Ayako > Ayako's Quotes

“Just for the record, the weather today is calm and sunny, but the air is full of bullshit.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

“If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character...Would you slow down? Or speed up?”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“Today is the sort of day where the sun only comes up to humiliate you.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“Happy the writer who, passing by characters that are boring, disgusting, shocking in their mournful reality, approaches characters that manifest the lofty dignity of man, who from the great pool of daily whirling images has chosen only the rare exceptions, who has never once betrayed the exalted turning of his lyre, nor descended from his height to his poor, insignificant brethren, and, without touching the ground, has given the whole of himself to his elevated images so far removed from it. Twice enviable is his beautiful lot: he is among them as in his own family; and meanwhile his fame spreads loud and far. With entrancing smoke he has clouded people's eyes; he has flattered them wondrously, concealing what is mournful in life, showing them a beautiful man. Everything rushes after him, applauding, and flies off following his triumphal chariot. Great world poet they name him, soaring high above all other geniuses in the world, as the eagle soars above the other high fliers. At the mere mention of his name, young ardent hearts are filled with trembling, responsive tears shine in all eyes...No one equals him in power--he is God! But such is not the lot, and other is the destiny of the writer who has dared to call forth all that is before our eyes every moment and which our indifferent eyes do not see--all the stupendous mire of trivia in which our life in entangled, the whole depth of cold, fragmented, everyday characters that swarm over our often bitter and boring earthly path, and with the firm strength of his implacable chisel dares to present them roundly and vividly before the eyes of all people! It is not for him to win people's applause, not for him to behold the grateful tears and unanimous rapture of the souls he has stirred; no sixteen-year-old girl will come flying to meet him with her head in a whirl and heroic enthusiasm; it is not for him to forget himself in the sweet enchantment of sounds he himself has evoked; it is not for him, finally, to escape contemporary judgment, hypocritically callous contemporary judgment, which will call insignificant and mean the creations he has fostered, will allot him a contemptible corner in the ranks of writers who insult mankind, will ascribe to him the quality of the heroes he has portrayed, will deny him heart, and soul, and the divine flame of talent. For contemporary judgment does not recognize that equally wondrous are the glasses that observe the sun and those that look at the movement of inconspicuous insect; for contemporary judgment does not recognize that much depth of soul is needed to light up the picture drawn from contemptible life and elevate it into a pearl of creation; for contemporary judgment does not recognize that lofty ecstatic laughter is worthy to stand beside the lofty lyrical impulse, and that a whole abyss separates it from the antics of the street-fair clown! This contemporary judgment does not recognize; and will turn it all into a reproach and abuse of the unrecognized writer; with no sharing, no response, no sympathy, like a familyless wayfarer, he will be left alone in the middle of the road. Grim is his path, and bitterly he will feel his solitude.”
― Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls

“Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back.”
― John Green, An Abundance of Katherines

“My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“It is a curious thing, but as one travels the world getting older and older, it appears that happiness is easier to get used to than despair. The second time you have a root beer float, for instance, your happiness at sipping the delicious concoction may not be quite as enormous as when you first had a root beer float, and the twelfth time your happiness may be still less enormous, until root beer floats begin to offer you very little happiness at all, because you have become used to the taste of vanilla ice cream and root beer mixed together. However, the second time you find a thumbtack in your root beer float, your despair is much greater than the first time, when you dismissed the thumbtack as a freak accident rather than part of the scheme of a soda jerk, a phrase which here means "ice cream shop employee who is trying to injure your tongue," and by the twelfth time you find a thumbtack, your despair is even greater still, until you can hardly utter the phrase "root beer float" without bursting into tears. It is almost as if happiness is an acquired taste, like coconut cordial or ceviche, to which you can eventually become accustomed, but despair is something surprising each time you encounter it.”
― Lemony Snicket, The End

