Claire > Claire's Quotes

“he asked, "what makes a man a
writer?"
"well," I said, "it's simple, it's either you
get it down on paper or you jump off a
bridge.
writers are desperate people and when they stop
being desperate they stop being
writers."
"are you desperate?"
"I don't know...”
― Charles Bukowski

“You are the only one who has understood even a whisper of me, and I will tell you that I am the only person who has understood even a whisper of you.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“Life is fundamentally up for grabs”
― Jonathan Lethem, The Disappointment Artist

“Thinking within strict limits is stifling”
― Christian Bok, Eunoia

“Contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that costs nothing.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“The greater a man's fear, the greater his potential courage”
― Tim O'Brien

“some moments are nice, some are
nicer, some are even worth
writing
about.”
― Charles Bukowski, War All the Time: Poems 1981 - 1984

“nothing can save
you
except
writing.
it keeps the walls
from
failing.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Some people like what you do, some people hate what you do, but most people simply don’t give a damn.”
― Charles Bukowski

“the way to create art is to burn and destroy
ordinary concepts and to substitute them
with new truths that run down from the top of the head
and out of the heart”
― Charles Bukowski

“Fiction is an improvement on life”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

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

“What if you find your soul mate... at the wrong time?”
― Lauren Kate, Passion

“Could be my soul mate / two kindred spirits / Maybe we're not / I guess we'll never / know”
― Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why

“The way to maintain one's connection to the wild is to ask yourself what it is that you want. This is the sorting of the seed from the dirt. One of the most important discriminations we can make in this matter is the difference between things that beckon to us and things that call from our souls.
Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in the choice of mates and lovers. A lover cannot be chosen a la smorgasbord. A lover has to be chosen from soul-craving. To choose just because something mouthwatering stands before you will never satisfy the hunger of the soul-self. And that is what the intuition is for; it is the direct messenger of the soul.”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves

“He asked, "What makes a man a writer?" "Well," I said, "it's simple. You either get it down on paper, or jump off a bridge.”
― Charles Bukowski

“The easiest thing in the world is to be what you are, what you feel. The hardest thing to be is what other people want you to be.”
― Leo Buscaglia

“When you love someone you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“She told me something that has stayed with me. Ferber said, ‘Beware the clowns.’ The leaders who start out as jokes—people make fun of them, they’re caricatures, cartoons in newspapers, and people decide they are harmless. Those men are the most dangerous. The day comes when they use their power against their own people.” Alda”
― Adriana Trigiani, All the Stars in the Heavens