Alyisha > Alyisha's Quotes

“I say, gentlemen, hadn't we better kick over the whole show and scatter rationalism to the winds, simply to send these logarithms to the devil, and to enable us to live once more at our own sweet foolish will?”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up

“Whether or not [a] story has a happy ending depends, of course, on who is reading it. Whether you are a wolf or a girl. A girl or a monster or both. Not everyone in a story gets a happy ending. Not everyone who reads a story feels the same way about how it ends. And if you go back to the beginning and read it again, you may discover it isn't the same story you thought you'd read. Stories shift their shape.”
― Kelly Link

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”
― Thomas Merton , No Man Is an Island

“In the end, we'll all become stories.”
― Margaret Atwood, Moral Disorder and Other Stories

“I would always rather be happy than dignified.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti

“Recipe For Happiness Khaborovsk Or Anyplace'

One grand boulevard with trees
with one grand cafe in sun
with strong black coffee in very small cups.

One not necessarily very beautiful
man or woman who loves you.

One fine day.”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti

“Fuck Art, let's Dance!”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti

“I am waiting
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth...

without taxes”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti

“A silent Library is a sad Library. A Library without patrons on whom to pile books and tales and knowing and magazines full of up-to-the-minute politickal fashions and atlases and plays in pentameter! A Library should be full of exclamations! Shouts of delight and horror as the wonders of the world are discovered or the lies of the heavens are uncovered or the wild adventures of devil-knows-who sent romping out of the pages. A Library should be full of now-just-a-minutes and that-can't-be-rights and scientifick folk running skelter to prove somebody wrong. It should positively vibrate with laughing at comedies and sobbing at tragedies, it should echo with gasps as decent ladies glimpse indecent things and indecent ladies stumble upon secret and scandalous decencies! A Library should not shush; it should roar!”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two

“I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop.”
― Bohumil Hrabal

“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”
― Walt Whitman

“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“We were together. I forget the rest.”
― Walt Whitman

“These are the days that must happen to you.”
― Walt Whitman

“Some people are so much sunshine to the square inch.”
― Walt Whitman

“I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.”
― Walt Whitman

“I will You, in all, Myself, with promise to never desert you,
To which I sign my name.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“I am larger, better than I thought; I did not know I held so much goodness.

All seems beautiful to me.

Whoever denies me, it shall not trouble me;
Whoever accepts me, he or she shall be blessed, and shall bless me.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary.”
― Oscar Wilde

“I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.”
― George Eliot

“I am not an angel,' I asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me - for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.”
― David Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

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

“We always see our worst selves. Our most vulnerable selves. We need someone else to get close enough to tell us we’re wrong. Someone we trust.”
― David Levithan, Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

“The key to a successful relationship isn’t just in the words, it’s in the choice of punctuation. When you’re in love with someone, a well-placed question mark can be the difference between bliss and disaster, and a deeply respected period or a cleverly inserted ellipsis can prevent all kinds of exclamations.”
― David Levithan, The Lover's Dictionary

“rest, v. and n.


Rest with me for the rest of this.

That's it. Come closer.

We're here.”
― David Levithan, The Lover's Dictionary

“I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination.”
― John Keats