Jackie > Jackie's Quotes

“The more the heart is nourished with happiness, the more it is insatiable.”
― Gabrielle Roy

“Freedom is often the first casualty of war.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, The General in His Labyrinth

“I'll never fall in love again... it's like having two souls at the same time.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, The General in His Labyrinth

“He was shaken by the overwhelming revelation that the headlong race between his misfortunes ad his dreams was at that moment reaching the finish line. The rest was darkness, 'Damn it,' he sighed. 'How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!”
― Gabriel García Márquez, The General in His Labyrinth

“Life had already given him sufficient reasons for knowing that no defeat was the final one.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, The General in His Labyrinth

“There is great power in the irresistible force of love.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, The General in His Labyrinth

“[F]or fate granted him the immense good fortune of losing his memory.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, The General in His Labyrinth

“The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seemed filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster”
― Elizabeth Bishop, The Complete Poems 1927-1979

“ I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling finger-tips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!

There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep. ”
― Elizabeth Bishop

“Why shouldn't we, so generally addicted to the gigantic, at last have some small works of art, some short poems, short pieces of music [...], some intimate, low-voiced, and delicate things in our mostly huge and roaring, glaring world?”
― Elizabeth Bishop

“I do think free will is sewn into everything we do; you can't cross a street, light a cigarette, drop saccharine in your coffee without really doing it. Yet the possible alternatives that life allows us are very few, often there must be none. I've never thought there was any choice for me about writing poetry. No doubt if I used my head better, ordered my life better, worked harder etc., the poetry would be improved, and there must be many lost poems, innumerable accidents and ill-done actions. But asking you is the might have been for me, the one towering change, the other life that might have been had.”
― Robert Lowell, Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell

“Dreams were the worst. Of course I dreamed of food
and love, but they were pleasant rather
than otherwise. But then I'd dream of things
like slitting a baby's throat, mistaking it
for a baby goat. I'd have
nightmares of other islands
stretching away from mine, infinities
of islands, islands spawning islands,
like frogs' eggs turning into polliwogs
of islands, knowing that I had to live
on each and every one, eventually,
for ages, registering their flora,
their fauna, their geography.”
― Elizabeth Bishop, Geography III

“All the untidy activity continues,
awful but cheerful.”
― Elizabeth Bishop

“The moon in the bureau mirror
looks out a million miles
(and perhaps with pride, at herself,
but she never, never smiles)
far and away beyond sleep, or
perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.

By the Universe deserted,
she'd tell it to go to hell,
and she'd find a body of water,
or a mirror, on which to dwell.
So wrap up care in a cobweb
and drop it down the well

into that world inverted
where left is always right,
where the shadows are really the body,
where we stay awake all night,
where the heavens are shallow as the sea
is now deep, and you love me.”
― Elizabeth Bishop

“But they made me realize more than I ever had the rarity of true originality, and also the sort of alienation it might involve.”
― Elizabeth Bishop

“What I told you about saving people isn't true. You might think it is, because you might want someone else to save you, or you might want to save someone so badly. But no one else can save you, not really. Not from yourself. [...] You fall asleep in the foothills, and the wolf comes down from the mountains. And you hope someone will wake you up. Or chase it off. Or shoot it dead. But when you realize that the wolf is inside you, that's when you know. You can't run from it. And no one who loves you can kill the wolf, because it's part of you. They see your face on it. And they won't fire the shot.”
― Ava Dellaira, Love Letters to the Dead

“And maybe what growing up really means is knowing that you don't have to be just a character, going whichever way the story says. It's knowing you could be the author instead.”
― Ava Dellaira, Love Letters to the Dead

“You can be noble and brave and beautiful and still find yourself falling.”
― Ava Dellaira, Love Letters to the Dead

“You think you know someone, but that person always changes, and you keep changing, too. I understood it suddenly, how that’s what being alive means. Our own invisible plates shifting inside of our bodies, beginning to align into the people we are going to become.”
― Ava Dellaira, Love Letters to the Dead

“When we are in love, we are both completely in danger and completely saved.”
― Ava Dellaira, Love Letters to the Dead

“Sometimes when we say things, we hear silence. Or only echoes. Like screaming from inside. And that’s really lonely. But that only happens when we weren’t really listening. It means we weren’t ready to listen yet. Because every time we speak, there is a voice. There is the world that answers back.”
― Ava Dellaira, Love Letters to the Dead

“Truth is beautiful, no matter what the truth is. Even if it's scary or bad. It is beauty simply because it's true. And truth is bright. Truth makes you more you.”
― Ava Dellaira, Love Letters to the Dead

“So maybe when we can say things, when we can write the words, when we can express how it feels, we aren’t so helpless.”
― Ava Dellaira, Love Letters to the Dead

“Nirvana means freedom. Freedom from suffering. I guess some people would say that death is just that. So, congratulations on being free, I guess. The rest of us are still here, grappling with all that's been torn up.”
― Ava Dellaira, Love Letters to the Dead

“The thing about traditions is that they hold up the shape of your memory.”
― Ava Dellaira, Love Letters to the Dead

“I mean, words can't be good enough for a lot of things. But, you know, I guess we have to try.”
― Ava Dellaira, Love Letters to the Dead

“I think that by beauty, you don't just mean something that's pretty. You mean something that makes us human.”
― Ava Dellaira, Love Letters to the Dead

“If beauty is truth, and truth is beauty, they are defined by each other, so how do we know the meaning of either?”
― Ava Dellaira, Love Letters to the Dead

“I feel like I am drowning in memories. Everything is too bright.”
― Ava Dellaira, Love Letters to the Dead

“We do things sometimes because we feel so much inside of us, and we don’t notice how it affects somebody else.”
― Ava Dellaira, Love Letters to the Dead