Isabelle Rieser > Isabelle's Quotes

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Reader's Bill of Rights

1. The right to not read

2. The right to skip pages

3. The right to not finish

4. The right to reread

5. The right to read anything

6. The right to escapism

7. The right to read anywhere

8. The right to browse

9. The right to read out loud

10. The right to not defend your tastes”
― Daniel Pennac

“Life is not a dream. Careful! Careful! Careful!
We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth
or we climb to the knife edge of the snow with the voices of
the dead dahlias.
But forgetfulness does not exist, dreams do not exist;
flesh exists. Kisses tie our mouths
in a thicket of new veins,
and whoever his pain pains will feel that pain forever
and whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulders.”
― Federico García Lorca

“The waves broke and spread their waters swiftly over the shore. One after another they massed themselves and fell; the spray tossed itself back with the energy of their fall. The waves were steeped deep-blue save for a pattern of diamond-pointed light on their backs which rippled as the backs of great horses ripple with muscles as they move. The waves fell; withdrew and fell again, like the thud of a great beast stamping.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“...But beauty must be broken daily to remain beautiful...”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“I sometimes longed for someone who, like me, had not adjusted perfectly with his age, and such a person was hard to find; but I soon discovered cats, in which I could imagine a condition like mine, and books, where I found it quite often.”
― Julio Cortázar, Around the Day in Eighty Worlds

“Beauty is like a train that ceaselessly roars out of the Gare de Lyon and which I know will never leave, which has not left. It consists of jolts and shocks, many of which do not have much importance, but which we know are destined to produce one Shock, which does...The human heart, beautiful as a seismograph...Beauty will be CONVULSIVE or will not be at all.”
― Andre Breton, Nadja

“En réalité, je n'avais jamais pensé qu'il pût lire mon livre. L'art incomparable de Johnny. Que pouvais je dire de plus ? Mais c'est peut-être justement à ce tournant qu'il m'attend, à l'affût comme toujours ramassé sur lui-même, prêt à faire un de ces bonds qui risquent toujours de blesser l'un de nous. Honnêtement, que m'importe sa vie ? La seule chose qui m'inquiète c'est qu'en se laissant mener par ce genre d'existence que je ne peux pas suivre, disons que je ne veux pas suivre, il ne finisse par contredire les conclusions de mon livre, par laisser entendre une ou deux fois que sa musique n'est pas ce que je dis.”
― Julio Cortázar