Emma Burris > Emma's Quotes

“Never get so attached to a poem
You forget truth that lacks lyricism”
― Joanna Newsom

“Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride

“No, life is only given to me once and I shall never have it again; I don’t want to wait for ‘the happiness of all.’ I want to live myself, or else better not live at all. I simply couldn’t pass by my mother starving, keeping my rouble in my pocket while I waited for the ‘happiness of all.’ I am putting my little brick into the happiness of all and so my heart is at peace.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Nightjar, transmit — once more, and innumerable times more!”
― Joanna Newsom

“But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Thinking can hurt your chances, and I intend to last”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“He felt as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in a monstrous world where he himself was the monster. He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable”
― George Orwell, 1984

“And people are just people,
They shouldn't make you nervous.
The world is everlasting,
It's coming and it's going.”
― Regina Spektor

“To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Indeed, in that sense we’re all rather often almost like mad people, only with the slight difference that the ‘sick’ are somewhat madder than we are, so that it’s necessary to draw a line here.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“You mustn't think! The whole secret of life in two pages of print!”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Lord: is it harder to carry on, or to know when you are done?”
― Joanna Newsom

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Darling, there's a place for us
Can we go, before I turn to dust?”
― Joanna Newsom

“Be a woman, be a woman!”
― Joanna Newsom

“Everybody has to die, Firdaus. I will die, and you will die. The important thing is how to live until you die.'
'How is it possible to live? Life is so hard.'
'You must be harder than life, Firdaus. Life is very hard. The only people who really live are those who are harder than life itself.”
― Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero

“If the first man who comes along does not want her, she will have the next, or the one after. No need to wait any longer for just one man. No need to be sad when he does not turn up, or to expect anything and suffer when one's hopes are razed to the ground.”
― Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero

“I was like a woman walking through an enchanted world to which she did not belong. She is free to do what she wants, and free not to do it.”
― Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero

“The thing that I was experiencing and dwelling on the entire time is that there are so many things that are not OK and that will never be OK again. But there’s also so many things that are OK and good that sometimes it makes you crumple over with being alive. We are allowed such an insane depth of beauty and enjoyment in this lifetime. It’s what my dad talks about sometimes. He says the only way that he knows there’s a God is that there’s so much gratuitous joy in this life. And that’s his only proof. There’s so many joys that do not assist in the propagation of the race or self-preservation. There’s no point whatsoever. They are so excessively, mind-bogglingly joy-producing that they distract from the very functions that are supposed to promote human life. They can leave you stupefied, monastic, not productive in any way, shape or form. And those joys are there and they are unflagging and they are ever-growing. And still there are these things that you will never be able to feel OK about–unbearably awful, sad, ugly, unfair things.”
― Joanna Newsom

“I fought angrily against seeing particular types of poetic organization because it seemed awful to see my own life and these actual events in that way. But when you put forth an intention into the universe to speak a certain truth and narrate a certain period of your life, you start to see the sorts of symmetries that you are not usually supposed to be able to see until you are on your deathbed and your life flashes before your eyes. And you see exactly why everything happened. And even the most painful things you’ve ever been through can seem unbearably beautiful.”
― Joanna Newsom

“the signifieds butt-heads with the signifiers
and we all fall down slackjawed to marvel at words
while across the sky sheet impossible birds
in a steady illiterate movement homewards.”
― Joanna Newsom

“Maybe a good goal would be to just at least always try to create something good. Like something that is connected to love in some way. Like the [musical] equivalent of…you can make a decision to be kind. You can make a decision to greet people kindly and make jokes with people and connect.”
― Joanna Newsom

“You fondle my trigger, then you blame my gun”
― Fiona Apple

“I don't want to give advice to a 19-year-old, because I want a 19-year-old to make mistakes and learn from them. Make mistakes, make mistakes, make mistakes. Just make sure they're your mistakes.”
― Fiona Apple

“When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks Like a King What He Knows Throws the Blows When He Goes to the Fight and He'll Win the Whole Thing 'Fore He Enters the Ring There's No Body to Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might So When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand and Remember That Depth Is the Greatest of Heights and If You Know Where You Stand, Then You Know Where to Land and If You Fall It Won't Matter, Cuz You'll Know That You're Right”
― Fiona Apple

“Be kind to me, or treat me mean
I'll make the most of it, I'm an extraordinary machine”
― fiona apple

“Nothing that you do will ever feel good if you let people convince you that you have no choice.”
― Fiona Apple

“You can live your whole life in your brain and not experience what's around you. You go crazy that way. That's why I have to watch myself when I get isolated for too long.”
― Fiona Apple

“I have a very steadfast tendency to parent myself, to monitor my development into the person I want to be. I try to keep the corruption minimal. And though I advocate learning from my mistakes as much as making mistakes, I also try and make sure my mistakes do not cost other people.”
― Fiona Apple

“I really don't think anything I do is a mistake. It could be if I didn't learn from it.”
― Fiona Apple