Galina > Galina's Quotes

“Three things can not hide for long: the Moon, the Sun and the Truth.”
― Gautama Buddha

“I live in my dreams — that's what you sense. Other people live in dreams, but not in their own. That's the difference.”
― Herman Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's beautiful.”
― Milan Kundera

“We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.”
― Milan Kundera

“But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.”
― Milan Kundera

“When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“I want you to be weak. As weak as I am.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Physical love is unthinkable without violence.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“The only relationship that can make both partners happy is one in which sentimentality has no place and neither partner makes any claim on the life and freedom of the other.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“I have no mission. No one has.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

“Don't use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.”
― Jack Kerouac

“Life must be rich and full of loving--it's no good otherwise, no good at all, for anyone.”
― Jack Kerouac, Selected Letters, 1940-1956

“Maybe there is a beast… maybe it's only us.”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“The greatest ideas are the simplest.”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“They looked at each other, baffled, in love and hate.”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“People don't help much.”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“I am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist.”
― William Golding

“He was going to live forever, or die in the attempt.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.

"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“Destiny is a good thing to accept when it's going your way. When it isn't, don't call it destiny; call it injustice, treachery, or simple bad luck.”
― Joseph Heller, God Knows

“Every writer I know has trouble writing. ”
― Joseph Heller

“Let's take a drive into the middle of nowhere with a packet of Marlboro lights and talk about our lives.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“Some people—and I am one of them—hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only unnaturally but unethically.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin

“Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“Dear Jesus, do something.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire

“I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“All great and precious things are lonely.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden