emily > emily's Quotes

“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”
― Margaret Mead

“The only queer people are those who don't love anybody.”
― Rita Mae Brown

“If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.”
― Harvey Milk

“Sometimes I prayed so hard for God to materialize at the foot of my bed it would start to happen; then I’d beg it to stop, and it would.”
― Marie Howe, What the Living Do

“I don’t know anything but her name right now. I can’t see anything but her.”
― Tess Sharpe, 6 Times We Almost Kissed [and One Time We Did]

“Come on. Indulge my domestic fantasies, darling. I want to share a Costco card with you.”
― Alexandria Bellefleur, The Fiancée Farce

“I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass

“If there is pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, don't snuff it out, don't be brutal with it. Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night, and watching others forget us sooner than we'd want to be forgotten is no better. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything - what a waste! (p. 225)”
― André Aciman

“i hope i die
warmed
by the life that i tried
to live”
― Nikki Giovanni, The Collected Poetry, 1968-1998

“Such wounds to the heart will probably never heal. But we cannot simply sit and stare at our wounds forever.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”
― N.H. Kleinbaum, Dead Poets Society

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“We read to know we're not alone.”
― William Nicholson, Shadowlands: A Play

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend”
― Albert Camus

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Who says you need to wait until you 'feel like' doing something in order to start doing it? The problem, from this perspective, isn't that you don't feel motivated; it's that you imagine you need to feel motivated. If you can regard your thoughts and emotions about whatever you're procrastinating on as passing weather, you'll realise that your reluctance about working isn't something that needs to be eradicated or transformed into positivity. You can coexist with it. You can note the procrastinatory feelings and act anyway.”
― Oliver Burkeman, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking