Mila > Mila's Quotes

“We are our stories. We tell them to stay alive or keep alive those who only live now in the telling.”
― Niall Williams, History of the Rain

“What does the brain matter compared with the heart?”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“He thought her beautiful, believed her impeccably wise; dreamed of her, wrote poems to her, which, ignoring the subject, she corrected in red ink.”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“What Ryan had learned from this is that your failures keep returning to you, while your successes are something you always have to convince yourself of.”
― Rachel Cusk, Outline

“Ось чим різниться подружжя від усіх, хай би яких вольтанутих кохань і закохань: воно включає обов`язковий обмін привидами”
― Оксана Забужко, Музей покинутих секретів

“I suppose, I said, it is one definition of love, the belief in something that only the two of you can see.”
― Rachel Cusk, Outline

“If love is what is held to make us immortal, hatred is the reverse. And what is astonishing is how much details it gathers to itself, so that nothing remains untouched by it.”
― Rachel Cusk, Outline

“It's hard to recognize discrimination when you live with it”
― Slavenka Drakulić, How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed

“Why communism failed: it failed because of distrust, because of a fear for the future.
Because deep down no body believed in a system that was continuously unable to provide for its life citizen's basic needs for forty years or more.”
― Slavenka Drakulić, How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed

“That evening, in her apartment, still in Warsaw, Ana takes down a book from her shelf – a rather thick, ordinary paperback. It looks old, because it's worn out and somehow shabby. But it's not ordinary. I can tell by the way she handles it so carefully, like something unique. 'This is the book I told you about,' she says, holding out the Anthology of Feminist Texts, a collection of early American feminist essays, 'the only feminist book translated into the Polish language,' the only such book to turn to when you are sick and tired of reading about man-eater/man-killer feminists from the West, I think, looking at it, imagining how many women have read this one copy. 'Sometimes I feel like I live on Jupiter, among Jupiterians, and then one day, quite by chance, I discover that I belong to another species. And I discover it in this book. Isn't that wonderful.”
― Slavenka Drakulić, How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed

“How is a woman to tell the story of her life and not stumble upon men?”
― Slavenka Drakulić, How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed

“Humor is the only way to overcome depression”
― Slavenka Drakulić, How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed

“Yes I don’t like to live here,’ she said, more to herself than me. Then she turned toward me: ‘But if I have learned anything from my life, it’s that since I don’t belong anywhere, only the movement matters.”
― Slavenka Drakulić, How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed

“They were forced to vote for communists, as if communists needed voting for.”
― Slavenka Drakulić, How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed

“Perhaps to them and their peers their ecological consciousness is a bigger sign of prestige than a fur coat.”
― Slavenka Drakulić, How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed

“A degree of self-deception, she said, was an essential part of the talent for living.”
― Rachel Cusk, Kudos

“The one thing you can say about people for sure, is that they'll only free themselves if freedom is in their own interest.”
― Rachel Cusk, Kudos

“You can't tell your story to everybody, I said. Maybe you can only tell it to one person.”
― Rachel Cusk, Kudos

“you survived your own death and there was nothing left to do but to talk about it, to strangers on a plane or whoever would listen”
― Rachel Cusk, Kudos

“Whatever we might wish to believe about ourselves, we are only the result of how others have treated us.”
― Rachel Cusk, Transit

“it felt like he was acting a part in a play: other people spoke their lines and he spoke his, and everything that happened and everywhere he went felt unreal somehow, like scripted events unfolding on a stage set”
― Rachel Cusk, Transit

“(...) which goes to show, he said, that we examine least what has formed us the most, and instead find ourselves driven blindly to re-enact it. Maybe it's only in our injuries, he said, that the future can take root.”
― Rachel Cusk, Transit

“ми й далі тішимо себе дитячою ілюзією, ніби маємо над ним [минулим] владу, бо можемо його забути. Наче від нашого забуття воно кудись зникне”
― Oksana Zabuzhko, The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

“When we face pain in relationships our first response is often to sever bonds rather than to maintain commitment.
”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“the wounded child inside many males is a boy who, when he first spoke his truths, was silenced by paternal sadism, by a patriarchal world that did not want him to claim his true feelings. The wounded child inside many females is a girl who was taught from early childhood that she must become something other than herself, deny her true feelings, in order to attract and please others. When men and women punish each other for truth telling, we reinforce the notion that lies are better. To be loving we willingly hear the other’s truth, and most important, we affirm the value of truth telling. Lies may make people feel better, but they do not help them to know love.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control.”
― Bell Hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“When we surrender to the "wait" we allow changes to emerge within us without anticipation or struggle”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions