Aliana > Aliana's Quotes

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”
― George Orwell, Why I Write

“Creative work is more accurately a machine that digs down and finds stuff, emotional stuff that will someday be raw material that can be used to produce more stuff, stuff like itself - clay to be available for future use. ”
― David Byrne, Bicycle Diaries

“The better a singer's voice, the harder it is to believe what they're saying.”
― David Byrne, Social Exclusion

“It can often seem that those in power don't want us to enjoy making things for ourselves - they'd prefer to establish a cultural hierarchy that devalues our amateur efforts and encourages consumption rather than creation.”
― David Byrne, How Music Works

“To some extent I happily don't know what I'm doing. I feel that it's an artist's responsibility to trust that.”
― David Byrne

“Before he dies, all his experiences in these long years gather themselves in his head to one point, a ques-tion he has not yet asked the doorkeeper. He waves him nearer, since he can no longer raise his stiffening body. The doorkeeper has to bend low towards him, for the difference in height between them has altered much to the man's disadvantage. "What do you want to know now?" asks the doorkeeper; "you are insati-able." "Everyone strives to reach the Law," says the man, "so how does it happen that for all these many years no one but myself has ever begged for admit-tance?" The doorkeeper recognizes that the man has reached his end, and to let his failing senses catch the words roars in his ear: "No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

“This perversion of the truth, familiar to the artist though it was, always unnerved him afresh and proved too much for him. What was a consequence of the premature ending of his fast was here presented as the cause of it! To fight against this lack of understanding, against a whole world of nonunderstanding, was impossible.”
― Franz Kafka, A Hunger Artist

“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”
― Franz Kafka

“Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”
― Franz Kafka

“Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.”
― Franz Kafka

“Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”
― Franz Kafka

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
― C.G. Jung

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn't thought about it.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Love is wise; hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don't like. We can only live together in that way. But if we are to live together, and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.”
― Bertrand Russell

“Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“You’ll be all right. You’re strong. I know you’ll be okay because I like you and you can’t like someone who doesn’t like themself. The people I fear for are the ones who I don’t like because they hate themselves so much they won’t let anyone else like them either. But I do like you. I’ll miss you. And I know you’ll be okay.”
― Sarah Kane, 4.48 Psychosis

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“Love art in yourself, and not yourself in art.”
― Constantin Stanislavski, My Life In Art

“Every person who is really an artist desires to create inside of himself another, deeper, more interesting life than the one that actually surrounds him.”
― Constantin Stanislavski

“If you are looking for something, don't go sit on the seashore and expect it to come and find you; you must search, search, search with all the stubbornness in you!”
― Konstantin Stanislavski, Building A Character

“you
not wanting me
was
the beginning of me
wanting myself
thank you”
― Nayyirah Waheed

“All I'm telling you to do is to be smart about it. Know that if this man isn't looking for a serious relationship, you're not going to change his mind just because you two are going on dates and being intimate. You could be the most perfect woman on the Lord's green earth-you're capable of interesting conversation, you cook a mean breakfast, you hand out backrubs like sandwiches, you're independent (which means, to him, that you're not going to be in his pockets)-but if he's not ready for a serious relationship, he going to treat you like sports fish.”
― Steve Harvey, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment

“The more relaxed you are, the better you are at everything: the better you are with your loved ones, the better you are with your enemies, the better you are at your job, the better you are with yourself.”
― Bill Murray

“Name one hero who was happy.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles