azur > azur's Quotes

“Communism was born from a beautiful dream, the likes of which there will never be again on the face of this earth: that there would no longer be lazy men who eat their fill while others work hard and starve.”
― Eka Kurniawan, Beauty Is a Wound

“The only reason you say that race was not an issue is because you wish it was not. We all wish it was not. But it’s a lie. I came from a country where race was not an issue; I did not think of myself as black and I only became black when I came to America. When you are black in America and you fall in love with a white person, race doesn’t matter when you’re alone together because it’s just you and your love. But the minute you step outside, race matters. But we don’t talk about it. We don’t even tell our white partners the small things that piss us off and the things we wish they understood better, because we’re worried they will say we’re overreacting, or we’re being too sensitive. And we don’t want them to say, Look how far we’ve come, just forty years ago it would have been illegal for us to even be a couple blah blah blah, because you know what we’re thinking when they say that? We’re thinking why the fuck should it ever have been illegal anyway? But we don’t say any of this stuff. We let it pile up inside our heads and when we come to nice liberal dinners like this, we say that race doesn’t matter because that’s what we’re supposed to say, to keep our nice liberal friends comfortable. It’s true. I speak from experience.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

“If you don't understand, ask questions. If you're uncomfortable about asking questions, say you are uncomfortable about asking questions and then ask anyway. It's easy to tell when a question is coming from a good place. Then listen some more. Sometimes people just want to feel heard. Here's to possibilities of friendship and connection and understanding.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

“Beauty meant that you were good. And being good meant being happy. Happiness can be defined all kinds of ways, but human beings, consciously or unconsciously, are always pulling for their own version of happiness. Even people who want to die see death as a kind of solace, and view ending their lives as the only way to make it there. Happiness is the base unit of consciousness, our single greatest motivator. Saying "I just want to be happy" trumps any other explanation. But who knows. Maybe Makiko had a more specific reason, not just some vague idea of how to make herself happy.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Breasts and Eggs

“A word is a lot.”
― Etgar Keret

“I believe in movement. I believe in that lighthearted balloon, the world. I believe in midnight and the hour of noon. But what else do I believe in? Sometimes everything. Sometimes nothing. It fluctuates like light flitting over a pond. I believe in life, which one day each of us shall lose. When we are young we think we won’t, that we are different. As a child I thought I would never grow up, that I could will it so. And then I realized, quite recently, that I had crossed some line, unconsciously cloaked in the truth of my chronology. How did we get so damn old? I say to my joints, my iron-colored hair. Now I am older than my love, my departed friends. Perhaps I will live so long that the New York Public Library will be obliged to hand over the walking stick of Virginia Woolf. I would cherish it for her, and the stones in her pocket. But I would also keep on living, refusing to surrender my pen.”
― Patti Smith

“The degree of slowness is directionally proportional to the intensity of memory. The degree of speed is directionally proportional to the intensity of forgetting.”
― Milan Kundera, Slowness

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

“I believe that evil is directly proportional to idiocy. I believe that the territory you roamed in anguish before you disappeared is ruled by idiots. It isn’t true that criminals are masterminds. It takes a vast amount of stupidity to assemble the parts of such grotesque, absurd, and cruel machinery. Pure brutality disguised as a masterplan. Small people, with small minds, who don’t understand the abyss of the other. They lack the language or tools for it. Empathy and compassion require a clear mind. Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, changing your skin, adopting a new face: these are all acts of genuine intelligence.”
― Nona Fernández, The Twilight Zone

“Only those who dare may fly”
― Luis Sepúlveda, The Story of a Seagull and the Cat Who Taught Her to Fly

“We've learnt to appreciate and respect and love someone who's different from us. It is very easy to accept and love those who are like us, but to love someone different is very hard, and you helped us to do that.”
― Luis Sepúlveda, The Story of a Seagull and the Cat Who Taught Her to Fly

“It was the purest love without purpose other than love itself. Without tenure or jealousy.”
― Luis Sepúlveda, The Old Man Who Read Love Stories

“People who love horror films are people with boring lives... when a really scary movie is over, you're reassured to see that you're still alive and the world still exists as it did before. That's the real reason we have horror films - they act as shock absorbers - and if they disappeared altogether, I bet you'd see a big leap in the number of serial killers. After all, anyone stupid enough to get the idea of murdering people from a movie could get the same idea from watching the news.”
― Ryu Murakami, In the Miso Soup

“... The type of loneliness where you need to keep struggling to accept a situation is fundamentally different than the sort you know you'll get through if you just hang in there”
― Ryu Murakami, In the Miso Soup

“But I wasn’t crying because I was sad. I guess I was crying because we had nowhere else to go, no choice but to go on living in this world. Crying because we had no other world to choose, and crying at everything before us, everything around us.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“Because we’re always in pain, we know exactly what it means to hurt somebody else.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“I think you travel to search and you come back home to find yourself there.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“Menulislah, agar hidupmu tak seperti hewan ternak, sekadar makan dan minum sebelum disembelih," kata Loki Tua waktu itu.”
― Yusi Avianto Pareanom, Raden Mandasia si Pencuri Daging Sapi

“We shouldn't be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas.”
― Noam Chomsky

“Mereka harus menerima kenyataan, bahwa untuk menjadi cerdas, mereka membutuhkan uang. Sopir angkot hanya mau mengantar ke sekolah bila dikasih uang. Guru-guru pun hanya mau mengajar jika dikasih uang.

Namun uang tidak gampang dicari. Hanya daun yang gampang dicari. Dan hanya sapi, di kandang karantina itu, yang mau dikasih daun.”
― Felix K. Nesi, Orang-Orang Oetimu

“kau mata, aku airmatamu...”
― Joko Pinurbo

“Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don't abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book."

(Acceptance speech, National Book Award 2010 (Nonfiction), November 17, 2010)”
― Patti Smith

“The artist seeks contact with his intuitive sense of the gods, but in order to create his work, he cannot stay in this seductive and incorporeal realm. He must return to the material world in order to do his work. It's the artist's responsibility to balance mystical communication and the labor of creation.”
― Patti Smith, Just Kids

“To build up a library is to create a life. It's never just a random collection of books.”
― Carlos María Domínguez, The House of Paper

“For me the greatest joy is to be able to submerge myself for a few hours every day in a human time that otherwise would be alien to me. A lifetime is not enough.”
― Carlos Maria Dominguez, The House of Paper

“Aku sering berpikir pengorbanan adalah perbuatan yang egois. Ada kepentingan pribadi di situ. Kepentingan untuk meyakinkan diri bahwa kita adalah orang yang mulia.”
― Venerdi Handoyo, Pemetik Bintang