van > van's Quotes

“Everything is a self-portrait. A diary. Your whole drug history’s in a strand of your hair. Your fingernails. The forensic details. The lining of your stomach is a document. The calluses on your hand tell all your secrets. Your teeth give you away. Your accent. The wrinkles around your mouth and eyes. Everything you do shows your hand.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

“What if evil doesn't really exist? What if evil is something dreamed up by man, and there is nothing to struggle against except out own limitations? The constant battle between our will, our desires, and our choices?”
― Libba Bray, Rebel Angels

“A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, The one I feed the most.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“We are not all born at once, but by bits. The body first, and the spirit later... Our mothers are racked with the pains of our physical birth; we ourselves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth.”
― Mary Austin

“I was beginning to see that Phineas could get away with anything. I couldn't help envying him that a little, which was perfectly normal. There was no harm in envying even your best friend a little”
― John Knowles, A Separate Peace

“...his jaw tightening and his eyes closed on the tears. “I believe you. It’s okay because I understand and I believe you.”
― John Knowles, A Separate Peace

“What makes you so special? Why should you get it and all the rest of us be in the dark?"

The momentum of the argument abruptly broke from his control. His face froze. "Because I've suffered," he burst out.”
― John Knowles, A Separate Peace

“I thought the issue was settled until at the end he said, 'Listen, pal, if I can't play sports, you're going to play them for me,' and I lost part of myself to him, and a soaring sense of freedom revealed that this must have been my purpose from the first: to become a part of Phineas.”
― John Knowles, A Separate Peace

“I never killed anybody and I never developed an intense level of hatred for the enemy. Because my war ended before I ever put on a uniform; I was on active duty all my time at school; I killed my enemy there. Only Phineas never was afraid, only Phineas never hated anyone. Other people experienced this fearful shock somewhere, this sighting of the enemy...All of them, all except Phineas, constructed at infinite cost to themselves these Maginot Lines against this enemy they thought they saw across the frontier, this enemy who never attacked that way—if he ever attacked at all; if he was indeed the enemy.”
― John Knowles, A Separate Peace

“Now, in this winter of snow and crutches with Phineas, I begin to know that each morning reasserted the problems of the night before, that sleep suspended all but changed nothing, that you couldn’t make yourself over between dawn and dusk. Phineas however did not believe this. I’m sure that he looked down at his leg every morning first thing, as soon as he remembered it, to see if it had not been totally restored while he slept. When he found on this first morning back at Devon that it happened still to be crippled and in a cast, he said in his usual self-contained way, “Hand me my crutches, will you?”
― John Knowles, A Separate Peace

“The last words of Finny's usual nighttime monologue were, 'I hope you're having a pretty good time here. I know I kind of dragged you away at the point of a gun, but after all you can't come to the shore with just anybody and you can't come by yourself, and at this teen-age period in life the proper person is your best pal.' He hesitated and then added, 'which is what you are,' and there was silence on his dune.
It was a courageous thing to say. Exposing a sincere emotion nakedly like that at the Devon School was the next thing to suicide. I should have told him then that he was my best friend also and rounded off what he said. I started to; I nearly did. But something held me back. Perhaps I was stopped by the level of feeling, deeper than thought, which contains the truth.”
― John Knowles, A Separate Peace

“It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.”
― William Blake

“Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard
Some do it with a bitter look
Some with a flattering word
The coward does it with a kiss
The brave man with a sword”
― Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol

“You teach me now how cruel you've been - cruel and false. Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they'll blight you - they'll damn you. You loved me - what right had you to leave me? What right - answer me - for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will did it. I have no broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you - Oh, God! would you like to lie with your soul in the grave?”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“Et tu, Brute?”
― William Shakespeare , Julius Caesar

“It's very easy to get a boy to leave the room.
It's much harder to get him to leave your thoughts.”
― Elizabeth Eulberg, Prom & Prejudice

“Thus with my lips have I denounced you, while my heart, bleeding within me, called you tender names.

It was love lashed by its own self that spoke. It was pride half slain that fluttered in the dust. It was my hunger for your love that raged from the housetop, while my own love, kneeling in silence, prayed your forgiveness.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Forerunner: His Parables and Poems

“A kingdom, or this?”
― C.S. Pacat, Captive Prince

“I think if I gave you my heart, you would treat it tenderly.”
― C.S. Pacat, Kings Rising

“Laurent said, ‘Hello, lover.”
― C.S. Pacat, Kings Rising

“I miss you," said Laurent. "I miss our conversations.”
― C.S. Pacat, Kings Rising

“I miss you too,’ he said. ‘I’m jealous of Isander.’ ‘Isander’s a slave.’ ‘I was a slave.’ The moment ached. Laurent met his gaze, his eyes too clear. ‘You were never a slave, Damianos. You were born to rule, as I was.”
― C.S. Pacat, Kings Rising

“To gain everything and lose everything in the space of a moment. That is the fate of all princes destined for the throne.”
― C.S. Pacat, Kings Rising

“Laurent said, ‘No. I’m not here to—’ He said, ‘I’m just here.”
― C.S. Pacat, Kings Rising

“There was a warmth in his chest whenever he looked at Laurent. He didn't look often for that reason.”
― C.S. Pacat, Kings Rising

“You're still wearing it."
He couldn't help but say it. Laurent's wrist was heavy with gold, like the colour of his hair in the firelight.
"So are you."
"Tell me why."
"You know why," said Laurent.”
― C.S. Pacat, Kings Rising

“I mean that we hold the centre. We hold everything from Acquitart to Sicyon. Can we not call it a kingdom and rule it together? Am I such a poorer prospect than a Patran princess, or a daughter of the Empire?’ He made himself say no more than that, though the words crowded in his chest. He waited. It surprised him that it hurt to wait, and that the longer he waited, the more he felt he couldn’t bear to hear the answer, brought to him on a knife point. When he made himself look at Laurent, Laurent’s eyes on him were very dark, his voice quiet. ‘How can you trust me, after what your own brother did to you?’ ‘Because he was false,’ said Damen, ‘and you are true. I have never known a truer man.’ He said, into the stillness, ‘I think if I gave you my heart, you would treat it tenderly.’ Laurent turned his head, denying Damen his face. Damen could see his breathing. After a moment he said in a low voice, ‘When you make love to me like that, I can’t think.’ ‘Don’t think,’ said Damen. Damen”
― C.S. Pacat, Kings Rising

“The normal world has no room for exceptions and always quietly eliminates foreign objects. Anyone who is lacking is disposed of.

So that’s why I need to be cured. Unless I’m cured, normal people will expurgate me. Finally I understood why my family had tried so hard to fix me.”
― Sayaka Murata, Convenience Store Woman

“After all, I absorb the world around me, and that’s changing all the time. Just as all the water that was in my body last time we met has now been replaced with new water, the things that make up me have changed too.”
― Sayaka Murata, Convenience Store Woman

“I wished I was back in the convenience store where I was valued as a working member of staff and things weren’t as complicated as this. Once we donned our uniforms, we were all equals regardless of gender, age, or nationality— all simply store workers.”
― Sayaka Murata, コンビニ人間 [Konbini ningen]