Bookish Dee > Bookish Dee's Quotes

“If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.”
― Audre Lorde

“Time is a created thing. To say 'I don't have time,' is like saying, 'I don't want to.”
― Lao Tzu

“All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
is Change.

God
is Change.”
― Octavia E. Butler

“First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice.”
― Octavia Butler, Bloodchild and Other Stories

“Choose your leaders
with wisdom and forethought.
To be led by a coward
is to be controlled
by all that the coward fears.
To be led by a fool
is to be led
by the opportunists
who control the fool.
To be led by a thief
is to offer up
your most precious treasures
to be stolen.
To be led by a liar
is to ask
to be told lies.
To be led by a tyrant
is to sell yourself
and those you love
into slavery.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents

“Give me a daughter with your stubborn heart, or your even temper. Give our children your dark-bright eyes, or your enchanted smile. So that even when we are gone, the world will find within them all of the reasons why I loved you”
― Nizar Qabbani

“أرقى النفوس هي التي تجرعت الألم فتجنبت أن تذيق الآخرين مرارته

-

The finest souls are those who gulped pain and avoided making others taste it.”
― Nizar Qabbani

“I hadn't told them about you,
But they saw you bathing in my eyes.
I hadn't told them about you,
But they saw you in my written words.
The perfume of love cannot be concealed.”
― Nizar Qabbani, Arabian Love Poems: Full Arabic and English Texts

“Not everything in the heart can be said, so god created sighs, tears, long sleep, cold smile and shivering hands.”
― Nizar Qabbani

“I throw my passport in the sea, And name you my country
I throw all of my dictionaries in the fire, and name you my language”
― Nizar Qabbani

“Abuse and neglect negate love. Care and affirmation, the opposite of abuse and humiliation, are the foundation of love. No one can rightfully claim to be loving when behaving abusively.”
― Bell Hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“There is in this world
No such force as the force of
A person determined to rise.

The human soul
Cannot be permanently chained.”
― W.E.B. Du Bois

“I am looking for the human who admits his flaws
Who shocks the adversary
By being kinder not stronger
What would that be like?
We don't even know”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, Honeybee: Poems and Short Prose

“Because sometimes I live in a hurricane of words
and not one of them can save me.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, Words Under the Words: Selected Poems

“Today you will say things you can predict and other things you could never imagine this minute. Don't reject them, let them come through when they're ready, don't think you can plan it al out. This day will never, no matter how long you live, happen again. It is exquisitely singular. It will never again be exactly repeated.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, I'll Ask You Three Times, Are You OK?: Tales of Driving and Being Driven – A Traveling Poet's Funny and Moving Young Adult Stories

“Because the difference between prayer & mercy is how you move the tongue.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds