Om Malik > Om's Quotes

“Wait

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven't they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don't go too early.
You're tired. But everyone's tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.”
― Galway Kinnell

“المشكلة يا ولد أن قادتنا كانوا أصغر منا، كنا أكبر و أعفى و أقدر لكنهم كانوا القادة، انكسروا فانكسرنا”
― رضوى عاشور, ثلاثية غرناطة

“ما الخطأ في أن يتعلق الغريق بلوح خشب أو عود أو قشة؟! ما الجرم في أن يصنع لنفسه قنديلا مزججا و ملونا لكي يتحمل عتمة أيامه ؟!ما الخطيئة في أن يتطلع إلى يوم جديد آملا و مستبشرا ؟!”
― رضوى عاشور, ثلاثية غرناطة

“Coffee, she'd discovered, was tied to all sorts of memories, different for each person. Sunday mornings, friendly get-togethers, a favorite grandfather long since gone, the AA meeting that saved their life. Coffee meant something to people. Most found their lives were miserable without it. Coffee was a lot like love that way. And because Rachel believed in love, she believed in coffee, too.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Peach Keeper

“There are times in life when people must know when not to let go. Balloons are designed to teach small children this.”
― Terry Pratchett

“The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Diggers

“The first step ... shall be to lose the way.”
― Galway Kinnell

“Prose is walking; poetry is flying”
― Galway Kinnell

“Never mind. The self is the least of it. Let our scars fall in love”
― Galway Kinnell

“Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Critic As Artist: With Some Remarks on the Importance of Doing Nothing and Discussing Everything

“If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
― Stephen King

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
― Albert Einstein

“No sight so sad as that of a naughty child," he began, "especially a naughty little girl. Do you know where the wicked go after death?"

"They go to hell," was my ready and orthodox answer.

"And what is hell? Can you tell me that?"

"A pit full of fire."

"And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for ever?"

"No, sir."

"What must you do to avoid it?"

I deliberated a moment: my answer, when it did come was objectionable: "I must keep in good health and not die.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Children aren't coloring books. You don't get to fill them with your favorite colors.”
― Khaled Hosseini

“تحبین الأطفال ؟.. برافو .. لكنھم طبعًا ھؤلاء الأطفال الذين يظھرون على علب الألبان الصناعیة .. لو استطعت أن تحبي طفلاً قذرًا فقیرًا مبلل الثیاب يتزاحم الذباب والمخاط حول وجھه فأنا أقر لك بأنك أنثى كاملة..”
― أحمد خالد توفيق

“I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn't be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage.”
― Roald Dahl

“I'm right and you're wrong, I'm big and you're small, and there's nothing you can do about it.”
― Roald Dahl, Matilda

“Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people.”
― Roald Dahl

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Nothing is as real as a dream. Responsibilities need not erase it. Duties need not obscure it. Because the dream is within you, no one can take it away.”
― Tom Clancy

“There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road: The Original Scroll

“You can even get used to having a hole in your life where someone used to live. A hole where you thought they'd live for always, except that one day they just step sideways, without looking back or saying good-bye, and vanish forever.”
― Sally Nicholls, Season of Secrets

“Or perhaps it is just that desire lies at the heart of human existence. When we turn away from one desire, we must find another to cleave to with all our strength --or else we die.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Sister of My Heart

“the darkness is a cresting wave. It sweeps me up out of my body until I float among the stars, those tine bright pores on the sky's skin. If only I could pass through them, I would end up on the other side, the right side, shadowless, perfectly illuminated, beyond the worries of this mundane world”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Sister of My Heart

“...the bird began to carry them to a new life in a new land. We'll be happy ever after, the queen wanted to whisper to her daughter as they flew, but she knew that was not true. Life never is that way. And so instead she held her daughter in silence, heart to heart, and as they traveled each heart drew on the other's strength, so that when they reached their destination they would be ready.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Sister of My Heart

“Ideas are easy. It's the execution of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats.”
― Sue Grafton

“Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“What she had realized was that love was that moment when your heart was about to burst.”
― Stieg Larsson, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

“I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay

“My heart is warm with the friends I make,
And better friends I'll not be knowing,
Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take,
No matter where it's going.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay, The Selected Poetry