Essie > Essie's Quotes

“The day was ill-omened from the beginning; one of those unlucky days when every little detail seems to go wrong and one finds oneself engaged in a perpetual and infuriating strife with inanimate objects. How truly fiendish the sub-human world can be on these occasions! How every atom, every cell, every molecule, seems to be leagued in a maddening conspiracy against the unfortunate being who has incurred its obscure displeasure!”
― Anna Kavan, Asylum Piece

“A human being can only endure depression up to a certain point; when this point of saturation is reached it becomes necessary for him to discover some element of pleasure, no matter how humble or on how low a level, in his environment if he is to go on living at all. In my case these insignificant birds with their subdued colourings have provided just sufficient distraction to keep me from total despair. Each day I find myself spending longer and longer at the window watching their flights, their quarrels, their mouse-quick flutterings, their miniature feuds and alliances. Curiously enough, it is only when I am standing in front of the window that I feel any sense of security. While I am watching the birds I believe that I am comparatively immune from the assaults of life. The very indifference to humanity of these wild creatures affords me a certain safeguard. Where all else is dangerous, hostile and liable to inflict pain, they alone can do me no injury because, probably, they are not even aware of my existence. The birds are at once my refuge and my relaxation.”
― Anna Kavan, Asylum Piece

“Unquestionably it would have been Mary Magdalene who did the dishes at the Last Supper.

Concluded Marguerite Yourcenar.”
― David Markson, Reader’s Block

“Can Protagonist think of a single film that interests him as much as the three-hundredth best book he ever read?”
― David Markson, Reader’s Block

“Instead of complaining, discover ways, tactics and tricks on how to reach out to people”
― Sunday Adelaja

“People who understand how to convert their time into useful products do not complain of boredom. They have too many important tasks to accomplish that they can hardly get bored.”
― Sunday Adelaja, How To Become Great Through Time Conversion: Are you wasting time, spending time or investing time?

“Nothing came or went out of the tower that Gothel didn't bring herself-- or that Rapunzel did not create out of the things she had brought. And usually the things she created took days or weeks and were obvious in their coming into existence. Gothel always complained about the sawdust, the paint flecks, the experimental cheese curds...”
― Liz Braswell, What Once Was Mine

“The world was to me a secret which I desired to devine.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“The city is a device for measuring time.”
― Don DeLillo, Mao II

“In committing a work to memory we make it safe from decay. It stands untouched. Children memorize parts of stories their parents tell them. They want the same story again and again. Don't change a word or they get terribly upset. This is the unchanged narrative every culture needs in order to survive.”
― Don DeLillo, Mao II

“Sitting for a picture is morbid business. A portrait doesn’t begin to mean anything until the subject is dead. This is the whole point. We’re doing this to create a kind of sentimental past for people in decades to come. It’s their past, their history we’re inventing here. And it’s not how I look now that matters. It’s how I’ll look in twenty-five years as clothing and faces change, as photographs change. The deeper I pass into death, the more powerful my picture becomes. Isn’t this why picture-taking is so ceremonial? It’s like a wake. And I’m the actor made up for the laying-out.”
― Don DeLillo, Mao II

“A fact is innocent until someone wants it; then it become intelligence.”
― Don DeLillo, Libra

“If we are on the outside, we assume a conspiracy is the perfect working scheme. Silent nameless men with unadorned hearts. A conspiracy is everything that ordinary life is not. It's the inside game, cold, sure, undistracted, forever closed off to us. We are the flawed ones, the innocents, trying to make some rough sense of the daily jostle. Conspirators have a logic and daring beyond our reach. All conspiracies are the same taut story of men who find coherence in some criminal act.”
― Don DeLillo, Libra

“He suddenly recalled from Plato's Symposium: People were hermaphrodites until God split then in two, and now all the halves wander the world over seeking one another. Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“She had an overwhelming desire to tell him, like the most banal of women. Don't let me go, hold me tight, make me your plaything, your slave, be strong! But they were words she could not say.

The only thing she said when he released her from his embrace was, "You don't know how happy I am to be with you." That was the most her reserved nature allowed her to express.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“I'm always happy," Sasha said. "Sometimes I just forget.”
― Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

“The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of the things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place.”
― Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

“The hitter can never be the judge. Only the receiver of the blow can tell you how hard it was, whether it would kill a man or make a baby just yawn.”
― Edward P. Jones, The Known World

“We are all worthy of one another.”
― Edward P. Jones, The Known World

“A woman, no matter the age, is always learning, always becoming. But a man . . . stops learning at fourteen or so.”
― Edward P. Jones, The Known World

“A man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“If I am going to be afraid, I might as well do it honest. Arm in arm with everyone I love, adorned in blood and bruises, singing jokes on our way to the grave.”
― Hanif Abdurraqib, A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance

“I’ve run out of language to explain the avalanche of anguish I feel when faced with this world, and so if I can’t make sense of this planet, I’m better off imagining another.”
― Hanif Abdurraqib, A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance

“Let me play the lion too: I will roar that I will do any man's heart good to hear me. I will roar that I will make the duke say 'Let him roar again, let him roar again.”
― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“يوجد العيد دائما حيث الشقاء مقيم”
― Etel Adnan, Paris, When It's Naked

“نحن البحر. نجزر ونفيض بلا انتظام”
― Etel Adnan, Paris, When It's Naked

“قلبي يضيق بالخوف من الآتي”
― Etel Adnan, Paris, When It's Naked

“I think I dislike what I don't like more than I like what I like.”
― George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

“Let my body dwell in poverty, and my hands be as the hands of the toiler; but let my soul be as a temple of remembrance where the treasures of knowledge enter and the inner sanctuary is hope.”
― George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

“The tears were back, stinging just behind my eyes. There was blood all over my penguins. I didn't give a damn about the walls and carpet. They could be replaced, but I'd collected those damned stuffed toys over years.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, The Laughing Corpse