Ilana (illi69) > Ilana (illi69)'s Quotes

“There is a certain tyranny about perfection, a certain exhaustion about it even, something that denies the viewer a role in its creation and that asserts itself with all the dogmatism of an unambiguous statement. True beauty cannot be measured because it is fluctuating, it has only a few angles from which it may be seen, and then not in all lights and at all times. It flirts dangerously with ugliness, it takes risks with itself, it does not side comfortably with mathematical rules of proportion, it draws its appeal from precisely those areas that will also lend themselves to ugliness. Nothing can be beautiful that does not take a calculated risk with ugliness.”
― Alain de Botton, On Love

“Because I'm made up of body parts of people from diverse backgrounds - ethnicities, tribes, races and social classes - I represent the impossible mix that never was achieved in the past. I'm the first true Iraqi citizen, he (the Whatsitsname) thinks.”
― Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad

“. . . I lay on the bed and lost myself in the stories.
I liked that. Books were safer than other people anyway.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“Dare to think for yourself.”
― Voltaire

“Perhaps tomorrow I shall pick up one of the houses, any one, and, holding it gently in one hand, pull it carefully apart with my other hand, with great delicacy taking the pieces of it off one after another: first the door and then, dislodging the slight nails with care, the right front corner of the house, board by board, and then, sweeping out the furniture inside, down the right wall of the house, removing it with care and not touching the second floor, which should remain intact even after the first floor is entirely gone. Then the stairs, step by step, and all this while the mannikins inside run screaming from each section of the house to a higher and a more concealed room, crushing one another and stumbling and pulling frantically, slamming doors behind them while my strong fingers pull each door softly off its hinges and pull the walls apart and lift out the windows intact and take out carefully the tiny beds and chairs; and finally they will be all together like seeds in a pomegranate, in one tiny room, hardly breathing, some of them fainting, some crying, and all wedged in together looking in the direction from which I am coming, and then, when I take the door off with sure careful fingers, there they all will be, packed inside and crushed back against the wall, and I shall eat the room in one mouthful, chewing ruthlessly on the boards and the small sweet bones.”
― Shirley Jackson, Hangsaman

“I don’t know where I am going, but I am on my way.”
― Voltaire

“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“Maybe instead of worrying about upgrading technology and slowly allowing ourselves to be cyborgs we should have a little peek at how we could upgrade our ability to cope with all this change.”
― Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

“How to be there for someone with depression or anxiety 1. Know that you are needed, and appreciated, even if it seems you are not. 2. Listen. 3. Never say ‘pull yourself together’ or ‘cheer up’ unless you’re also going to provide detailed, foolproof instructions. (Tough love doesn’t work. Turns out that just good old ‘love’ is enough.) 4. Appreciate that it is an illness. Things will be said that aren’t meant. 5. Educate yourself. Understand, above all, that what might seem easy to you –going to a shop, for instance –might be an impossible challenge for a depressive. 6. Don’t take anything personally, any more than you would take someone suffering with the flu or chronic fatigue syndrome or arthritis personally. None of this is your fault. 7. Be patient. Understand it isn’t going to be easy. Depression ebbs and flows and moves up and down. It doesn’t stay still. Do not take one happy/ bad moment as proof of recovery/ relapse. Play the long game. 8. Meet them where they are. Ask what you can do. The main thing you can do is just be there. 9. Relieve any work/ life pressure if that is doable. 10. Where possible, don’t make the depressive feel weirder than they already feel. Three days on the sofa? Haven’t opened the curtains? Crying over difficult decisions like which pair of socks to wear? So what. No biggie. There is no standard normal. Normal is subjective. There are seven billion versions of normal on this planet.”
― Matt Haig, Reasons To Stay Alive

“The object of art is to give life a shape,’ said Shakespeare. And my life –and my mess of a mind –needed shape. I had ‘lost the plot’. There was no linear narrative of me. There was just mess and chaos. So yes, I loved external narratives for the hope they offered. Films. TV dramas. And most of all, books. They were, in and of themselves, reasons to stay alive. Every book written is the product of a human mind in a particular state. Add all the books together and you get the end sum of humanity.”
― Matt Haig, Reasons To Stay Alive

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way.”
― Kingsley Amis

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
― James Baldwin

“Lincoln is not the only famous leader to have battled depression. Winston Churchill lived with the ‘black dog’ for much of his life too. Watching a fire, he once remarked to a young researcher he was employing: ‘I know why logs spit. I know what it is to be consumed.”
― Matt Haig, Reasons To Stay Alive

“And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on.”
― George Gordon Byron

“Because inside there is a golden you who loves you and wants you to win and prevail and be happy. #reasonstostayalive”
― Matt Haig, Reasons To Stay Alive

“Read a book without thinking about finishing it. Just read it. Enjoy every word, sentence, and paragraph. Don't wish for it to end, or for it to never end.”
― Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

“To draw an analogy: a man's suffering is similar to the behavior of a gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the "size" of human suffering is absolutely relative.”
― Viktor Emil Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Personally, I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.”
― Woody Allen

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
― Mark Twain

“Sometimes you have to be a high riding bitch to survive, sometimes, being a bitch is all a woman has to hang on to.”
― Stephen King, Dolores Claiborne

“I want to feel what I feel. What's mine. Even if it's not happiness, whatever that means. Because you're all you've got.”
― Toni Morrison

“Overhyped books are the empty calories of the literary world.”
― Kevin Ansbro

“What's the good of living if you don't try a few things?”
― Charles M. Schulz

“You don’t believe the sky is falling until a chunk of it falls on you.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Testaments