Rita > Rita's Quotes

“Happy is what you realize you are a fraction of a second before it's too late.”
― Ali Smith

“You must choose the life you live at the time you live it.”
― Claire North, The End of the Day

“Until you have not been free, you cannot understand what freedom means.”
― Claire North, The End of the Day

“Everyone who dies was once a child; every child once had a dream of something else; every child must die. It is important to remember the human behind the story, and I find it … good.” “I see. Less of an executioner, more of a … historian?”
― Claire North, The End of the Day

“Almost every woman I have ever met has a secret belief that she is just on the edge of madness, that there is some deep, crazy part within her, that she must be on guard constantly against ‘losing control’ — of her temper, of her appetite, of her sexuality, of her feelings, of her ambition, of her secret fantasies, of her mind.”
― Elana Dykewomon, Sinister Wisdom 36: Surviving Psychiatric Assault & Creating Emotional Well-Being in Our Communities

“We get so used to the stories we tell about ourselves. This is why we sometimes need to find ourselves in the stories of others.”
― Michele Filgate, What My Mother and I Don't Talk About: Fifteen Writers Break the Silence

“Our mothers are our first homes, and that's why we’re always trying to return to them.”
― Michele Filgate, What My Mother and I Don't Talk About: Fifteen Writers Break the Silence

“I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more”
― Franz Kafka, The Castle

“You misinterpret everything, even the silence.”
― Franz Kafka, The Castle

“If a man has his eyes bound, you can encourage him as much as you like to stare through the bandage, but he'll never see anything.”
― Franz Kafka, The Castle

“those who are ignorant naturally consider everything possible.”
― Franz Kafka, The Castle

“Humans are by nature romantic creatures. By that I don't mean full of love: I mean that they like the idea of things more than the reality of them.”
― Ronan Hession, Panenka

“Let’s not name it. Once you name something, you have to define it: say what it is and isn’t. Not to mention maintenance. All the relationships with names – parent, sister, husband, lover – come with maintenance. All that effort keeping it to what it’s supposed to be. Shouldn’t we allow ourselves at least one unnamed, undefined close relationship in our lives? A free-standing, wild-card arrangement. How about it, Joseph? How about you just try to make me happy, and I’ll try and do the same for you?”
― Ronan Hession, Panenka

“We were scared, but fear doesn’t look the same as desperation.”
― Mariana Enríquez, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed

“At that age there’s music playing in your head all the time, as if a radio were transmitting from the nape of your neck, inside your skull. Then one day that music starts to grow softer, or it just stops. When that happens, you’re no longer a teenager”
― Mariana Enríquez, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed

“We are such inward secret creatures, that inwardness the most amazing thing about us, even more amazing than our reason. But we cannot just walk into the cavern and look around. Most of what we think we know about our minds is pseudo-knowledge. We are all such shocking poseurs, so good at inflating the importance of what we think we value.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea

“Sometimes I felt I would die by wishing it when I went to sleep but I always woke up again and found I was still there. Every morning finding I'm still me, that's hell."

"Well, get out of hell then! The gate's open and I'm holding it!"

"I can't. I'm hell, myself.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea

“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Don't let the bastards grind you down.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom.
We lived in the gaps between the stories.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy?”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Imagine you’ve been unable to move for years because your fist is clenched inside a container, and to manage to pull your hand out, to free yourself, you just need to let go of what you’re clutching in your clenched fist . . . You open up your hand, you lose what’s inside it, it falls to the bottom of the container, but you are free.”
― Valérie Perrin, Trois

“A person who ceases to be a friend never was one.”
― Valérie Perrin, Three

“but no room with a view can replace a friend.”
― Valérie Perrin, Three

“When life takes away, it gives back in return.” But sometimes life gets it wrong. Deals the cards out dishonestly. Sometimes life lies to us, swindles us.”
― Valérie Perrin, Three

“Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones that I did not.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god.”
― Aristotle

“The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend.”
― Aristotle