Emily > Emily's Quotes

“If you don't hunt it down and kill it, it will hunt you down and kill you.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“To be alive at all is to have scars.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“Your criticism sounds to me as if you have read too many critical books and are too smart in an artificial, destructive, and very limited way.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“Men don't get knocked out, or I mean they can fight back against big things. What kills them is erosion; they get nudged into failure. They get slowly scared.[...]It's slow. It rots out your guts.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“There is prodigious strength in sorrow and despair.”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

“I'm only interested in stories that are about the crushing of the human heart.”
― Richard Yates

“There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go.”
― Tennessee Williams, Camino Real

“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Flannery O'Connor: Collected Works

“Do stuff. be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. stay eager.”
― Susan Sontag

“I want to be able to be alone, to find it nourishing - not just a waiting.”
― Susan Sontag, Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963

“Result of self-consciousness: audience and actor are the same. I live my life as a spectacle for myself, for my own edification. I live my life but I don't live in it. The hoarding instinct in human relations.”
― Susan Sontag, Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963

“I shall revenge myself in the cruelest way you can imagine. I shall forget it.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“Failure is a state of mind. It's like one of those sand traps an ant lion digs. You keep sliding back. Takes one hell of a jump to get out of it.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“He saw something that makes a man doubtful of the constancy of the realities outside himself. It was the shocking discovery that makes a man wonder if I've missed this, what else have I failed to see?”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“And no matter what, there's not one thing in this world *or* the next that we can do or hope or guess at or wish or pray that can change it or help it one iota. Because whatever is, is. That's all. And all there is now is to be ready for it, strong enough for it, whatever it may be. That's all. That's all that matters. It's all that matters because it's all that's possible. ”
― James Agee, A Death in the Family

“Just spunk won't be enough; you've got to have gumption. You've got to bear it in mind that nobody that ever lived is specially privileged; the axe can fall at any moment, on any neck, without any warning or any regard for justice. You've got to keep your mind off of pitying your own rotten luck and setting up any kind of howl about it. You've got to remember that things as bad as this and a hell of a lot worse have happened to millions of people before and that they've come through it and you can too. You'll bear it because there isn't any choice--except to go to pieces. . . It's kind of a test, Mary, and it's the only kind that amounts to anything. When something rotten like this happens. Then you have your choice. You start to really be alive, or you start to die. That's all.”
― James Agee , A Death in the Family

“Child, it's a very bad thing for a woman to face the worst that can happen to her, because after she's faced the worst she can't ever really fear anything again. ...Scarlett, always save something to fear— even as you save something to love...”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“You're so brutal to those who love you, Scarlett. You take their love and hold it over their heads like a whip.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“I guess I'm trying to say, Grab anything that goes by. It may not come around again.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“When a condition or a problem becomes too great, humans have the protection of not thinking about it. But it goes inward and minces up with a lot of other things already there and what comes out is discontent and uneasiness, guilt and a compulsion to get something--anything--before it is all gone.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. (Mr. Dumby, Act III)”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Doubt requires more courage than conviction does, and more energy; because conviction is a resting place and doubt is infinite – it is a passionate exercise. You may come out of my play uncertain. You may want to be sure. Look down on that feeling. We’ve got to learn to live with a full measure of uncertainty. There is no last word. That’s the silence under the chatter of our time. ”
― John Patrick Shanley, Doubt, a Parable

“It's a disease. Nobody thinks or feels or cares any more; nobody gets excited or believes in anything except their own comfortable little God damn mediocrity.”
― Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road