Livs > Livs's Quotes

“But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“It’s your body, you can treat it however you please. The only area where you’re free to do just as you like. And even that doesn’t turn out how you wanted.”
― Han Kang, The Vegetarian

“We wear clothes, and speak, and create civilizations, and believe we are more than wolves. But inside us there is a word we cannot pronounce and that is who we are.”
― Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

“Nothing will come of nothing: speak again.”
― William Shakespeare, King Lear

“When we our betters see bearing our woes,
We scarcely think our miseries our foes.”
― William Shakespeare, King Lear

“How light and portable my pain seems now
When that which makes me bend makes the king bow.”
― William Shakespeare, King Lear

“I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“Love is what we have, against time and death, against all the powers ranged to crush us down.”
― Amal El-Mohtar, This Is How You Lose the Time War

“It was like kissing the darkness. As if the darkness had life, had a shape, had taste, was warm and glib.”
― Sarah Waters, Fingersmith

“Life is such a strange thing, she thinks, once she has stopped laughing. Even after certain things have happened to them, no matter how awful the experience, people still go on eating and drinking, going to the toilet and washing themselves - living, in other words. And sometimes they even laugh out loud. And they probably have these same thoughts, too, and when they do it must make them cheerlessly recall all the sadness they'd briefly managed to forget.”
― Han Kang, The Vegetarian

“Time was a wave, almost cruel in its relentlessness as it whisked her life downstream, a life she had to constantly strain to keep from breaking apart.”
― Han Kang, The Vegetarian

“I have dreams too, you know. Dreams…and I could let myself dissolve
into them, let them take me over…but surely the dream isn’t all there is? We have to wake up at some
point, don’t we? Because…because then…”
― Han Kang, The Vegetarian

“They did this to me. They did that to me. A woman who thinks that way will never overcome her anger. You are not being punished for your anger. You're being punished by your anger.”
― Lisa See, The Island of Sea Women

“How do we fall in love? ... How different it is with friendship. No one picks a friend for us. We come together by choice. We are not tied together through ceremony or the responsibility to create a son. We tie ourselves together through moment. The spark when we first meet. Laughter and tears shared. Secrets packed away to be treasured, hoarded, and protected. The wonder that someone can be so different from you and yet still understand your heart in a way no one else ever will.”
― Lisa See, The Island of Sea Women

“Women live quietly," I said. "However angry or broken a woman might get, she does not think about beating someone, does she?”
― Lisa See, The Island of Sea Women

“A queen
offers her hand to be kissed,
& can form it into a fist
while smiling the whole damn time.”
― Elizabeth Acevedo, Clap When You Land

“Fight until you can’t breathe, & if you have to forfeit, you forfeit smiling, make them think you let them win.”
― Elizabeth Acevedo, Clap When You Land

“There is an artist my mother loved, Juan Gabriel, who was once asked in an interview if he was gay. His reply: What's understood need not be said. I remember how Mami's eyes fluttered to me like a bee on a flower acknowledging the pollen is sweet.”
― Elizabeth Acevedo, Clap When You Land

“I was an aspiration, a flame he wanted to kiss. But for her, he would have lit the entire island. I was a smart decision. She made a dreamer of him. & well, for the child that came, he sacrificed it all. He loved you both. Understand that. A part of me even thinks he might have loved me & his other wife too. Yano was a complicated man.”
― Elizabeth Acevedo, Clap When You Land

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“He kisses—how do I explain it? Like someone in love. Like he has nothing to lose. Like someone who has just learned a foreign language and can use only the present tense and only the second person. Only now, only you. There are some men who have never been kissed like that. There are some men who discover, after Arthur Less, that they never will be again.”
― Andrew Sean Greer, Less

“Strange to be almost fifty, no? I feel like I just understood how to be young."
"Yes! It's like the last day in a foreign country. You finally figure out where to get coffee, and drinks, and a good steak. And then you have to leave. And you won't ever be back.”
― Andrew Sean Greer, Less

“Twenty years of joy and support and friendship, that’s a success. Twenty years of anything with another person is a success. If a band stays together twenty years, it’s a miracle. If a comedy duo stays together twenty years, they’re a triumph. Is this night a failure because it will end in an hour? Is the sun a failure because it’s going to end in a billion years? No, it’s the fucking sun. Why does a marriage not count? It isn’t in us, it isn’t in human beings, to be tied to one person forever.”
― Andrew Sean Greer, Less

“She told me she met the love of her life,” Zohra says at last, still staring out the window. “You read poems about it, you hear stories about it, you hear Sicilians talk about being struck by lightning. We know there’s no love of your life. Love isn’t terrifying like that. It’s walking the fucking dog so the other one can sleep in, it’s doing taxes, it’s cleaning the bathroom without hard feelings. It’s having an ally in life. It’s not fire, it’s not lightning. It’s what she always had with me. Isn’t it? But what if she’s right, Arthur? What if the Sicilians are right? That it’s this earth-shattering thing she felt? Something I’ve never felt. Have you?”
― Andrew Sean Greer, Less

“entendendo que o tempo
sempre leva
as nossas coisas preferidas no mundo
e nos esquece aqui
olhando pra vida
sem elas”
― Aline Bei, O Peso do Pássaro Morto

“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

“Mr. Moony presents his compliments to Professor Snape, and begs him to keep his abnormally large nose out of other people's business.
Mr. Prongs agrees with Mr. Moony, and would like to add that Professor Snape is an ugly git.
Mr. Padfoot would like to register his astonishment that an idiot like that ever became a professor.
Mr. Wormtail bids Professor Snape good day, and advises him to wash his hair, the slimeball.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

“Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

“Don't let the muggles get you down.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly – they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World