斤 日 > 斤's Quotes

“[...]the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“The only truth is music.”
― Jack Kerouac

“Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book. The reader's recognition in himself of what the book says is the proof of the book's truth.”
― Marcel Proust, Time Regained

“Everything great in the world is done by neurotics; they alone founded our religions and created our masterpieces.”
― Marcel Proust

“If we are to make reality endurable, we must all nourish a fantasy or two.”
― Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower

“...the memory of a particular image is but regret for a particular moment..”
― Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

“What if I forgave myself? I thought. What if I forgave myself even though I'd done something I shouldn't have? What if I was a liar and a cheat and there was no excuse for what I'd done other than because it was what I wanted and needed to do? What if I was sorry, but if I could go back in time I wouldn't do anything differently than I had done? What if I'd actually wanted to fuck every one of those men? What if heroin taught me something? What if yes was the right answer instead of no? What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn't have done was what also had got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves...”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“Fear begets fear. Power begets power. I willed myself to beget power. And it wasn't long before I actually wasn't afraid.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“He kissed me hard and I kissed him back harder, like it was the end of an era that had lasted all of my life.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“I was a pebble. I was a leaf. I was the jagged branch of a tree. I was nothing to them and they were everything to me.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“There's no way to know what makes one thing happen and not another. What leads to what. What destroys what. What causes what to flourish or die or take another course. But I was pretty certain as I sat there that tonight that if it hadn't been for Eddie, I wouldn't have found myself on the PCT. And though it was true that everything I felt for him sat like a boulder in my throat, this realization made the boulder sit ever so much lighter. He hadn't loved me well in the end, but he'd loved me well when it mattered.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail