maia > maia's Quotes

“It takes time to live. Like any work of art, life needs to be thought about.”
― Albert Camus, A Happy Death

“I want to talk about everything with at least one person as I talk about things with myself.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

“I thought: pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language.”
― Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

“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

“Reader, I cannot promise you will be less afraid when you finish this book, but I hope you will feel more able to name what lives inside you.”
― Olivia Gatwood, Life of the Party

“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?”
― Albert Camus

“I've never really not written, never not had another world of my own making to escape to, never known how to be in this world without most of my soul dreaming up and living in another.”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.”
― Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living

“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
― Arundhati Roy