Tashia > Tashia's Quotes

“Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.”
― Iris Murdoch, Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature

“I think being a woman is like being Irish... Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the time.”
― Iris Murdoch

“A country where everybody always running from the next body feeling they’s better. But mark my words, one of these days they gon all run out of where-to-run. ~ Ulene”
― Paule Marshall, The Fisher King: A Novel

“You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”
― Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

“It is easy to love people in memory; the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you.”
― John Updike, My Father's Tears and Other Stories

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I want to look at the work. I don’t care if its white or black. I don’t agree that “If you’re white, you can’t write”. I want to see what they can do. I also don’t believe that because I am a man, I can’t write about women. I had better quit writing, if I can’t write about women. Why can’t women write about men? It’s talent that’s important.”
― Leon Forrest, Conversations with Leon Forrest

“Buy an atlas and keep it by the bed—remember you can go anywhere.”
― Joanna Lumley

“Happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain.”
― Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge

“I probably reread novels more often than I read new ones. The novel form is made for rereading. Novels are by their nature too long, too baggy, too full of things – you can't hold them completely in your mind. This isn't a flaw – it's part of the novel's richness: its length, multiplicity of aspects, and shapelessness resemble the length and shapelessness of life itself. By the time you reach the end of the novel you will have forgotten the beginning and much of what happens in between: not the main outlines but the fine work, the detail and the music of the sentences – the particular words, through which the novel has its life. You think you know a novel so well that there must be nothing left in it to discover but the last time I reread Emma I found a little shepherd boy, brought into the parlour to sing for Harriet when she's staying with the Martin family. I'm sure he was never in the book before.”
― Tessa Hadley

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”
― Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca

“My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people.”
― Patricia Highsmith

“Anticipation! It occurred to him that his anticipation was more pleasant to him than the experiencing.”
― Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley

“My hour for tea is half-past five, and my buttered toast waits for nobody.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White

“Any woman who is sure of her own wits, is a match, at any time, for a man who is not sure of his own temper.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White

“I think about how truly interesting and odd it is that when a woman marries, traditionally she loses her name, becoming absorbed by the husband's family name - she is in effect lost, evaporated from all records under her maiden name. I finally understand the anger behind feminism - the idea that as a woman you are property to be conveyed between your father and your husband, but never an individual who exists independently. And on the flip side, it is also one of the few ways one can legitimately get lost - no one questions it.”
― A.M. Homes, The Mistress's Daughter

“Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade since it consists principally of dealings with men.”
― Joseph Conrad, Chance

“It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose.”
― Joseph Conrad, An Outcast of the Islands

“I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.”
― Anne Tyler

“People do not change, they are merely revealed.”
― Anne Enright, The Gathering

“A strong woman who recklessly throws away her strength, she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away.”
― Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles: Classic Collection

“Books are the mirrors of the soul.”
― Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts

“Instead of committing suicide, people go to work.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Correction

“It would be wrong to refuse to face the fact that everything is fundamentally sick and sad.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Gargoyles

“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Garden of Eden

“There is no friend as loyal as a book.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.”
― Henry James

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“No one forgets the truth; they just get better at lying.”
― Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road

“You can't ever be really free if you admire somebody too much.”
― Tove Jansson, Tales from Moominvalley