Z > Z's Quotes

“When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”
― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You

“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
― Ray Bradbury

“Remember it all, every insult, every tear. Tattoo it on the inside of your mind. In life, knowledge of poisons is essential. I've told you, nobody becomes an artist unless they have to.”
― Janet Fitch

“If there is a thing I truly despise, it is being addressed as "dearie." When I write my magnum opus, A Treatise Upon All Poison, and come to "Cyanide," I am going to put under "Uses" the phrase "Particularly efficacious in the cure of those who call one 'Dearie.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

“Poison." he said, deadpan. "That's an unusual name to give your child. You must love her very much."
She's a treasure." Bram agreed, blithely ignoing the sarcasm.
....
Then went a few dozen feet in silence, until they were out of eaarshor of the gaurd.
She's a treasure." Poison mimicked, and Bram burst out laughing.”
― Chris Wooding, Poison

“Do you remember? Do you remember the world before the poison?”
― Amy Reed, Clean

“Beasts bounding through time.

Van Gogh writing his brother for paints
Hemingway testing his shotgun
Celine going broke as a doctor of medicine
the impossibility of being human
Villon expelled from Paris for being a thief
Faulkner drunk in the gutters of his town
the impossibility of being human
Burroughs killing his wife with a gun
Mailer stabbing his
the impossibility of being human
Maupassant going mad in a rowboat
Dostoevsky lined up against a wall to be shot
Crane off the back of a boat into the propeller
the impossibility
Sylvia with her head in the oven like a baked potato
Harry Crosby leaping into that Black Sun
Lorca murdered in the road by the Spanish troops
the impossibility
Artaud sitting on a madhouse bench
Chatterton drinking rat poison
Shakespeare a plagiarist
Beethoven with a horn stuck into his head against deafness
the impossibility the impossibility
Nietzsche gone totally mad
the impossibility of being human
all too human
this breathing
in and out
out and in
these punks
these cowards
these champions
these mad dogs of glory

moving this little bit of light toward
us
impossibly”
― Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

“You go to work the next day pretending nothing happened.
Your co-workers ask
if everything's okay and you tell them
you're just tired.
And you're trying to smile. And they're trying to smile.”
― Richard Siken

“Two words. Three vowels. Four constenants. Seven letters. It can either cut you open to the core and leave you in ungodly pain or it can free your soul and lift a tremendous weight off you shoulders. The phrase is: It's over.”
― Maggi Richard

“when things break, it's not the actual breaking that prevents them from getting back together again. it's because a little piece gets lost -- the two remaining ends couldn't fit together even if they wanted to. the whole shape has changed.”
― David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“Tell me the story..
About how the sun loved the moon so much..
That she died every night..
Just to let him breathe...”
― Hanako Ishii

“For the Earth itself is a blossom, she says,
on the star tree,
pale with luminous
ocean leaves.”
― Rolf Jacobsen

“Aristotle taught that stars are made of a different matter than the four earthly elements— a quintessence— that also happens to be what the human psyche is made of. Which is why man’s spirit corresponds to the stars. Perhaps that’s not a very scientific view, but I do like the idea that there’s a little starlight in each of us.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Love in the Afternoon

“You were right to come to see a dying man. It is right that these moments should have witnesses. Everyone has his dream; I would like to live till dawn, but I know I have less than three hours left. It will be night, but no matter. Dying is simple. It does not take daylight. So be it: I will die by starlight”
― Victor Hugo

“There was the starlight set upon the brilliant darkness; and there were her pale cool cheeks, and he let himself be lost in love for her, as he had so wanted to do.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, One Interne

“Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

“Non est ad astra mollis e terris via" - "There is no easy way from the earth to the stars”
― Seneca

“But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“We have calcium in our bones, iron in our veins, carbon in our souls, and nitrogen in our brains. 93 percent stardust, with souls made of flames, we are all just stars that have people names.”
― Nikita Gill

“I saw the world from the stars' point of view, and it looked unbearably lonely.”
― Shaun David Hutchinson, We Are the Ants

“Per aspera ad astra, Papa,' I whispered. Through hardship to the stars.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“Thoughts are like burning stars, and ideas, they flood, they stretch the universe.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“A sunset is the sun’s fiery kiss to the night.”
― Crystal Woods, Write like no one is reading 3

“There's a special quality to the loneliness of dusk, a melancholy more brooding even than the night's.”
― Ed Gorman, Everybody's Somebody's Fool

“Dusk is the time when men whisper of matters about which they remain silent in the full light of the sun.”
― Simon Raven, Doctors Wear Scarlet

“And dusk fell because it suited his skin.”
― Anne Enright, What Are You Like?

“She was his dawn of bliss
He was her dusk of wounds,
Each day they came up to
See and touch
They couldn't stay for long
But they looked perfect together ~”
― Tanya Gambhir