Dika > Dika's Quotes

“People shout when they don't have the vocabulary to whisper”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys

“Respice post te. Hominem te esse memento. Memento mori.
-“Look behind you,” Julian translated. “Remember that you are a man. Remember that you will die”
― Cassandra Clare, Lord of Shadows

“Happily ever after, or even just together ever after, is not cheesy,” Wren said. “It’s the noblest, like, the most courageous thing two people can shoot for.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl

“Cakes are healthy too, you just eat a small slice.”
― Mary Berry

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
― Robert Frost

“Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books.”
― Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“There is no friend as loyal as a book.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“That's a poor match, Sean Kendrick," says a voice at my elbow. It's the other sister from Fathom & Sons, and she follows my gaze to Puck. "Neither of you are a housewife."
I don't look away from Puck. "I think you assume too much, Dory Maud."
"You leave nothing to assumption," Dory Maud says. "You swallow her with your eyes. I'm surprised there's any of her left for the rest of us to see.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Scorpio Races

“A library is a place where you can lose your innocence without losing your virginity.”
― Germaine Greer

“Wither thou goest, I will go; thy people shall by my people; where thou diest, will I die, and there I be buried.”
― Cassandra Clare, Lady Midnight

“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”
― E.L. Doctorow

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“If you don't feel that you are possibly on the edge of humiliating yourself, of losing control of the whole thing, then probably what you are doing isn't very vital.”
― John Irving

“There are no easy answers, there's only living through the questions.”
― Elizabeth George, Missing Joseph

“When asked, "How do you write?" I invariably answer, "One word at a time," and the answer is invariably dismissed. But that is all it is. It sounds too simple to be true, but consider the Great Wall of China, if you will: one stone at a time, man. That's all. One stone at a time. But I've read you can see that motherfucker from space without a telescope.”
― Stephen King

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“She was not becoming anything different from what she always was and always had the capacity to be. You just finally saw everything. And once you saw that other part of her… You cannot pick and choose what parts of her to love. Just as you cannot pick which parts of me you accept.”
― Sarah J. Maas, Heir of Fire

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
― Ira Glass

“We live in a world where joy and empathy and pleasure are all around us, there for the noticing.”
― Ira Glass

“You'll hit gold more often if you simply try out a lot of things.”
― Ira Glass

“It's hard to make something that's interesting. It's really, really hard. It's like a law of nature, a law of aerodynamics, that anything that's written or anything that's created wants to be mediocre. The natural state of all writing is mediocrity... So what it takes to make anything more than mediocre is such an act of will...”
― Ira Glass

“You will be fierce. You will fearless. And you will make work you know in your heart is not as good as you want it to be.”
― Ira Glass

“Perfectionism: the need to be right instead of being right.”
― Ira Glass

“The most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work.”
― Ira Glass