Emma > Emma's Quotes

“I couldn't allow myself to think about her very long; if I had I would have jumped off the bridge. It's strange. I had become so reconciled to this life without her, and yet if I thought about her only for a minute it was enough to pierce the bone and marrow of my contentment and shove me hack again into the agonizing gutter of my wretched past.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“Common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist only a little, and that true reality is only in dreams.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“From this point on, she whispered, we will either find or lose our souls.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“Every night I cut out my heart. But in the morning it was full again”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“having nothing to struggle
against
they have nothing to struggle
for.”
― Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.”
― Charles Bukowski

“She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“Death should take me while I am in the mood.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance

“Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important in some respect, whether he chooses to be so or not.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne

“To do nothing is the way to be nothing.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne

“We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves.

I wish for all this to be marked on by body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“I'll be looking at the moon,
but I'll be seeing you.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“Talent is perhaps nothing other than successfully sublimated rage.”
― Theodor W. Adorno

“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Garden of Eden

“I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Fiction is one of the few experiences where loneliness can be both confronted and relieved. Drugs, movies where stuff blows up, loud parties -- all these chase away loneliness by making me forget my name's Dave and I live in a one-by-one box of bone no other party can penetrate or know. Fiction, poetry, music, really deep serious sex, and, in various ways, religion -- these are the places (for me) where loneliness is countenanced, stared down, transfigured, treated.”
― David Foster Wallace

“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”
― Albert Camus

“You should never read just for "enjoyment." Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgmental. More apt to understand your friends' insane behavior, or better yet, your own. Pick "hard books." Ones you have to concentrate on while reading. And for god's sake, don't let me ever hear you say, "I can't read fiction. I only have time for the truth." Fiction is the truth, fool! Ever hear of "literature"? That means fiction, too, stupid.”
― John Waters, Role Models

“I hate men who are afraid of women's strength.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932

“People living deeply have no fear of death.”
― Anaïs Nin

“I am the most tired woman in the world. I am tired when I get up. Life requires an effort I cannot make. Please give me that heavy book. I need to put something heavy like that on top of my head. I have to place my feet under the pillows always, so as to be able to stay on earth. Otherwise I feel myself going away, going away at a tremendous speed, on account of my lightness. I know that I am dead. As soon as I utter a phrase my sincerity dies, becomes a lie whose coldness chills me. Don't say anything, because I see that you understand me, and I am afraid of your understanding. I have such a fear of finding another like myself, and such a desire to find one! I am so utterly lonely, but I also have such a fear that my isolation be broken through, and I no longer be the head and ruler of my universe. I am in great terror of your understanding by which you penetrate into my world; and then I stand revealed and I have to share my kingdom with you.”
― Anais Nin

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”
― Rumi

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
― Rumi

“Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

“Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.”
― Rumi

“Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious.”
― Rumi

“To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.”
― Thomas Campbell

“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.”
― Marcel Proust

“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.”
― OMAR KHAYYAM, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

“I am mad, I am going under, I must follow the advice of a friend, and pay no heed to myself.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black