Aia > Aia's Quotes

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
― Mark Twain

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

“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“I love mankind ... it's people I can't stand!!”
― Charles M. Schulz

“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?”
― Albert Camus

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.”
― James Baldwin

“I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“Death, taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“Supposed I don't want to redeem myself? Why should I fight to uphold the system that cast me out? I shall take pleasure in seeing it smashed.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“I wish to Heaven I was married," she said resentfully as she attacked the yams with loathing. "I'm tired of everlastingly being unnatural and never doing anything I want to do. I'm tired of acting like I don't eat more than a bird, and walking when I want to run and saying I feel faint after a waltz, when I could dance for two days and never get tired. I'm tired of saying, 'How wonderful you are!' to fool men who haven't got one-half the sense I've got, and I'm tired of pretending I don't know anything, so men can tell me things and feel important while they're doing it... I can't eat another bite.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves”
― Albert Camus, The Plague

“Each suburban wife struggles with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night- she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question-- 'Is this all?”
― Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique

“You know nothing, Jon Snow.”
― George R.R. Martin

“Every once in a very long while, Lord Tywin Lannister would actually threaten to smile; he never did, but the threat alone was terrible to behold.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords

“Up and down," Meera would sigh sometimes as they walked, "then down and up. Then up and down again. I hate these stupid mountains of yours, Prince Bran."
"Yesterday you said you loved them."
"Oh, I do. My lord father told me about mountains, but I never saw one till now. I love them more than I can say."
Bran made a face at her. "But you just said you hated them."
"Why can't it be both?" Meera reached up to pinch his nose.
"Because they're different," he insisted. "Like night and day, or ice and fire."
"If ice can burn," said Jojen in his solemn voice, "then love and hate can mate. Mountain or marsh, it makes no matter. The land is one."
"One," his sister agreed, "but over wrinkled.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords

“My personality is a luxury that's costing me too dearly.”
― Martin Page, How I Became Stupid

“Do one thing every day that scares you.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real ... for a moment at least ... that long magic moment before we wake.

Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?

We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.

They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to middle Earth.”
― George R.R. Martin

“And I have a tender spot in my heart for cripples and bastards and broken things.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“Power resides only where men believe it resides. [...] A shadow on the wall, yet shadows can kill. And ofttimes a very small man can cast a very large shadow.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings

“What do we say to the Lord of Death?'

'Not today.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“I don't want to have a dozen sons," she had told him, appalled. "I want to have adventures" ~Asha Greyjoy”
― George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows

“Always keep your foes confused. If they are never certain who you are or what you want, they cannot know what you are like to do next. Sometimes the best way to baffle them is to make moves that have no purpose, or even seem to work against you. Remember that, Sansa, when you come to play the game.”

“What . . . what game?”

“The only game. The game of thrones.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords

“It's weird not to be weird.”
― John Lennon

“When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.”
― Mark Twain

“Of all God's creatures, there is only one that cannot be made slave of the leash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat.”
― Mark Twain

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods