Laura Dzubay > Laura's Quotes

“Pierre's madness consisted in not waiting, as he had formerly done, to discover personal attributes which he called "good qualities" in people before loving them: his heart overflowed with love, and by loving without cause he never failed to discover undeniable reasons for loving.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“Everything I know, I know because of love.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“Sometimes if you let people do things to you, you're really doing it to them.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“I teach you to be warriors in the garden so you will never be gardeners in the war.”
― Tomi Adeyemi, Children of Blood and Bone

“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“The soil of a man's heart is stonier, Louis. A man grows what he can, and he tends it. 'Cause what you buy, is what you own. And what you own... always comes home to you.”
― Stephen King, Pet Sematary

“So Now You're Death: Here's What You'll Need”
― Christopher Moore, A Dirty Job

“There was an embrace in death.”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“What concerns me is that man, unable to articulate, to express himself adequately, reverts to action. Since the vocabulary of action is limited, as it were, to his body, he is bound to act violently, extending his vocabulary with a weapon where there should have been an adjective.”
― Joseph Brodsky

“Listen--are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?”
― Mary Oliver

“The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.”
― Mary Oliver

“You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.”
― Mary Oliver, Wild Geese

“When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.”
― Mary Oliver

“I want to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.”
― Mary Oliver, Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays

“I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.”
― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Vol. 2

“How I go to the wood

Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single
friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore
unsuitable.

I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds
or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of
praying, as you no doubt have yours.

Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit
on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds,
until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost
unhearable sound of the roses singing.

If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love
you very much.”
― Mary Oliver, Swan: Poems and Prose Poems

“Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed.”
― Mary Oliver, Evidence: Poems

“You can have the other words-chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'll take it. ”
― Mary Oliver

“It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“The truly frightening flaw in humanity is our capacity for cruelty - we all have it.”
― Gillian Flynn, Dark Places

“It was surprising that you could spend hours in the middle of the night pretending things were okay, and know in thirty seconds of daylight that simply wasn't so”
― Gillian Flynn, Dark Places

“Everyone who keeps a secret, itches to tell it.”
― Gillian Flynn, Dark Places

“Coffee goes great with sudden death.”
― Gillian Flynn, Dark Places

“I should just listen to my gut and then do the opposite.”
― Gillian Flynn, Dark Places

“Glum. It meant having the blues in a way that annoyed other people. Having the blues aggressively.”
― Gillian Flynn, Dark Places

“I assumed everything bad in the world could happen, because everything bad in the world already did happen.”
― Gillian Flynn, Dark Places

“Worries find you easily enough without inviting them.”
― Gillian Flynn, Dark Places

“I've had the blues for twenty-four years.”
― Gillian Flynn, Dark Places

“Do you understand this is serious?"

"I understand you think it's serious.”
― Gillian Flynn, Dark Places