Jill > Jill's Quotes

“Death is the easy part, the hard part is living and knowing you could be so much more then you’re willing to be.”
― robert m drake

“when man determined to destroy
himself he picked the was
of shall and finding only why
smashed it into because”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“Well-behaved women seldom make history.”
― Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History

“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, down throw and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression.”
― Dylan Thomas

“And we all know love is a glass which makes even a monster appear fascinating.”
― Alberto Moravia, The Woman of Rome

“‎Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.”
― Voltaire

“She had a habit of walking around in white cotton panties and writing poetry on the back of crumpled envelopes.”
― Michael Faudet

“There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.”
― Leonard Cohen, Selected Poems, 1956-1968

“Sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.

I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you’re falling to the floor crying thinking, “I am falling to the floor crying,” but there’s an element of the ridiculous to it — you knew it would happen and, even worse, while you’re on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realize you didn’t paint it very well.”
― Richard Siken

“I sleep. I dream. I make up things that I would never say. I say them very quietly.”
― Richard Siken

“Imagine that the world is made out of love. Now imagine that it isn’t. Imagine a story where everything goes wrong, where everyone has their back against the wall, where everyone is in pain and acting selfishly because if they don’t, they’ll die. Imagine a story, not of good against evil, but of need against need against need, where everyone is at cross-purposes and everyone is to blame.”
― Richard Siken

“I wanted to explain myself to myself in an understandable way. I gave shape to my fears and made excuses. I varied my velocities, watched myselves sleep. Something's not right about what I'm doing but I'm still doing it-- living in the worst parts, ruining myself. My inner life is a sheet of black glass. If I fell through the floor I would keep falling.
The enormity of my desire disgusts me.”
― Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

“Oh we're a mess, poor humans, poor flesh—hybrids of angels and animals, dolls with diamonds stuffed inside them. We've been to the moon and we're still fighting over Jerusalem. Let me tell you what I do know: I am more than one thing, and not all of those things are good. The truth is complicated. It's two-toned, multi-vocal, bittersweet. I used to think that if I dug deep enough to discover something sad and ugly, I'd know it was something true. Now I'm trying to dig deeper.”
― Richard Siken

“Bird 1: This is the wrong story.
Bird 2: All stories are the wrong story when you are impatient.”
― Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

“Not knowing when the dawn will come
I open every door.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

“I am out with lanterns, looking for myself.”
― Emily Dickinson

“And I knew in my bones that Emily Dickinson wouldn't have written even one poem if she'd had two howling babies, a husband bent on jamming another one into her, a house to run, a garden to tend, three cows to milk, twenty chickens to feed, and four hired hands to cook for. I knew then why they didn't marry. Emily and Jane and Louisa. I knew and it scared me. I also knew what being lonely was and I didn't want to be lonely my whole life. I didn't want to give up on my words. I didn't want to choose one over the other. Mark Twain didn't have to. Charles Dickens didn't.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, A Northern Light

“Tell all the Truth but tell it slant--
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind--”
― Emily Dickinson

“Dying is a wild night and a new road.”
― Emily Dickinson

“Faith is a fine invention
When gentlemen can see,
But microscopes are prudent
In an emergency.”
― Emily Dickinson

“Dreaming permits each and everyone of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.”
― William Dement

“Longed for him. Got him. Shit.”
― Margaret Atwood

“If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God. You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You'd never love anyone, ever again. You'd never dare to.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyoked humour of your idleness.
Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wondered at
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.
If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work;
But when they seldom come, they wished-for come,
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.
So, when this loose behaviour I throw off
And pay the debt I never promisèd,
By how much better than my word I am,
By so much shall I falsify men’s hopes;
And like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glitt’ring o’er my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
I’ll so offend to make offence a skill,
Redeeming time when men think least I will.”
― William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 1

“I can call the spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come, when you do call for them?”
― William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 1

“The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.”
― Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes

“People who claim that they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us... It's people who claim that they're good, or any way better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of.”
― Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.”
― Mae West