Elizabeth > Elizabeth's Quotes

“to live in this world

you must be able
to do three things
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go”
― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Volume One

“When I look at my life and its secret colours, I feel like bursting into tears.”
― Albert Camus, A Happy Death

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”
― Albert Camus

“To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.”
― Federico García Lorca, Blood Wedding and Yerma

“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”
― Pablo Neruda, Love: Ten Poems

“Someday, somewhere - anywhere, unfailingly, you'll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.”
― Pablo Neruda

“Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“I am moved by the multitudes of your intelligence and sometimes, returning, I become the sea— in love with your speed, your heaviness and breath.”
― Frank O'Hara , Meditations in an Emergency

“I do not care so much what I am to others as I care what I am to myself.”
― Michel de Montaigne

“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.”
― Edgar Allen Poe

“There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.”
― Francis Bacon

“I wasn't mean; I wasn't evil. I was nice. And let me tell you, a hesitant man is the last thing in the world a woman needs. She needs a lover and a warrior, not a Really Nice Guy.”
― John Eldredge, Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul

“Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

“If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character...Would you slow down? Or speed up?”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“A girl calls and asks, "Does it hurt very much to die?"
"Well, sweetheart," I tell her, "yes, but it hurts a lot more to keep living.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

“Don't do what you want. Do what you don't want. Do what you're trained not to want. Do the things that scare you the most.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“Your heart is my piñata.”
― Chuck Palahniuk

“Find out what you're afraid of and go live there.”
― Chuck Palahniuk

“You have a choice. Live or die.
Every breath is a choice.
Every minute is a choice.
Every time you don't throw yourself down the stairs, that's a choice. Every time you don't crash your car, you re-enlist.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

“Honest is how I want to look. The truth doesn't glitter and shine.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

“People have to really suffer before they can risk doing what they love.”
― Chuck Palahniuk

“It's only in drugs or death we'll see anything new, and death is just too controlling.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

“This is the biggest mistake I could think would save me. I wanted to give up the idea that I had any control. Shake things up. To be saved by chaos. To see if I could cope, I wanted to force myself to grow again. To explode my comfort zone.”
― Chuck Palahniuk

“The truth is, every son raised by a single mom is pretty much born married. I don't know, but until your mom dies it seems like all the other women in your life can never be more than just your mistress.”
― Chuck Palahniuk

“Almost all the time, you tell yourself you're loving somebody when you're just using them.
This only looks like love.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“When you're young, you think everything you do is disposable. You move from now to now, crumpling time up in your hands, tossing it away. You're your own speeding car. You think you can get rid of things, and people too—leave them behind. You don't yet know about the habit they have, of coming back.

Time in dreams is frozen. You can never get away from where you've been.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“The best way of keeping a secret is to pretend there isn't one.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“Should is a futile word. It's about what didn't happen. It belongs in a parallel universe. It belongs in another dimension of space.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin