Chloe > Chloe's Quotes

“It was a joy! Words weren't dull, words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter what happened to you.”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“Basically what we have here is a dreamer. Somebody out of touch with reality. When she jumped, she probably thought she'd fly”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides

“In the end, it wasn't death that surprised her but the stubbornness of life.”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides

“What a weary time those years were -- to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability.”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole goddamned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves.”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“You just rebel against everything. How are you going to survive?

I don't know. I'm already tired.”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“The young people
nowadays – men and women, amateurs and pros – generally fall
into one of two categories: either they don’t know what it is
that’s most important to them, or they know but don’t have the
power to go after it. But this girl’s different. She knows what’s
most important to her and she knows how to get it, but she
doesn’t let on what it is. I’m pretty sure it’s not money, or
success, or a normal happy life, or a strong man, or some weird
religion, but that’s about all I can tell you. She’s like smoke: you
think you’re seeing her clearly enough, but when you reach for
her there’s nothing there. That’s a sort of strength, I suppose.
But it makes her hard to figure out.”
― Ryū Murakami, Audition

“Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Why bother trying? What was the point? So I could go to some suck-ass college, get a diploma, march out into a job that I hated, marry a pretty girl who would want to divorce me, but then she wouldn't because we'd have kids, so instead she'd be the angry woman at the other end of the kitchen table, and the kids would grow up watching this, until one day I'd look at my son and he'd look just like that face in the bathroom mirror?
If that was life, then it was twisted.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Twisted

“You are not your job, you're not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis. You are all singing, all dancing crap of the world.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“Consider, if you will, the morning boner. What a metaphor of hope and renewal! How can anyone give way to despair when one’s groin greets each day with such a gala spectacle of physical optimism?”
― C.D. Payne, Youth in Revolt

“And I can't be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“Oh, it's lovely to see you!' Franny said as the cab moved off. 'I've missed you.' The words were no sooner out than she realized that she didn't mean them at all.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“I thought that the difference between a successful life and an unsuccessful one, between me at that moment and all the people who owned the cars that were nosed-in to their proper places in the lot, maybe between me and that woman out in the trailers by the gold mine, was how well you were able to put things like this out of your mind and not be bothered by them, and maybe too, by how many troubles like this one you had to face in a lifetime.”
― Richard Ford, Rock Springs

“Can you be happy with the movies, and the ads, and the clothes in the stores, and the doctors, and the eyes as you walk down the street all telling you there is something wrong with you? No. You cannot be happy. Because, you poor darling baby, you believe them.”
― Katherine Dunn, Geek Love

“You do things and do things and nobody really has a clue.”
― John Updike, Rabbit, Run

“Seems like the only kind of job an American can get these days is committing suicide in some way.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

“You are pooped and demoralised,” read Dwayne. “Why wouldn’t you be? Of course it is exhausting, having to reason all the time in a universe which wasn’t meant to be reasonable.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

“Impropriety is the soul of wit.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence

“Little solace comes
to those who grieve
when thoughts keep drifting
as walls keep shifting
and this great blue world of ours
seems a house of leaves

moments before the wind.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

“What a fine weather today! Can’t choose whether to drink tea or to hang myself.”
― A.P. Chekhov

“Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it.”
― Toni Morrison, Jazz

“I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked [James] Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of Dublin. Never. And I don't know why I should be asked to explain your life to you. We have splendid writers to do that, but I am not one of them. It is that business of being universal, a word hopelessly stripped of meaning for me. Faulkner wrote what I suppose could be called regional literature and had it published all over the world. That's what I wish to do. If I tried to write a universal novel, it would be water. Behind this question is the suggestion that to write for black people is somehow to diminish the writing. From my perspective there are only black people. When I say 'people,' that's what I mean.”
― Toni Morrison

“A dream is just a nightmare with lipstick.”
― Toni Morrison

“There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.”
― Gore Vidal