Benjamin > Benjamin's Quotes

“When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

“Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time: Mcdougal Littell Literature Connections

“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

“Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness.”
― Allen Ginsberg

“Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.”
― Franz Kafka

“It’s strange how you give the people you love so much power over you.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“The decisions I made after that moment were not the ones she would have made. They were the choices of a changed person, a new self.
You could call this selfhood many things. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal.
I call it an education”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“I began to experience the most powerful advantage of money: the ability to think of things besides money.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“The skill I was learning was a crucial one, the patience to read things I could not yet understand.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“The thing about having a mental breakdown is that no matter how obvious it is that you're having one, it is somehow not obvious to you.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“Once upon a time something happened that you never could have imagined, a spell was broken, a girl was saved, a rose grew out of a tooth buried deep in the ground, love was everywhere, and people who had been taken away continued to walk with you, in dreams and in the waking world.”
― Alice Hoffman, The World That We Knew

“What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Every time you name yourself, you name someone else.”
― Bertolt Brecht

“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”
― Albert Camus

“And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“When trouble strikes, head to the library. You will either be able to solve the problem, or simply have something to read as the world crashes down around you.”
― Lemony Snicket

“My darling girl, when are you going to realize that being normal is not necessarily a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of courage." - Aunt Frances”
― Alice Hoffman, Practical Magic

“It doesn't matter what people tell you. It doesn't matter what they might say. Sometimes you have to leave home. Sometimes, running away means you're headed in the exact right direction.”
― Alice Hoffman, Practical Magic

“Books may well be the only true magic.”
― Alice Hoffman

“Some stories begin at the beginning and others begin at the end, but all the best stories begin in a library.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Book of Magic

“Read as many books as you can. Choose courage over caution. Take time to visit libraries. Look for light in the darkness. Have faith in yourself. Know that love is what matters most.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Book of Magic

“Words were everything, stories were more powerful than any weapon, books changed lives.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Book of Magic

“Once, a long time ago, before we knew who we were, we thought we wanted to be like everyone else. How lucky to be exactly who we were.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Book of Magic

“once a girl walked into a library she could never be controlled again.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Invisible Hour

“It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

“I have no desire to fit in. No plans to walk with the crowd. I have my own mind, heart and soul. I am me and it has taken me years to realize how important that is.”
― R.M. Drake

“You sensed that you should be following a different path, a more ambitious one, you felt that you were destined for other things but you had no idea how to achieve them and in your misery you began to hate everything around you.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Netochka Nezvanova

“The planet is fine. The people are fucked.”
― George Carlin

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
― George Carlin

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