Booked > Booked's Quotes

“In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up

“If you don't like someone's story, write your own.”
― Chinua Achebe

“Nobody can teach me who I am. You can describe parts of me, but who I am - and what I need - is something I have to find out myself.”
― Chinua Achebe

“When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.”
― Chinua Achebe

“There is no story that is not true, [...] The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.”
― Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.”
― George Orwell

“The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Blow the candle out, I don't need to see what my thoughts look like.”
― Emile Zola, Germinal

“There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.”
― Emile Zola

“If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud.”
― Émile Zola

“One should always be drunk. That's all that matters...But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you chose. But get drunk.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen

“Always be a poet, even in prose.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“The beautiful is always bizarre.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“Remembering is only a new form of suffering.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“Be always drunken.
Nothing else matters:
that is the only question.
If you would not feel
the horrible burden of Time
weighing on your shoulders
and crushing you to the earth,
be drunken continually.

Drunken with what?
With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will.
But be drunken.

And if sometimes,
on the stairs of a palace,
or on the green side of a ditch,
or in the dreary solitude of your own room,
you should awaken
and the drunkenness be half or wholly slipped away from you,
ask of the wind,
or of the wave,
or of the star,
or of the bird,
or of the clock,
of whatever flies,
or sighs,
or rocks,
or sings,
or speaks,
ask what hour it is;
and the wind,
wave,
star,
bird,
clock will answer you:
"It is the hour to be drunken!”
― Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen

“If the word doesn't exist, invent it; but first be sure it doesn't exist.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“Strangeness is a necessary ingredient in beauty.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“Extract the eternal from the ephemeral.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“I saw that my witticism was unperceived and quietly replaced it in the treasury of my mind.”
― Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds

“Your talk," I said, "is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do I understand.”
― Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

“Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

“Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.”
― Mary Shelley

“If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear!”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein