Ana > Ana's Quotes

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
― Albert Camus

“If you want to find out what a man is to the bottom, give him power. Any man can stand adversity — only a great man can stand prosperity. It is the glory of Abraham Lincoln that he never abused power only on the side of mercy”
― Robert Ingersoll

“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
― Anaïs Nin

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“How lost do you have to be to let the devil lead you home?”
― Stuart Turton, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Eleonora

“Tell me why the stars do shine,
Tell me why the ivy twines,
Tell me what makes skies so blue,
And I'll tell you why I love you.

Nuclear fusion makes stars to shine,
Tropisms make the ivy twine,
Raleigh scattering make skies so blue,
Testicular hormones are why I love you. ”
― Isaac Asimov

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
― Mary Oliver

“Here is a lesson in creative writing.

First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.

And I realize some of you may be having trouble deciding whether I am kidding or not. So from now on I will tell you when I'm kidding.

For instance, join the National Guard or the Marines and teach democracy. I'm kidding.

We are about to be attacked by Al Qaeda. Wave flags if you have them. That always seems to scare them away. I'm kidding.

If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“Morality, too, is a question of time.”
― Gabriel Garcia Marquez

“(I)f we are going to be kind, let it be out of simple generosity, not because we fear guilt or retribution.”
― J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace

“She is no longer sure that people are always improved by what they read. Furthermore, she is not sure that writers who venture into the darker territories of the soul always return unscathed.”
― J.M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello

“Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are.”
― José Saramago, Blindness

“Los únicos interesados en cambiar el mundo son los pesimistas, porque los optimistas están encantados con lo que hay.”
― José Saramago

“We never consider that the things dogs know about us are things of which we have not the faintest notion.”
― José Saramago, Death with Interruptions

“the only thing more terrifying than blindness is being the only one who can see.”
― José Saramago, Blindness

“O drama não é que as pessoas tenham opiniões, mas sim que as tenham sem saber do que falam.”
― José Saramago

“... the best way of killing a rose is to force it open when it is still only the promise of a bud.”
― José Saramago, The Cave

“Strictly speaking, we do not make decisions, decisions make us.”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“You have no idea what it is like to watch two blind people fighting. Fighting has always been, more or less, a form of blindness.”
― José Saramago, Blindness

“Juro que nunca te olharei por dentro" - Blimunda”
― José Saramago

“Quando, de manhã, Baltasar acordou, viu Blimunda deitada a seu lado, a comer pão, de olhos fechados. Só os abriu, cinzentos àquela hora, depois de ter acabado de comer, e disse, Nunca te olharei por dentro.”
― José Saramago, Baltasar and Blimunda

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”
― Anais Nin

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book.”
― J.K Rowling