Vanessa Goscinny > Vanessa's Quotes

“The whole time I was hoping my silence would fit yours and exclamation marks would gently float across time and space so that boundaries would be crossed; the whole time I was praying you would read my eyes and understand what I was never able to understand. See, we were never about butterflies. We’ve always been about burning stars. All about us is unearthly and radiant.”
― Anna Akhmatova

“you are many years late; how happy I am to see you”
― Anna Akhmatova

“Love consists of this: two solitudes that meet, protect and greet each other. ”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“This is a book about a very simple idea: where the criminal justice system fails to respond vigorously to violent injury and death, homicide becomes endemic.”
― Jill Leovy, Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America

“I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list.”
― Susan Sontag

“And also don’t forget, the reason opportunity is often missed is that it usually comes disguised as hard work.”
― Clifford Irving, Trial

“If you ever find yourself in the wrong story, leave.”
― Mo Willems, Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs

“Do not resent her. Think about the situation, for instance, when you take the last trash bag from its box: you must throw out the box by putting it in that very trash bag. What was once contained, now must contain. The container, then, becomes the contained, the enveloped, the held.”
― Lorrie Moore, Self-Help

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.”
― Alice Walker

“Don't compromise yourself - you're all you have.”
― John Grisham, The Rainmaker

“The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned. We”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”
― Muhammad Ali

“I realized that, sure, I was a Spokane Indian. I belonged to that tribe. But I also belonged to the tribe of American immigrants. And to the tribe of basketball players. And to the tribe of bookworms. And the tribe of cartoonists. And the tribe of chronic masturbators. And the tribe of teenage boys. And the tribe of small-town kids. And the tribe of Pacific Northwesterners. And the tribe of tortilla chips-and-salsa lovers. And the tribe of poverty. And the tribe of funeral-goers. And the tribe of beloved sons. And the tribe of boys who really missed their best friends. It was a huge realization. And that's when I knew that I was going to be okay.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“What do you say to people when they ask you how it feels to lose everything? When every planet in your solar system has exploded?”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“He may not have loved me perfectly, but he loved me as well as he could.”
― Sherman Alexie

“I used to think the world was broken down by tribes,' I said. 'By Black and White. By Indian and White. But I know this isn't true. The world is only broken into two tribes: the people who are assholes and the people who are not.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“We all have to find our own ways to say good-bye.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“I think all of us are always five years old in the presence and absence of our parents.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“If you're good at it, and you love it, and it helps you navigate the river of the world, then it can't be wrong.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“Do you understand how amazing it is to hear that from an adult? Do you know how amazing it is to hear that from anybody? It's one of the simplest sentences in the world, just four words, but they're the four hugest words in the world when they're put together.

You can do it.

I can do it.

Let's do it.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“Quand il m'arrive de sentir que mon temps est peu de chose, je pense à celui qui s'écoule simultanément dans bien des endroits du monde et qui passe près du mien : ce sont des arbres qui chassent des pollens, des femmes qui attendent une rupture des eaux, un garçon qui étudie un vers de Dante, mille cloches de récréation qui sonnent dans toutes les écoles du monde, du vin qui fermente au soutirage, toutes choses qui arrivent au même moment et qui, alliant leur temps au mien, lui donnent de l'ampleur. (p. 106)”
― Erri De Luca, Tre cavalli

“This is what books should do: Carry a person and not be carried by him; take the day off his back, not add its own ounces of paper to his vertebrae.”
― Erri De Luca, Tre cavalli

“Voilà Dvora, je sens des abeilles dans mon sang, un ours dans mon cœur, chaque battement est une patte qui démolit la ruche. Elle me donne sa main et moi je sais que je ne la lui rendrai plus.”
― Erri De Luca

“You're right to say "hold on to" instead of "keep." To keep is presumptuous. To hold means you realize that today it's yours and tomorrow who knows.”
― Erri De Luca, God's Mountain

“Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.”
― Marie Curie

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”
― Marie Curie

“Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.”
― Marie Curie