Anna > Anna's Quotes

“The Three Oddest Words

When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.
When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.
When I pronounce the word nothing,
I make something no nonbeing can hold.”
― Wislawa Szymborska

“Does it ever happen to you," Natasha said to her brother, when they had settled in the sitting room, "does it ever happen to you that you feel there's nothing more - nothing; that everything good has already happened? And it's not really boring, but sad?"

"As if it doesn't!" he said. "It's happened to me that everything's fine, everybody's merry, and it suddenly comes into my head that it's all tiresome and we all ought to die....”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“Never laugh at live dragons.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
― L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

“flux, n.

The natural state. Our moods change. Our lives change. Our feelings for each other change. Our bearings change. The song changes. The air changes. The temperature of the shower changes.
Accept this. We must accept this.”
― David Levithan, The Lover's Dictionary

“The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart.”
― Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay

“Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“[...] however big our world is - in our hearts, our minds, and our outsized digital maps - the universe is even bigger. A depressing thought to some, but a liberating thought to me.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

“...beauty, she had discovered occupied a narrow band. Ugliness, on the hand, had infinite variation.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“...falling in love could be achieved in a single word—a glance.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you’ve done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired. You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you didn’t even have a name for.”
― richard siken

“In one of his last newsletters, Mike Ranney wrote: "In thinking back on the days of Easy Company, I'm treasuring my remark to a grandson who asked, 'Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?'
No,'" I answered, 'but I served in a company of heroes.”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest

“The problem is, I can’t tell what’s real anymore, and what’s made up.”
― Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay

“Thinking like your prey. . . that's where you find their vulnerabilities.”
― Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay

“Death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Meniti Bianglala

“When people don't express themselves, they die one piece at a time.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

“I am getting better at smiling when people expect it.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

“Cecilia knew she could not go on wasting her days in the stews of her untidied room, lying on her bed in a haze of smoke, chin propped on her hand, pins and needles spreading up through her arm as she read her way through Richardson's Clarissa.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“Initially, a simple phrase chased round and round in Cecilia's thoughts: Of course, of course. How had she not seen it? Everything was explained. The whole day, the weeks before, her childhood. A lifetime. It was clear to her now. Why else take so long to choose a dress, or fight over a vase, or find everything so different, or be unable to leave? What had made her so blind, so obtuse?”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“Az első gondolatot mindig egy második követi, egyik rejtély szüli a másikat: vajon ugyanannyira élő-e mindenki más, mint ő maga? A nővére például számít-e önmagának, ugyanolyan fontos-e önmaga számára, mint Briony? Ceciliának lenni, az vajon ugyanolyan élettől pezsgő állapot-e, mint Brionynak lenni? Van-e nővérének is hullámtörés mögé rejtett titkos, igazi énje, és tölt-e vele időt, gondolkozik-e rajta, arca elé tartva egyik kinyújtott ujját? Van-e mindenkinek, apját, Bettyt, Hardmant is beleértve? Ha igen, akkor a világ, a társadalmi világ elviselhetetlenül bonyolult, kétmilliárd hang szól benne, és mindenkinek egyformán fontosak a gondolatai, mindenki egyformán ragaszkodhat foggal-körömmel az élethez, miközben egyedülállónak hiszi önmagát, pedig senki sem az. Az ember akár bele is fulladhat a jelentéktelenségbe.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“You're always in a rush, or else you're too exhausted to have a proper conversation. Soon enough, the long hours, the traveling, the broken sleep have all crept into your being and become part of you, so everyone can see it, in your posture, your gaze, the way you move and talk.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“That was the only time, as I stood there, looking at that strange rubbish, feeling the wind coming across those empty fields, that I started to imagine just a little fantasy thing, because this was Norfolk after all, and it was only a couple of weeks since I’d lost him. I was thinking about the rubbish, the flapping plastic in the branches, the shore-line of odd stuff caught along the fencing, and I half-closed my eyes and imagined this was the spot where everything I'd ever lost since my childhood had washed up, and I was now standing here in front of it, and if I waited long enough, a tiny figure would appear on the horizon across the field, and gradually get larger until I'd see it was Tommy, and he'd wave, maybe even call. The fantasy never got beyond that --I didn't let it-- and though the tears rolled down my face, I wasn't sobbing or out of control. I just waited a bit, then turned back to the car, to drive off to wherever it was I was supposed to be.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“She wanted to leave, she wanted to lie alone face down on her bed and savor the vile piquancy of the moment, and go back down the lines of branching consequences to the point before the destruction began. She needed to contemplate with eyes closed the full richness of what she had lost, what she had given away, and to anticipate the new regime.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“She raised one hand and flexed its fingers and wondered, as she had sometimes before, how this thing, this machine for gripping, this fleshy spider on the end of her arm, came to be hers, entirely at her command. Or did it have some little life of its own? She bent her finger and straightened it. The mystery was in the instant before it moved, the dividing moment between not moving and moving, when her intention took effect. It was like a wave breaking. If she could only find herself at the crest, she thought, she might find the secret of herself, that part of her that was really in charge.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“When we lost something precious, and we'd looked and looked and still couldn't find it, then we didn't have to be completely heartbroken. We still had that last bit of comfort, thinking one day, when we grow up, and we were free to travel around the counry, we would always go and find it in Norfolk...And that's why years and years later, that day Tommy and I found another copy of that lost tape of mine in a town on the Norfolk coast, we didn't just think it pretty funny; we both felt deep down some tug, some old wish to believe again in something that was once close to our hearts.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.

A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.

A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master...”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all.”
― Vincent Van Gogh