Isabelle > Isabelle's Quotes

“Big Brother isn’t watching. He’s singing and dancing. He’s pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother’s busy holding your attention every moment you’re awake. He’s making sure you’re always distracted. He’s making sure you’re fully absorbed.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby

“Are these things really better than the things I already have? Or am I just trained to be dissatisfied with what I have now?”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby

“Experts in ancient Greek culture say that people back then didn't see their thoughts as belonging to them. When ancient Greeks had a thought, it occurred to them as a god or goddess giving an order. Apollo was telling them to be brave. Athena was telling them to fall in love.

Now people hear a commercial for sour cream potato chips and rush out to buy, but now they call this free will.
At least the ancient Greeks were being honest.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby

“Sticks and stones may break your bones but words can hurt like hell.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby

“All you can do is hope for a pattern to emerge, and sometimes it never does. Still, with a plan, you only get the best you can imagine. I'd always hoped for something better than that.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”
― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You

“I think... if it is true that
there are as many minds as there
are heads, then there are as many
kinds of love as there are hearts.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“The pleasure lies not in discovering truth, but in searching for it.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“I don't want to stay in the bad place, where no one believes in silver linings or love or happy endings.”
― Matthew Quick, The Silver Linings Playbook

“Life is random and fucked-up and arbitrary, until you find someone who can make sense of it all for you— if only temporarily.”
― Matthew Quick, The Silver Linings Playbook

“If clouds are blocking the sun, there will always be a silver lining that reminds me to keep on trying.”
― Matthew Quick, The Silver Linings Playbook

“But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad."
"How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn’t have come here.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Where would you like to go, what would you really like to do with your life?

See Istanbul, Port Said, Nairobi, Budapest. Write a book. Smoke too many cigarettes. Fall off a cliff but get caught in a tree halfway down. Get shot at a few times in a dark alley on a Morrocan midnight. Love a beautiful woman.”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

“Sunsets we always liked because they only happen once and go away."
"But, Lena, that's sad."
"No, if the sunset stayed and we got bored, that would be a real sadness.”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

“As I walked over the loose fragments of stone, which lay scattered and surveyed the sublimity and grandeur of the ruins, I recurred, by a natural association of ideas, to the times when these walls stood proudly in their original splendor, when the halls were the scenes of hospitality and festive magnificence, and when they resounded with the voices of those whom death had long since swept from earth. "Thus," said I, "shall the present generation - he who now sink in misery - and he who now swim in pleasure, alike pass away and be forgotten.”
― Ann Radcliffe, A Sicilian Romance

“Perhaps the immobility of the things that surround us is forced upon them by our conviction that they are themselves and not anything else, by the immobility of our conception of them.”
― Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time: The Complete Masterpiece

“Allt detta gjorde kyrkan i mina ögon till någonting helt annorlunda än staden i övrigt: en byggnad som, om man kan uttrycka sig så, var rest i fyra dimensioner - av vilka den fjärde var tiden - genom seklerna sträckande sitt skepp, som från travé till travé, från sidokapell till sidokapell tycktes erövra och överskrida icke endast några meter, utan den ena epoken efter den andra.”
― Marcel Proust, Combray