grantlovesbooks > grantlovesbooks's Quotes

“It is hard to laugh at the need for beauty and romance, no matter how tasteless, even horrible, the results of that need are. But it is easy to sigh. Few things are sadder than the truly monstrous.”
― Nathanael West

“When you aren't sincere you need to pretend, and by pretending you end up believing yourself; that's the basic principle of every faith.”
― Alberto Moravia, The Time of Indifference

“This thought strengthened in me my belief that all men, without exception, deserve to be pitied, if only because they are alive.”
― Alberto Moravia, The Woman of Rome

“We all want things we can't have. Being a decent human being is accepting that.”
― John Fowles, The Collector

“Security is a false God. Begin to make sacrifices to it and you are lost.”
― Paul Bowles

“Sometimes, immersed in his books, there would come to him the awareness of all that he did not know, of all that he had not read; and the serenity for which he labored was shattered as he realized the little time he had in life to read so much, to learn what he had to know.”
― John Williams, Stoner

“If hell’s in store for us someday, one of its most refined forms of torture will be to lock a person naked in a room filled with framed photos of his era.”
― Günter Grass, The Tin Drum

“Do your bit to save humanity from lapsing back into barbarity by reading all the novels you can.”
― Richard Hughes