nirarin > nirarin's Quotes

“He broke my heart. You merely broke my life.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“No one's fate is of any interest to you except your own.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“You should never ask anyone for anything. Never- and especially from those who are more powerful than yourself.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“The tongue may hide the truth but the eyes—never!”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“Why try to pursue what is completed?”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“She felt something warm and velvety by her leg. It was Behemoth.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“As long as I'm alive, I can think what I want, when I want, any way I want, as much as I want, and nobody can tell me any different.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“I want to push myself to my limits, and if things don't work out, then I can give up. But I will do everything I can until the bitter end. That is how I live.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“How about Proust's In Search of Lost Time?" Tamaru asked. "If you've never read it this would be a good opportunity to read the whole thing."

"Have you read it?"

"No, I haven't been in jail, or had to hide out for a long time. Someone once said unless you have those kinds of opportunities, you can't read the whole of Proust.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Don't touch me; I'll die if you touch me.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Alas, poor gentleman,
He look’d not like the ruins of his youth
But like the ruins of those ruins.”
― John Ford, Broken Heart

“In Nizhny Novgorod, there are not simply apple trees scattered about the countryside; there are forests of apple trees — forests as wild and ancient as Russia itself — in which apples grow in every color of the rainbow and in sizes ranging from a walnut to a cannonball.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“When you die, there is nothing--only a life that will be forgotten."

-from "Gathering Ashes”
― Yasunari Kawabata, The Dancing Girl of Izu and Other Stories

“Sometimes I feel so- I don’t know - lonely. The kind of helpless feeling when everything you’re used to has been ripped away. Like there’s no more gravity, and I’m left to drift in outer space with no idea where I’m going’
Like a little lost Sputnik?’
I guess so.”
― Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart

“As he caught his footing, his head fell back, and the Milky Way flowed down inside him with a roar.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country

“It was a stern night landscape. The sound of the freezing of snow over the land seemed to roar deep into the earth. There was no moon. The stars, almost too many of them to be true, came forward so brightly that it was as if they were falling with the swiftness of the void. As the stars came nearer, the sky retreated deeper and deeper into the night color.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country

“I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.”
― Wallace Stevens, The Collected Poems

“I love you. I love you,
but I’m turning to my verses
and my heart is closing
like a fist.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“Winter had long since come. It was freezing cold. Torn-up sounds and forms appeared with no evident connection from the frosty mist, stood, moved, vanished. Not the sun we are accustomed to on earth, but the crimson ball of some other substitute sun hung in the forest. From it, strainedly and slowly, as in a dream or a fairy tale, rays of amber yellow light, thick as honey, spread and on their way congealed in the air and froze to the trees.”
― Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

“Je te rencontre.
Je me souviens de toi.
Cette ville était faite à la taille de l'amour.
Tu étais fait à la taille de mon corps même.
Qui es-tu ?
Tu me tues.
J'avais faim. Faim d'infidélités, d'adultères, de mensonges et de mourir.
Depuis toujours.
Je me doutais bien qu'un jour tu me tomberais dessus.
Je t'attendais dans une impatience sans borne, calme.
Dévore-moi. Déforme-moi à ton image afin qu'aucun autre, après toi, ne comprenne plus du tout le pourquoi de tant de désir.
Nous allons rester seuls, mon amour.
La nuit ne va pas finir.
Le jour ne se lèvera plus sur personne.
Jamais. Jamais plus. Enfin.
Tu me tues.
Tu me fais du bien.
Nous pleurerons le jour défunt avec conscience et bonne volonté.
Nous n'aurons plus rien d'autre à faire, plus rien que pleurer le jour défunt.
Du temps passera. Du temps seulement.
Et du temps va venir.
Du temps viendra. Où nous ne saurons plus du tout nommer ce qui nous unira. Le nom s'en effacera peu à peu de notre mémoire.
Puis, il disparaîtra, tout à fait.”
― Marguerite Duras, Hiroshima mon amour

“Le vent se lève!... Il faut tenter de vivre!”
― Paul Valéry

“And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass”
― Ezra Pound

“I had no hope. Yet expectation lived on in me, the last thing she had left behind. What further consummations, mockeries, torments did I still anticipate? I had no idea as I abided in the unshaken belief that the time of cruel wonders was not yet over.”
― Stanisław Lem, Solaris

“What did that word mean to me? Earth? I thought of the great bustling cities where I would wander and lose myself, and I thought of them as I had thought of the ocean on the second or third night, when I had wanted to throw myself upon the dark waves. I shall immerse myself among men. I shall be silent and attentive, an appreciative companion. There will be many acquaintances, friends, women—and perhaps even a wife. For a while, I shall have to make a conscious effort to smile, nod, stand and perform the thousands of little gestures which constitute life on Earth, and then those gestures will become reflexes again. I shall find new interests and occupations; and I shall not give myself completely to them, as I shall never again give myself completely to anything or anybody. Perhaps at night I shall stare up at the dark nebula that cuts off the light of the twin suns, and remember everything, even what I am thinking now. With a condescending, slightly rueful smile I shall remember my follies and my hopes.”
― Stanisław Lem, Solaris

“There is a whole range of melancholy: it begins with a smile and a landscape and ends with the clang of a broken bell in the soul”
― Emil Cioran, Tears and Saints

“When eyes gaze endlessly into each other, they acquire an entirely new quality. You see things never revealed in passing glances. The eyes seem to lose their protective-colored retina. The whole truth comes splashing out wordlessly, it cannot be contained.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward

“But living longer doesn't mean having more life.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward

“He felt that they had nothing worth talking about. The indifferent gray noise blanketed all their words.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward

“This constant joining of hands which inevitably continues conversations.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward

“This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction. (...) Forever I shall be a stranger to myself.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus