Deborah > Deborah's Quotes

“There is only one good thing in life, and that is love.”
― Guy de Maupassant, The Complete Short Stories of de Maupassant

“I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.”
― Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems

“Remain true to yourself, child. If you know your own heart, you will always have one friend who does not lie.”
― Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Forest House

“Fiction is an improvement on life”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“Almighty God, I am sorry I am now an atheist, but have You read Nietzsche?”
― John Fante, Ask the Dust

“You are nobody, and I might have been somebody, and the road to each of us is love.”
― John Fante, Ask the Dust

“Do you hate people?”

“I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around.”
― Charles Bukowski, Barfly

“An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.”
― Charles Bukowski

“If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you've still got a soul left to lose”
― Charles Bukowski and Carl Weissner

“Real loneliness is not necessarily limited to when you are alone.”
― Charles Bukowski

“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”
― Charles Bukowski

“A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never entirely recover.”
― Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last

“Nobody crossed him without a battle. He disliked almost everything, particularly his wife, his children, his neighbours, his church, his priest, his town, his state, his country, and the country from which he emigrated. Nor did he give a damn for the world either, or the sun or the stars, or the universe, or heaven or hell. But he liked women.”
― John Fante, The Brotherhood of the Grape

“Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness.”
― Allen Ginsberg

“America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.”
― Allen Ginsberg

“No rest
without love,
No sleep
without dreams
of love -
be mad or chill
obsessed with angels
or machines
the final wish
is love.”
― Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems

“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world...would do this, it would change the earth.”
― William Faulkner

“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata

“It takes two people to make a lie work: the person who tells it, and the one who believes it.”
― Jodi Picoult, Vanishing Acts

“Words without experience are meaningless.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“And the rest is rust and stardust.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“You, too, are cut out for failure; not that you’d fight the world. You’d let it chew you up and spit you out, and you’d lie there wondering what was wrong. Because you’d always expect the world to be something it wasn’t, something it had no wish to be. The weevil in the cotton, the worm in the beanstalk, the borer in the corn. You couldn't face them, and you couldn't fight them; because you’re too weak, and you’re too strong. And you have no place to go in the world.”
― John Williams, Stoner

“Lust and learning,” Katherine once said. “That’s really all there is, isn’t it?”
― John Williams, Stoner

“I will remember the kisses
our lips raw with love
and how you gave me
everything you had
and how I
offered you what was left of
me,
and I will remember your small room
the feel of you
the light in the window
your records
your books
our morning coffee
our noons our nights
our bodies spilled together
sleeping
the tiny flowing currents
immediate and forever
your leg my leg
your arm my arm
your smile and the warmth
of you
who made me laugh
again.”
― Charles Bukowski

“If there is no love in the world, we will make a new world, and we will give it walls, and we will furnish it with soft, red interiors, from the inside out, and give it a knocker that resonates like a diamond falling to a jeweller's felt so that we should never hear it. Love me, because love doesn't exist, and I have tried everything that does.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated

“Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.”
― André Malraux

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain

“Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person's face as you pass them on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you.”
― Miranda July

“Next to music, beer was best.”
― Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter