Sara > Sara's Quotes

“The moment I saw her, a part of me walked out of my body and wrapped itself around her. And there it still remains.”
― Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

“All knowledge that is about human society, and not about the natural world, is historical knowledge, and therefore rests upon judgment and interpretation. This is not to say that facts or data are nonexistent, but that facts get their importance from what is made of them in interpretation… for interpretations depend very much on who the interpreter is, who he or she is addressing, what his or her purpose is, at what historical moment the interpretation takes place.”
― Edward Said

“She knew he’d be back. No matter how elaborate its charade, she recognized loneliness when she saw it. She sensed that in some strange tangential way, he needed her shade as much as she needed his. And she had learned from experience that Need was a warehouse that could accommodate a considerable amount of cruelty.”
― Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

“I miss you more than I remember you.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“They had always fitted together like pieces of an unsolved (and perhaps unsolvable) puzzle- the smoke of her into the solidness of him, the solitariness of her into the gathering of him, the strangeness of her into the straightforwardness of him, the insouciance of her into the restraint of him. The quietness of her into the quietness of him.”
― Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

“Because I kept fucking up, because it seemed so hard to not fuck up, I lived a life where I had less than what I desired. So instead of wanting more, sometimes I just made myself want even less. Sometimes I made myself believe that I wanted nothing.”
― Kevin Wilson, Nothing to See Here

“She wondered how to un-know certain things, certain specific things that she knew but did not wish to know. How to un-know, for example, that when people died of stone-dust, their lungs refused to be cremated.”
― Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

“Look to yourself. You free. Nothing and nobody is obliged to save you but you. Seek your own land. You young and a woman and there's serious limitation in both, but you are a person too. Don't let Lenore or some trifling boyfriend and certainly no devil doctor decide who you are. That's slavery. Somewhere inside you is that free person I'm talking about. Locate her and let her do some good in the world.”
― Toni Morrison, Home

“I remember learning that saints were only people whose pain was notable, noted.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“In Vietnamese, the word for missing someone and remembering them is the same: nhớ. Sometimes, when you ask me over the phone, Có nhớ mẹ không? I flinch, thinking you meant, Do you remember me?

I miss you more than I remember you.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Maybe in the next life we'll meet each other for the first time- believing in everything but the harm we're capable of. Maybe we'll be the opposite of buffaloes. We'll grow wings and spill over the cliff as a generation of monarchs, heading home. Green Apple.

Like snow covering the particulars of the city, they will say we never happened, that our survival was a myth. But they're wrong. You and I, we were real. We laughed knowing joy would tear the stitches from our lips.

Remember: The rules, like streets, can only take you to known places. Underneath the grid is a field- it was always there- where to be lost is never to be wrong, but simply more.

As a rule, be more.

As a rule, I miss you.

As a rule,"little" is always smaller than "small". Don't ask me why.

I'm sorry I don't call enough.

Green Apple.

I'm sorry I keep saying How are you? when I really mean Are you happy?”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Has he ever trapped you in a room and not let you out?
Has he ever raised a fist as if he were going to hit you?
Has he ever thrown an object that hit you or nearly did?
Has he ever held you down or grabbed you to restrain you?
Has he ever shoved, poked, or grabbed you?
Has he ever threatened to hurt you?
If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then we can stop wondering whether he’ll ever be violent; he already has been.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“Love is never any better than the lover.”
― Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

“She wasn’t a woman who smiled and said hello.”
― Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

“Even in the most uneventful of our lives, we are called upon to choose our battles...”
― Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

“Lonely, ain't it?
Yes, but my lonely is mine. Now your lonely is somebody else's. Made by somebody else and handed to you. Ain't that something? A secondhand lonely.”
― Toni Morrison, Sula

“She gave the impression that she had somehow slipped off her leash. As though she was taking herself for a walk while the rest of us were being walked – like pets. As”
― Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

“the wounded child inside many males is a boy who, when he first spoke his truths, was silenced by paternal sadism, by a patriarchal world that did not want him to claim his true feelings. The wounded child inside many females is a girl who was taught from early childhood that she must become something other than herself, deny her true feelings, in order to attract and please others. When men and women punish each other for truth telling, we reinforce the notion that lies are better. To be loving we willingly hear the other’s truth, and most important, we affirm the value of truth telling. Lies may make people feel better, but they do not help them to know love.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“There is so much I want to tell you, Ma. I was once foolish enough to believe knowledge would clarify, but some things are so gauzed behind layers of syntax and semantics, behind days and hours, names forgotten, salvaged and shed, that simply knowing the wound exists does nothing to reveal it.
I don't know what I'm saying. I guess what I mean is that sometimes I don't know what or who we are. Days I feel like a human being, while other days I feel more like a sound. I touch the world not as myself but as an echo of who I was. Can you hear me yet? Can you read me?”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Dear Doctor,

If you like you can change every inch of me. I'm just a story.”
― Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

“There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up, holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship's, smooths and contains the rocker. It's an inside kind--wrapped tight like skin. Then there is the loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down. It is alive. On its own. A dry and spreading thing that makes the sound of one's own feet going seem to come from a far-off place.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“There are times, though, that no matter how much food I eat, I find the food does nothing for me, like I am hungry for my country and nothing is going to fix that”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

“Om bhur bhuvah svaha Tat savitur varenyam Bhargo devasya dhimahi Dhiyo yo nah pracodayat O God, thou art the giver of life, Remover of pain and sorrow, Bestower of happiness, O Creator of the Universe, May we receive thy supreme sin-destroying light, May thou guide our intellect in the right direction.”
― Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

“Trees raised their naked, mottled branches to the sky like mourners stilled in attitudes of grief.”
― Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

“Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“I use the word love loosely, and only because my vocabulary is unequal to the task of describing the precise nature of that maze, that forest of feelings”
― Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

“He wants to put his story next to hers.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“Love, after all, is the ingredient that separates a sacrifice from ordinary, everyday butchery.”
― Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

“All they have to do is to turn around and shoot. All the people have to do is to lie down and die.”
― Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

“Stay away from the ones you love too much. Those are the ones who will kill you.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch