Ilef > Ilef's Quotes

“When I am dead, I hope it may be said: "His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.”
― Hilaire Belloc

“I’m talking about the kind of indignity that changes you as a person, makes you withdraw, hide from the world because suddenly it’s turned into something frightening—full of dark corners and monsters.”
― S. Walden, Going Under

“I realized I needed to look at evil in an entirely new light. Most bad guys weren’t running around with eyes bugged out. Most bad guys didn’t come across freaky and frightening…Most bad guys were normal, everyday guys moving through life like anyone else… They were hard to spot and that’s what made them so good at being bad… They could get away with it, and they knew it.”
― S. Walden, Going Under

“No one can know sincere happiness, Sophie, without first having known sorrow. One can never appreciate the enormity and rareness of such a fiery bliss without seeing misery, however unfair that may be.”
― Fisher Amelie, Vain

“I didn't want to wake up. I was having a much better time asleep. And that's really sad. It was almost like a reverse nightmare, like when you wake up from a nightmare you're so relieved. I woke up into a nightmare.”
― Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story

“I don't know how I can be so ambitious and so lazy at the same time.”
― Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story

“Sometimes I just think depression's one way of coping with the world. Like, some people get drunk, some people do drugs, some people get depressed. Because there's so much stuff out there that you have to do something to deal with it.”
― Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story

“I’m not better, you know. The weight hasn’t left my head. I feel how easily I could fall back into it, lie down and not eat, waste my time and curse wasting my time, look at my homework and freak out and go and chill at Aaron’s, look at Nia and be jealous again, take the subway home and hope that it has an accident, go and get my bike and head to the Brooklyn Bridge. All of that is still there. The only thing is, it’s not an option now. It’s just… a possibility, like it’s a possibility that I could turn to dust in the next instant and be disseminated throughout the universe as an omniscient consciousness. It’s not a very likely possibility.”
― Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story

“Fear, Sadness. They're not weaknesses. They are overpowering, defining emotions. They make you human, Sophie.”
― Fisher Amelie, Vain

“I was not staring at you,” he told his plate.
I leaned over. “Did you hear that, Dingane’s lunch? He was not staring at you.”
He looked up at me crossly. “I was not staring at you.”
“I never said you were.”
“I was merely explaining that Henry was exaggerating. I did not stare at you.”
“Okay,” I stated, implying in my tone that he had done just that.
“I didn’t. I-I wasn’t.”
“I believe you,” I told him
“I may have looked at you a few times to make sure you were doing your job.”
“Oh, I see then.”
“But I certainly wasn’t staring.”
“We’ve established that you were not staring.”
He breathed deeply a few times, his eyes burning into mine. “Good.”
He’d definitely been staring.”
― Fisher Amelie, Vain

“And what is there to be joyful about?" I asked honestly, thinking on the images of dead children curled into themselves at the village. Another burst of silent tears streamed down.

"Life, Sophie. They still live. They breathe, they love each other, they find joy in the world around them for no other reason than because they are children. They are resilient. They will always rise above. Always. It is a curious facet of the innocent young.”
― Fisher Amelie, Vain

“I have accepted fear as part of life – specifically the fear of change... I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back....”
― Erica Jong

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal — as we are!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Show me a hero, and I'll write you a tragedy.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“I would die for you. But I won't live for you.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“How can love be worthy of its name if one selects solely the pretty things and leaves out the hardships? It is easy to enjoy the good and dislike the bad. Anybody can do that. The real challenge is to love the good and the bad together, not because you need to take the rough with the smooth but because you need to go beyond such descriptions and accept love in its entirety.”
― Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love

“If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven't loved enough.”
― Elif Şafak, The Forty Rules of Love

“Tell me what you pay attention to and I will tell you who you are.”
― José Ortega y Gasset

“I spent so much energy on cutting and pasting together the person I wanted to be that I forgot who I was.”
― Maggi Myers, The Final Piece

“We are all alone, trapped in these bodies and our own minds, and whatever company we have in this life is only fleeting and superficial.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“The great thing about this life of ours is that you can be someone different to everybody.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“There is only one page left to write on. I will fill it with words of only one syllable. I love. I have loved. I will love.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest. I was standing on the lawn and I fell. The bullet hole opened wide and my heart rolled out of my rib cage and down into a flower bed. Blood gushed rhythmically from my open wound,
then from my eyes,
my ears,
my mouth.
It tasted like salt and failure. The bright red shame of being unloved soaked the grass in front of our house, the bricks of the path, the steps of the porch. My heart spasmed among the peonies like a trout.”
― E. Lockhart, We Were Liars

“One day, she ventured to the palace library and was delighted to find what good company books could be.”
― E. Lockhart, We Were Liars

“They know that tragedy is not glamorous. They know it doesn't play out in life as it does on a stage or between the pages of a book. It is neither a punishment meted out nor a lesson conferred. Its horrors are not attributable to one single person. Tragedy is ugly and tangled, stupid and confusing.”
― E. Lockhart, We Were Liars

“She confused being spartan with being charitable, and gave away her possessions without truly doing good with them.
She confused being sick with being brave, and suffered agonies while imagining she merited praise for it.
She confused wit with intelligence, and made people laugh rather than lightening their hearts or making them think.”
― E. Lockhart, We Were Liars

“إن حريتي لا أستمدها من خلايا ضعيفة من خلايا جسدي ...
وإن قيودي لا تنبع من خوف على عذرية واهية تمزقها خبطة عشوائية وتوصلها غرز العلم ...
قيودي أضعها بنفسي حين أريد القيود ...
وحريتي أمارسها بإرادتي كما أفهم الحرية.”
― نوال السعداوي, مذكرات طبيبة

“ لو أغلقت علىّ أربعة جدران عالية مع رجل لا أريد أن أعطيه لمسة واحدة من يدي فلن أعطيه .. وإذا أردت أن أعطي الرجل نفسي فسوف أعطيها له أمام العالم دون تلصص أو اختلاس”
― نوال السعداوي, مذكرات طبيبة