“Nu puţine întâmplări te întorc pe dos, te obligă să te învârţi în jurul tău. Alergi încercând să prinzi ceva, o bucăţică de certitudine; mai există zile în care vezi lumea până-n adâncurile ei, şi tocmai asta te derutează, te lasă descoperit, nu poţi, orice ai face, să dai de un capăt, să ai ceva sigur. Atunci te revolţi pe propriile-ţi simţuri, te doare că eşti o fiinţă măruntă, neputincioasă, îţi doreşti să fii copac, piatră, apă, nisip, orice, dacă forţa nu-ţi este dată, iar raţiunea şi inteligenţa nu folosesc cine ştie cât sau nu le pot adapta... Până la urmă îţi cauţi un mijloc pentru a uita, a amâna!”
― Augustin Buzura, Feţele tăcerii

“Adânca dezordine psihică, presiunile morale exercitate progresiv, minciuna, dezechilibrul din noi ca o consecinţă a neplăcerilor din afară au, când acestea sunt mari, efectele unui război autentic.”
― Augustin Buzura, Feţele tăcerii

“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.”
― Oscar Wilde

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”
― Joseph Brodsky

“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”
― Mortimer J. Adler

“Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.”
― John Locke

“It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be born.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“In woman's womb word is made flesh but in the spirit of the maker all flesh that passes becomes the word that shall not pass away. This is the postcreation.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“Beware the horns of a bull, the heels of the horse, and the smile of an Englishman.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“What's terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.”
― Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.”
― Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

“I am a person who continually destroys the possibilities of a future because of the numbers of alternative viewpoints I can focus on the present.”
― Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

“Because I was permanently confused, dissatisfied, unhappy, tormented by inadequacy, driven by wanting towards every kind of impossible future, the attitude of mind described by 'tolerantly amused eyes' was years away from me. I don't think I really saw people then, except as appendages to my needs. It's only now, looking back, that I understood, but at the time I lived in a brilliantly lit haze, shifting and flickering according to my changing desires. Of course, that is only a description of being young.”
― Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

“I'm going to make the obvious point that maybe the word neurotic means the condition of being highly conscious and developed. The essence of neurosis is conflict. But the essence of living now, fully, not blocking off to what goes on, is conflict. In fact I've reached the stage where I look at people and say - he or she, they are whole at all because they've chosen to block off at this stage or that. People stay sane by blocking off, by limiting themselves.”
― Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

“I stood looking down out of the window. The street seemed miles down. Suddenly I felt as if I'd flung myself out of the window. I could see myself lying on the pavement. Then I seemed to be standing by the body on the pavement. I was two people. Blood and brains were scattered everywhere. I knelt down and began licking up the blood and brains”
― Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

“I was surprised, as always, by how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves and long melon fields; the sun the color of pressed grapes, slashed with burgandy red, the fields the color of love and Spanish mysteries.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“Sure baby, mañana. It was always mañana. For the next few weeks that was all I heard––mañana a lovely word and one that probably means heaven.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face. But black words on a white page are the soul laid bare.”
― Guy de Maupassant

“It is love that is sacred," she said." Listen, child, to an old woman who has seen three generations, and who has had a long experience of men and women. Marriage and love have nothing in common. We marry to found a family, and we form families in order to constitute society. Society cannot dispense with marriage. If society is a chain, each family is a link in that chain. In order to weld those links, we always seek metals of the same order. When we marry, we must bring together suitable conditions; we must combine fortunes, unite similiar races and aim at the common interest, which is riches and children. We marry only once, my child, because the world requires us to do so, but we love twenty times in one lifetime because nature has made us like this. Marriage, you see, is law and love is an instinct which impels us, sometimes along a straight, and sometimes along a devious path. The world has made laws to combat our instincts- it was necessary to make them; but our instincts are always stronger, and we ought not to resist them too much, because they come from God; while laws come from men. If we did not perfume life with love, as much love as possible,darling, as we put sugar into drugs for children, nobody would care to take it just as it is.”
― Guy de Maupassant

“My principal sin is doubt. I doubt everything, and am in doubt most of the time.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina