Basma Sokarno > Basma's Quotes

“What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“هناك بعض الراحة في أن تكوني خاسرة , إنه شئ يتعلق بمسئولية ما بعد الفوز و حرية ما بعد الخسارة .”
― حسني محمد, باسيكاليا

“He would have felt safe if alongside the Dentrassis' underwear, the piles of Sqornshellous mattresses and the man from Betelgeuse holding up a small yellow fish and offering to put it in his ear he had been able to see just a small packet of cornflakes. But he couldn't, and he didn't feel safe.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Why is it when I'm inside this stone house I've come to love I can't remember what it looks like from the outside. And when I'm outside I can't remember what it looks like on the inside.
Why is it I keep losing my way. The things in the back room taunting me. The views from the windows don't seem to mesh somehow.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Middle Age: A Romance: When a Charismatic Hero Dies, a Small Town Uncovers His Flawed Humanity

“We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it's our job to invent something better.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“Here in your mind you have complete privacy. Here there's no difference between what is and what could be.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Asfixia

“Torture is torture and humiliation is humiliation only when you choose to suffer.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Asfixia

“I wish I had the courage not to fight and doubt everything... I wish, just once, I could say, 'This. This is good enough. Just because I choose it.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“It’s pathetic how we can’t live with the things we can’t understand. How we need everything labeled and explained and deconstructed.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“The little boy smiled back at all the angry faces glaring in at him. And the little boy blew kisses. ”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“It's creepy, but here we are, the Pilgrims, the crackpots of our time, trying to establish our own alternate reality. To build a world out of rocks and chaos.
What it's going to be, I don't know.
Even after all that rushing around, where we've ended up is the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.
And maybe knowing isn't the point.
Where we're standing right now, in the ruins in the dark, what we build could be anything.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“That big glorious mountain. For one transitory moment, I think I may have actually seen it”. For one flash, the Mommy had seen the mountain without thinking of logging and ski resorts and avalanches, managed wildlife, plate tectonic geology, microclimates, rain shadow, or yin-yang locations. She’d seen the mountain without the framework of language. Without the cage of associations. She’d seen it without looking through the lens of everything she knew was true about mountains.
What she’d seen in that flash wasn’t even a “mountain”. It wasn’t a natural resource. It had no name.
“That’s the big goal”, she said. “To find a cure for knowledge”.
For education. For living in our heads.
Ever since the story of Adam and Eve in the bible, humanity had been a little too smart for its own good, the Mommy said. Ever since eating that apple. Her goal was to find, if not a cure, then at least a treatment that would give people back their innocence.
“The cerebral cortex, the cerebellum”, she said, “that’s where your problem is”.
If she could just get down to using only her brain stem, she’d be cured.
This would be somewhere beyond happiness and sadness.
You don’t see fish agonized by wild mood swings.
Sponges never have a bad day.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“Any idiot can face a crisis; it's this day-to-day living that wears you out.”
― Anton Chekhov

“سقيت زهرة في حديقتي كان قد برح بها العطش، فلم تقل لي شكرا ولكنها انتعشت فانتعشت.”
― ميخائيل نعيمه

“What is hell? Hell is oneself.
Hell is alone, the other figures in it
Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from
And nothing to escape to. One is always alone.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Whatever you think, be sure it is what you think; whatever you want, be sure that is what you want; whatever you feel, be sure that is what you feel.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these.”
― T.S. Eliot

“If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away. The more the outside world tries to reinforce an image of you, the harder it is to continue to be an artist, which is why a lot of times, artists have to say, “Bye. I have to go. I’m going crazy and I’m getting out of here.” And they go and hibernate somewhere. Maybe later they re-emerge a little differently.”
― Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs

“Only after disaster can we be resurrected. It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything. Nothing is static, everything is evolving, everything is falling apart.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“If you don't know what you want," the doorman said, "you end up with a lot you don't.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“نعم إن العقلاء لا يوقدون المدافيء صباحا، لكن من هو ذلك اللوح الذي يريد أن يحشرني بالعافية في زمرة العقلاء ؟”
― محمد عفيفي, ترانيم في ظل تمارا

“It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.”
― Jonathan Swift

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.”
― Samuel Johnson