Anna > Anna's Quotes

“I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“When two people meet, each one is changed by the other so you've got two new people.”
― John Steinbeck

“Unbeing dead isn't being alive.”
― E. E. Cummings

“I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.”
― e.e. cummings

“Yours is the light by which my spirit's born: - you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.”
― E.E. Cummings

“I think there is something beautiful in reveling in sadness. The proof is how beautiful sad songs can be. So I don’t think being sad is to be avoided. It’s apathy and boredom you want to avoid. But feeling anything is good, I think. Maybe that’s sadistic of me.”
― Joseph Gordon-Levitt

“The Sun is such a lonely star. Whenever he comes out to see his friends, they all disappear.”
― Joseph Gordon-Levitt, The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories, Vol. 1

“When I was Younger, I wanted to be something.Now, I just want to be younger.”
― Joseph Gordon-Levitt

“Your heart has a little empty corner. You won't even know I'm there -- I'll be very quiet.”
― Joseph Gordon-Levitt, The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories, Vol. 2

“This is the saddest, most depressing music I've ever heard.

It makes me so happy.”
― Joseph Gordon-Levitt, The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories, Vol. 2

“A man touched me: 
his hand... my thigh.

I touched him too: 
my fist... his jaw.”
― Joseph Gordon-Levitt, The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories, Vol. 1

“All worthy work is open to interpretations the author did not intend. Art isn't your pet -- it's your kid. It grows up and talks back to you.”
― Joss Whedon

“A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

“We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and—in spite of True Romance magazines—we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely—at least, not all the time—but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

“Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Flannery O'Connor: Collected Works

“All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“Only if we are secure in our beliefs can we see the comical side of the universe.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“He loved her because it was his nature to do so, but there were times when he could not endure her love for him. There were times when it became nothing but pure idiot mystery...”
― Flannery O'Connor, Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories

“Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood

“Most of us have learned to be dispassionate about evil, to look it in the face and find, as often as not, our own grinning reflections with which we do not argue, but good is another matter. Few have stared at that long enough to accept that its face too is grotesque, that in us the good is something under construction. The modes of evil usually receive worthy expression. The modes of good have to be satisfied with a cliche or a smoothing down that will soften their real look.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe. I know what torment this is, but I can only see it, in myself anyway, as the process by which faith is deepened. A faith that just accepts is a child's faith and all right for children, but eventually you have to grow religiously as every other way, though some never do.

What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe. If you feel you can't believe, you must at least do this: keep an open mind. Keep it open toward faith, keep wanting it, keep asking for it, and leave the rest to God.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“She had observed that the more education they got, the less they could do. Their father had gone to a one-room schoolhouse through the eighth grade and he could do anything.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories

“Your beliefs will be the light by which you see, but they will not be what you see and they will not be a substitute for seeing.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

“Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place.

Nothing outside you can give you any place," he said. "You needn't look at the sky because it's not going to open up and show no place behind it. You needn't to search for any hole in the ground to look through into somewhere else. You can't go neither forwards nor backwards into your daddy's time nor your children's if you have them. In yourself right now is all the place you've got. If there was any Fall, look there, if there was any Redemption, look there, and if you expect any Judgment, look there, because they all three will have to be in your time and your body and where in your time and your body can they be?”
― Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood

“I preach there are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else's, but behind all of them, there's only one truth and that is that there is no truth... No truth behind all truths is what I and this church preach! Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place... In yourself right now is all the place you've got.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood

“You have to quit confusing a madness with a mission.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Violent Bear It Away

“The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can't make something out of a little experience, you probably won't be able to make it out of a lot.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“...the only thing that makes the Church endurable is that it is somehow the body of Christ and that on this we are fed. It seems to be a fact that you have to suffer as much from the Church as for it but if you believe in the divinity of Christ, you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it. ”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“I have almost no capacity for worship. What I have is the knowledge that it is my duty to worship and worship only what I believe to be true.”

May 19, 1962”
― Flannery O'Connor