I love her none the less because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me, than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“البعض نحبهم
لكن لا نقترب منهم...فهم في البعد أحلى
وهم في البعد أرقى...وهم في البعد أغلى

البعض نحبهم
ونسعى كي نقترب منهم
ونتقاسم تفاصيل الحياة معهم
ويؤلمنا الابتعاد عنهم
ويصعب علينا تصوّر الحياة حين تخلو منهم.

البعض نحبّهم
ونتمنى أن نعيش حكاية جميلة معهم
ونفتعل الصدف لكي نلتقي بهم
ونختلق الأسباب كي نراهم
ونعيش في الخيال أكثر من الواقع معهم

البعض نحبهم
بيننا و بين أنفسنا
نصمت برغم الألم
لا نجاهر بحبهم حتى لهم لأن
العواقب مخيفه و من الأفضل لنا و لهم أن تبقى الأبواب مغلقة

البعض نحبهم
فنملأ الأرض بحبهم و نحدث الدنيا عنهم
و نحتاج إلى وجودهم..كالماء..والهواء
و نختنق فى غيابهم أو الأبتعاد عنهم

البعض نحبّهم
لأننا لا نجد سواهم
وحاجتنا إلى الحب تدفعنا نحوهم
فالأيام تمضي
والعمر ينقضي
والزمن لا يقف
ويرعبنا بأن نبقى بلا رفيق

البعض نحبهم
لأن مثلهم لا يستحق سوى الحب
ولا نملك أمامهم سوى أن نحب
نرمم معهم أشياء كثيرة
نعيد طلاء الحياة
ونسعى صادقين كي نمنحهم بعض السعادة

البعض نحبهم
و لا نجد صدى للحب في
قلوبهم
فننهار
ونتخبط في حكايات فاشلة
فلا نكرههم
لا ننساهم
لا نحب سواهم
ونعود نبكيهم بعد كل محاولة فاشلة

والبعض نحبّهم
ويبقى فقط أن يحبّوننا
مثلما نحبّهم”
― جبران خليل جبران

“I believe that art is the highest expression of the human spirit. ~ I believe that we yearn to transcend the merely finite and ephemeral; to participate in something mysterious and communal called “culture” – and that this yearning is as strong in our species as the yearning to reproduce the species. ~ Through the local or regional, through our individual voices, we work to create art that will speak to others who know nothing of us. In our very obliqueness to one another, an unexpected intimacy is born.”
― Joyce Carol Oates

“Yes, people age horribly. They suffer strokes. Their bodies and brains fall apart. But the male ego? Firmly intact until the bitter end.”
― Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

“She had trouble being in her body in general, which was why she liked to be roughed up by the elements and was always either sunburned, windblown, or damp from the rain.”
― Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

“She reminded Greta of one of those exotic vegetables she was drawn to at the farmer's market but didn't know how to cook. Kohlrabi, maybe, or a Jerusalem artichoke. Not very approachable. Not sweet or overly familiar. Not easily boiled down or buttered up.”
― Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

“The mind is the only thing about human beings that’s worth anything. Why does it have to be tied to a bag of skin, blood, hair, meat, bones and tubes? No wonder people can’t get anything done, stuck for life with a parasite that has to be stuffed with food and protected from weather and germs all the time. And the fool thing wears out anyway – no matter how much you stuff and protect it.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Unready to Wear

“I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave's a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that's what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.”
― Joan Didion

“Grammar is a piano I play by ear.”
― Joan Didion, Joan Didion: Essays & Conversations

“Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.”
― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

“I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”
― Joan Didion