Bex > Bex's Quotes

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
― Albert Camus

“If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them.”
― Sylvia Plath

“We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”
― Charles Bukowski

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“How strange it is. We have these deep terrible lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep and real. Shouldn't they paralyze us? How is it we can survive them, at least for a little while? We drive a car, we teach a class. How is it no one sees how deeply afraid we were, last night, this morning? Is it something we all hide from each other, by mutual consent? Or do we share the same secret without knowing it? Wear the same disguise?”
― Don DeLillo, White Noise

“How terribly sad it was that people are made in such a way that they get used to something as extraordinary as living.”
― Jostein Gaarder, The Solitaire Mystery

“Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.”
― Henry Adams

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
― Joan Didion, The White Album

“The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.”
― Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

“Memory fades, memory adjusts, memory conforms to what we think we remember.”
― Joan Didion, Blue Nights

“Sometimes life is merely a matter of coffee and whatever intimacy a cup of coffee affords.”
― Richard Brautigan

“I have always wanted to write a book that ended with the word 'mayonnaise.”
― Richard Brautigan

“It's my firm conclusion that human meaning comes from humans, not from a supernatural source. After we die, our hopes for an afterlife reside in the social networks that we influenced while we were alive. If we influence people in a positive way -- even if our social web is only as big as our nuclear family -- others will want to emulate us and pass on our ideas, manners, and lifestyle to future generations. This is more than enough motivation for me to do good things in my life and teach my children to do the same.”
― Greg Graffin, Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science, and Bad Religion in a World Without God

“You’re not doing well and finally I don’t have to
pretend to be so interested in your on going tragedy,

but

I’ll rob the bank that gave you the impression that
money is more fruitful than words, and
I’ll cut holes in the ozone if it means you have one less day of rain.
I’ll walk you to the hospital,
I’ll wait in a white room that reeks of hand sanitizer and latex for the results from the MRI scan that tries to
locate the malady that keeps your mind guessing, and
I want to write you a poem every day until my hand breaks
and assure you that you’ll find your place,
it’s just
the world has a funny way of
hiding spots fertile enough for
bodies like yours to grow roots.

and

I miss you like a dart hits the iris of a bullseye,
or a train ticket screams 4:30 at 4:47, I
wanted to tell you that it’s my birthday on Thursday
and I would have wanted you to
give me the gift of your guts on the floor, one last time,
to see if you still had it in you.

I hope our ghosts aren’t eating you alive.
If I’m to speak for myself, I’ll tell you that
the universe is twice as big as we think it is
and you’re the only one that made that idea
less devastating.”
― Lucas Regazzi

“Everything in the existing world seemed strange to him; it was as if the world had been created for some brief, mocking game. But this game of make-believe had dragged on for a long time,for eternity, and nobody felt like laughing anymore.”
― Andrei Platonov, Soul

“And who's to say that just because something lasts only a short time, it has little value?”
― Alice Steinbach, Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman

“It is one of the strongest bonds, I think, that can spring up between people: sharing a passion for certain books and their authors.”
― Alice Steinbach, Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman

“What adds up to a life is nothing more than the accumulation of small daily moments.”
― Alice Steinbach, Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman

“What is the purpose of memory? Is it a trick to make sure we don't forget who we are by reminding us of who we were?”
― Alice Steinbach, Educating Alice: Adventures of a Curious Woman

“I had forgotten how wonderful it is to stand on a bridge and catch the scent of rain in the air. I had forgotten how much I need to be a part of water, wind, sky.”
― Alice Steinbach, Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman

“Things happen, I thought, and we respond. That's what it all comes down to. To believe anything else, as far as I could tell, was simply an illusion.”
― Alice Steinbach, Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's
why.”
― John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

“Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.”
― Terry Pratchett

“We love because it's the only true adventure.”
― Nikki Giovanni

“I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.”
― Nikki Giovanni

“A lot of people refuse to do things because they don't want to go naked, don't want to go without guarantee. But that's what's got to happen. You go naked until you die”
― Nikki Giovanni

“If you don't understand yourself you don't understand anybody else.”
― Nikki Giovanni