Libby > Libby's Quotes

“It's the hardest thing in the world to go on being aware of someone else's pain.”
― Pat Barker

“Sadly, the signals that allow men and women to find the partners who most please them are scrambled by the sexual insecurity initiated by beauty thinking. A woman who is self-conscious can't relax to let her sensuality come into play. If she is hungry she will be tense. If she is "done up" she will be on the alert for her reflection in his eyes. If she is ashamed of her body, its movement will be stilled. If she does not feel entitled to claim attention, she will not demand that airspace to shine in. If his field of vision has been boxed in by "beauty"--a box continually shrinking--he simply will not see her, his real love, standing right before him.”
― Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth

“Beauty provokes harassment, the law says, but it looks through men's eyes when deciding what provokes it.”
― Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth

“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
― Anaïs Nin

“i have given you the power to turn me inside out, my dear—please do not use it”
― Savannah Brown, Graffiti

“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Who can know the heart of youth but youth itself?”
― Patti Smith, Just Kids

“We went our separate ways, but within walking distance of one another.”
― Patti Smith, Just Kids

“I had no proof that I had the stuff to be an artist, though I hungered to be one.”
― Patti Smith, Just Kids

“Why can't I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply.”
― Patti Smith, Just Kids

“Moral wounds have this peculiarity - they may be hidden, but they never close; always painful, always ready to bleed when touched, they remain fresh and open in the heart.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“It's necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes.”
― Alexandre Dumas

“As a general rule...people ask for advice only in order not to follow it; or if they do follow it, in order to have someone to blame for giving it.”
― Alexandre Dumas

“Advice for a human.

81. You can't find happiness looking for the meaning of life. Meaning is only the third most important thing. It comes after loving and being.

82. If you think something is ugly, look harder. Ugliness is just a failure of seeing.”
― Matt Haig, The Humans

“And, just as it only takes a moment to die, it only takes a moment to live. You just close your eyes and let every futile fear slip away. And then, in this new state, free from fear, you ask yourself: who am I? If I could live without doubt what would I do? If I could be kind without the fear of being fucked over? If I could love without fear of being hurt? If I could taste the sweetness of today without thinking of how I will miss that taste tomorrow? If I could not fear the passing of time and the people it will steal? Yes. What would I do? Who would I care for? What battle would I fight? Which paths would I step down? What joys would I allow myself? What internal mysteries would I solve? How, in short, would I live?”
― Matt Haig, How to Stop Time

“If getting drunk was how people forgot they were mortal, then hangovers were how they remembered.”
― Matt Haig, The Humans

“That's the thing with time, isn't it? It's not all the same. Some days - some years - some decades - are empty. There is nothing to them. It's just flat water. And then you come across a year, or even a day, or an afternoon. And it is everything. It is the whole thing.”
― Matt Haig, How to Stop Time

“Wherever you are, at any moment, try and find something beautiful. A face, a line out of a poem, the clouds out of a window, some graffiti, a wind farm. Beauty cleans the mind.”
― Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

“Make sure, as often as possible, you are doing something you’d be happy to die doing.”
― Matt Haig, The Humans

“A paradox: The things you don’t need to live—books, art, cinema, wine, and so on—are the things you need to live.”
― Matt Haig, The Humans

“Knowledge is finite. Wonder is infinite.”
― Matt Haig, The Humans

“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”
― Franz Kafka

“My actions are my only true belongings.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Understanding Our Mind: 50 Verses on Buddhist Psychology

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“I suddenly realized that we were on borrowed time, that time is always borrowed, and that the lending agency exacts its premium precisely when we are least prepared to pay and need to borrow more...”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“We are not written for one instrument alone; I am not, neither are you.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Time makes us sentimental. Perhaps, in the end, it is because of time that we suffer.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata