Fatima Koops > Fatima's Quotes

“His eyes they held the most dangerous thing, they held the top of the sins. Indifference. Indifference. A vacancy where human care should be.”
― Nina MacLaughlin, Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung

“everything i want to say / I swallow

-"A Garden”
― Lyric Hunter, Swallower

“And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Yes, I deserve a spring–I owe nobody nothing.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Writer's Diary

“I need a life that isn’t just about needing to escape my life.”
― Robert Polito

“It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“...and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?”
― Vincent Willem van Gogh

“There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“A great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“I put my heart and soul into my work, and I have lost my mind in the process.”
― Vincent Willem van Gogh

“What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it.”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“I exist. It is soft, so soft, so slow. And light: it seems as though it suspends in the air. It moves.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“[B]ecause now
in this moment which is so wondrous the way
it lies beside you, I either do not exist or the past
has never existed, either my breath is
the breath of stars or I do not breathe as I turn to you,
as you breathe my name, my heart,
as the net of stars dissolves above us, as you wrap
yourself around me like honeysuckle, the moon
turning pale because it is so drained by our love,
so that before this moment, before you lay beneath me,
you must have disguised yourself the way the killdeer
you pointed out diverts intruders to save what it loves.
pretending a broken wing, giving itself over finally
to whatever forces, whatever love, whatever touch,
whatever suffering it needs just to say I am here,
I am always here, stroking the wings of your soul.

—Richard Jackson, closing lines to “Sonata of Love’s History,” Heartwall<?i> (University of Massachusetts Press, 2000)”
― Richard Jackson, Heartwall

“I am not a creature that was born. I am a fire that was set.”
― Moss Angel the Undying, Sea-Witch Vol. 2

“I kneel into a dream where I am good & loved. I am good. I am loved. My hands have made some good mistakes. They can always make better ones.”
― Natalie Wee, Our Bodies & Other Fine Machines

“Madness as a defense against terror.
Madness as a defense against grief.”
― Susan Sontag, As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980

“Glance at the sun. See the moon and the stars. Gaze at the beauty of the Earth's greenings. Now, think.”
― Hildegard von Bingen

“This is the strange way of the world, that people who simply want to love are instead forced to become warriors.”
― Lauren Oliver, Requiem

“When you left I walked
into the ocean. Not to
drown but to be held

by something
reluctant
to let go. Don’t

make this bigger
than it is, which is big
enough to swallow

whales
and civilizations.
I joined

the blue, I was blue.
And when I looked
down, I shattered

and reformed
so many times, you know, I couldn’t catch
a clear look at myself.”
― Leila Chatti

“To be alive: not just the carcass /
But the spark.
That's crudely put, but...
If we're not supposed to dance,
Why all this music?”
― Gregory Orr

“I am not the first person you loved.
You are not the first person I looked at
with a mouthful of forevers. We
have both known loss like the sharp edges
of a knife. We have both lived with lips
more scar tissue than skin. Our love came
unannounced in the middle of the night.
Our love came when we’d given up
on asking love to come. I think
that has to be part
of its miracle.
This is how we heal.
I will kiss you like forgiveness. You
will hold me like I’m hope. Our arms
will bandage and we will press promises
between us like flowers in a book.
I will write sonnets to the salt of sweat
on your skin. I will write novels to the scar
of your nose. I will write a dictionary
of all the words I have used trying
to describe the way it feels to have finally,
finally found you.

And I will not be afraid
of your scars.

I know sometimes
it’s still hard to let me see you
in all your cracked perfection,
but please know:
whether it’s the days you burn
more brilliant than the sun
or the nights you collapse into my lap
your body broken into a thousand questions,
you are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
I will love you when you are a still day.
I will love you when you are a hurricane.”
― Clementine von Radics

“You remember too much,
my mother said to me recently.
Why hold onto all that? And I said,
Where can I put it down?”
― Anne Carson, Glass, Irony and God

“Tell him yes. Even if you are dying of fear, even if you are sorry later, because whatever you do, you will be sorry all the rest of your life if you say no.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

“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]’m reliving it street by street, hour by hour, with the mission of neutralizing it, and transforming it into an inoffensive past that i can keep in my heart without either disowning it or suffering from it. That’s not easy. It’s at once painful and poetic.”
― Simone de Beauvoir

“Last year I abstained
this year I devour

without guilt
which is also an art”
― Margaret Atwood, You are Happy

“If you see beauty in something, don’t wait for others to agree.”
― Sherihan Gamal

“Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier 'til this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that – everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been. V.”
― Virginia Woolf

“I dream too much and I don’t write enough and I’m trying to find god everywhere.”
― Anis Mojgani