Sean > Sean's Quotes

“Live or die, but don't poison everything.”
― Anne Sexton

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
― Mae West

“No matter who you are, no matter what you did, no matter where you've come from, you can always change, become a better version of yourself.”
― Madonna

“I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The New Life

“Sometimes you need to scorch everything to the ground, and start over. After the burning the soil is richer, and new things can grow. People are like that, too. They start over. They find a way.”
― Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“Gay brothers and sisters,... You must come out. Come out... to your parents... I know that it is hard and will hurt them but think about how they will hurt you in the voting booth! Come out to your relatives... come out to your friends... if indeed they are your friends. Come out to your neighbors... to your fellow workers... to the people who work where you eat and shop... come out only to the people you know, and who know you. Not to anyone else. But once and for all, break down the myths, destroy the lies and distortions. For your sake. For their sake. For the sake of the youngsters who are becoming scared by the votes from Dade to Eugene.”
― Harvey Milk

“It was a light that shone over our faces, our wounds and scars. It was a light so brilliant and white it could have been beamed from heaven, and Brian and I could have been angels, basking in it. But it wasn’t, and we weren’t.”
― Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“I've got the guts to die. What I want to know is, have you got the guts to live?”
― Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

“Life resembles a novel more often than novels resemble life.

(La vie ressemble plus souvent à un roman qu'un roman ne ressemble à la vie.)”
― George Sand

“One must possess many gifts … which have not been acquired by one’s own effort. And, moreover … the artist must possess the courageous soul.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“The world spins. We stumble on. It is enough.”
― Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

“There will always be enemies. Time to stop being your own.”
― Larry Kramer, Faggots

“Just because you pretend the universe doesn't have teeth doesn't mean you won't get eaten in the end.”
― Paul Russell, The Coming Storm

“We're extraordinary people. We must do extraordinary things.”
― Jamie O'Neill, At Swim, Two Boys

“To say someone has lost her mind does not do justice to what madness looks like. It's not as if a person's mind rolls out of her head, lodges under the carpet or between the cracks of the sofa, and is therefore retrievable by some logical search.”
― Alexandra Fuller, Leaving Before the Rains Come

“Only my books anoint me,
and a few friends,
those who reach into my veins.”
― Anne Sexton, The Complete Poems

“What is important is the story. Because when we are all dust and teeth and kicked-up bits of skin - when we're dancing with our own skeletons - our words might be all that's left of us.”
― Alexandra Fuller, Scribbling the Cat

“Don’t overestimate the decency of the human race.”
― H. L. Mencken

“We all create stories to protect ourselves.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

“None of us really changes over time. We only become more fully what we are.”
― Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat

“It makes you wonder. All the brilliant things we might have done with our lives if only we suspected we knew how.”
― Ann Patchett, Bel Canto

“Never be so focused on what you're looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.”
― Ann Patchett, State of Wonder

“Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard.”
― Anne Sexton

“No one ever really gets used to nightmares.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

“I often wonder what I'd do if there weren't any books in the world.”
― James Baldwin , Giovanni’s Room

“All of us invent ourselves. Some of us just have more imagination than others.”
― Cher

“The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.”
― E. M. Forster

“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“She was happiest when sitting about and reading. She had read thousands of books, seeing no point in doing anything else unless you had to.”
― Ruth Rendell