Quynn! > Quynn! 's Quotes

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
― Mary Oliver

“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains.”
― Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

“What are men to rocks and mountains?”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”
― Confucius, Confucius: The Analects

“I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!”
― Dorothea Mackellar, The Poems of Dorothea Mackellar

“The mountains are calling and I must go.”
― John Muir

“I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.”
― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“Don't you think it's better to be extremely happy for a short while, even if you lose it, than to be just okay for your whole life?”
― Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife

“I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“I address you all tonight for who you truly are: wizards, mermaids, travelers, adventurers, and magicians. You are the true dreamers.”
― Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret

“Let me give you a piece of advice. The handsome young fellow who's trying to rescue you from a hideous fate is never wrong. Not even if he says the sky is purple and made of hedgehogs.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel

“When it was dark, you always carried the sun in your hand for me.”
― Sean O'Casey, THREE MORE PLAYS BY SEAN O'CASEY:THE SILVER TASSIE;PURPLE DUST;RED ROSES FOR ME [Paperback]

“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple. With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.”
― Jenny Joseph, Warning: When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple

“Twilight fell: The sky turned to a light, dusky purple littered with tiny silver stars.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

“Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.”
― Stephen King, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Cherish your solitude. Take trains by yourself to places you have never been. Sleep out alone under the stars. Learn how to drive a stick shift. Go so far away that you stop being afraid of not coming back. Say no when you don’t want to do something. Say yes if your instincts are strong, even if everyone around you disagrees. Decide whether you want to be liked or admired. Decide if fitting in is more important than finding out what you’re doing here. Believe in kissing.”
― Eve Ensler

“Adults follow paths. Children explore. Adults are content to walk the same way, hundreds of times, or thousands; perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths, to creep beneath rhododendrons, to find the spaces between fences. I was a child, which meant that I knew a dozen different ways of getting out of our property and into the lane, ways that would not involve walking down our drive.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“I intend to put up with nothing that I can put down."

[Letter to J. Beauchamp Jones, August 8, 1839]”
― Edgar Allan Poe, The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe

“There are some wounds that one can heal only by deepening them and making them worse.”
― Auguste de Villiers de L'Isle-Adam

“Some days in late August at home are like this, the air thin and eager like this, with something in it sad and nostalgic and familiar...”
― William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury

“Memory believes before knowing remembers.

[Light in August]”
― William Faulkner, Light in August

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
― Mae West

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

“Remember, we're madly in love, so it's all right to kiss me anytime you feel like it.”
― Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games