Fay > Fay's Quotes

“She was elusive. She was today. She was tomorrow. She was the faintest scent of a cactus flower, the flitting shadow of an elf owl. We did not know what to make of her. In our minds we tried to pin her to a cork board like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

“I came here because it's pine-dark and the ocean is wild. The kind of quiet-noise you need when there's too much going on in your head. Like the water and the woods are doing all the feeling, and I can hang out, quiet as a headstone, in a between place. A blank I can bear.”
― Amy McNamara, Lovely, Dark and Deep

“Sometimes I have loved the peacefulness of an ordinary Sunday. It is like standing in a newly planted garden after a warm rain. You can feel the silent and invisible life.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“We shall never meet, but there is something I want you to know. My time is not the same as your time. Our times are not the same. And do you know what that means? That means that time does not exist. Do you want me to repeat that? There is no time. There is a life and a death. There are people and animals. Our thoughts exist. And the world. The universe, too. But there is no time. You might as well take it easy. Do you feel better now? I feel better. This is going to work out. Have a nice day.”
― Erlend Loe, Naïve. Super

“Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person's face as you pass them on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you.”
― Miranda July

“No one expected me. Everything awaited me.”
― Patti Smith, Just Kids

“remember you must live.
remember you most love.
remainder you mist leaf.”
― Ali Smith, Hotel World

“Think how quiet a book is on a shelf, he said, just sitting there, unopened. Then think what happens when you open it.”
― Ali Smith, There but for the

“Happiness [is] only real when shared”
― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

“BITTER: always a bit unanticipated. Coffee, chocolate, rosemary, citrus rinds, wine. Once, when we were wild, it told us about poison. The mouth still hesitates at each new encounter. We urge it forward, say, Adapt. Now, enjoy it.”
― Stephanie Danler, Sweetbitter

“Empirically speaking, we are made of star stuff. Why aren’t we talking more about that?”
― Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts

“Everything was so quiet, as if the silence was listening.”
― Anna Kavan

“There is no poetry where there are no mistakes.”
― Joy Harjo

“...but I still think that one of the pleasantest of all emotions is to know that I, I with my brain and my hands, have nourished my beloved few, that I have concocted a stew or a story, a rarity or a plain dish, to sustain them truly against the hungers of the world.”
― M.F.K. Fisher, The Gastronomical Me

“If you are thinking about something that happened a long time ago:
Somebody asked you a question and you did not know the answer.
That is my name.”
― Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar

“She wanted to be extraordinary, to possess a savage glitter.”
― Joy Williams

“Books crowbar the world open for you.”
― Katherine Rundell, Rooftoppers

“I wanted to say, My life is full. I chose this life because it's a constant assault of color and taste and light and it's raw and ugly and fast and it's mine. And you'll never understand. Until you live it, you don't know.”
― Stephanie Danler, Sweetbitter

“I had never thought of a tomato as a fruit—the ones I had known were mostly white in the center and rock hard. But this was so luscious, so tart I thought it victorious. So—some tomatoes tasted like water, and some tasted like summer lightning.”
― Stephanie Danler, Sweetbitter

“The room was the poem, the day I was in. Oh Christ. What writes my poem is the second ring, inner or outer. Poetry is just the performance of it. These little things, whether I write them or not. That's the score. The thing of great value is you. Where you are, glowing and fading, while you live.”
― Eileen Myles, Inferno

“But the sky is interesting, it changes all the time.”
― Aimee Bender, The Color Master: Stories

“The people were all busy in their cars, listening to the radio, so there was no one to smile at, so I just sent my love to the traffic lights. No one ever appreciates them, all day long, working so hard to turn red and yellow and green, right in time with us to make sure we don't crash into each other. If there was any tiny chance, even the tiniest chance, that they happened to be alive, I bet I was the first person ever to tell them they were special. You are special, I said out loud in my car, but in case they couldn't hear, I cracked my window open. "You are special," I said, to the night air.
And just like that, a green light.”
― Aimee Bender, The Color Master: Stories

“The mind I love must have wild places.”
― Katherine Mansfield

“Beauty, as defined by society at large, seemed to be only about who was best at looking like everyone else.”
― Lucy Grealy, Autobiography of a Face

“Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.”
― Pema Chödrön, Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion

“Visual journals are created in a secret language of symbols. Intentional or not, they are private maps only their makers can follow.”
― Jennifer New, Drawing From Life: The Journal as Art

“Part of the job of being human is to consistently underestimate our effect on other people...”
― Lucy Grealy, Autobiography of a Face

“Why can’t you just understand that not having a plan is my plan?” Chris implored. “I don’t know exactly where I’ll be. That’s the whole point, the freedom of it. I’ve been so structured with school and sports and work—everything has been scheduled and laid out for me. I just want to get out of that mundane existence and purely enjoy life for a while. I’ll decide on the fly where I want to go next.”
― Carine McCandless, The Wild Truth: The secrets that drove Chris McCandless into the wild

“So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future.”
― Carine McCandless, The Wild Truth

“A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.”
― Mary Karr, The Liars' Club