Becca > Becca's Quotes

“What keeps my heart awake is colorful silence.”
― Claude Monet

“Everyday I discover more and more beautiful things. It’s enough to drive one mad. I have such a desire to do everything, my head is bursting with it.”
― Claude Monet

“It's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.”
― Claude Monet

“I don’t think I’m made for any earthly kind of pleasure.”
― Claude Monet

“I want to paint the way a bird sings.”
― Claude Monet, Monet By Himself

“I must have flowers. Always and always.”
― Claude Monet

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”
― Thomas Merton , No Man Is an Island

“Anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity.”
― Thomas Merton

“Some people have an interest in keeping the silence. Others have an interest in sowing hatred based on fear. Fear makes money, and it makes laws, and it takes land, and it builds settlements, and fear likes to keep everyone silent. And, let’s face it, in Israel we’re very good at fear, it occupies us. Our politicians like to scare us. We like to scare each other. We use the word security to silence others. But it’s not about that, it’s about occupying someone else’s life, someone else’s land, someone else’s head. It’s about control. Which is power. And I realized this with the force of an ax, that it’s true, this notion of speaking truth against power. Power already knows the truth. It tries to hide it. So you have to speak out against power.”
― Colum McCann, Apeirogon

“Chaos was the fuel of Israel. It was a country built on shifting tectonic plates. Things were constantly colliding. Everything led to the edge, the next moment of rupture, but life became most vivid at moments of danger. It was why people drove so fast and so close. It was why they didn’t wait in lines at the airport. It was why the cafés throbbed in the mornings. It was why the markets were so loud and raw. People were chaotic in unison. Molecular in their turmoil. But it worked. Even the polar opposites were attracted to one another. Occasionally they would bash together and it made the ground pulse. There was left and there was right, and there was Orthodox and secular, and there was Arab and Jew, and there was gay and straight, there was high-tech and hippie, and there was rich and fiercely poor. Israel was a condensed everywhere. A tiny country bursting at the seams, but they were in this together. Every dream and neurosis under the sun. The psychoses. The passivities. The pretensions. The pride. The electricity of it all. And the fear too. Everyone wore a loud armor. Always in search of a debate over who and what and where they were.”
― Colum McCann, Apeirogon

“And what is love, in the end?" Alabaster said. "Except the irrational desire to put evolutionary competitiveness aside in order to ease someone else's journey through life?”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“I love that world more, I think, because it is perfectible. Because I have perfected it. The actual world is the random garbage fire it always is. There's not a goddamn thing I can do about the actual world's code.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“For most of his life, Sam had found it difficult to say I Love You. It was superior, he believed, to show love those one loved. But now, it seemed like one of the easiest things in the world Sam could do. Why wouldn't you tell someone you loved them? Once you loved someone, you repeated it until they were tired of hearing it. You said it until it ceased to have meaning. Why not? Of course, you goddamn did.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“The most successful people are also the most able to change their mindsets.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“A great textile, like the William Morris Strawberry Thief, is a piece of art, but it takes a lot of time to make a piece of art. It isn't simply design either. You have to understand the fabrics and what they can bear. You have to understand the dyeing process and how to achieve certain colors and what will make the color last through the ages. If you make a mistake, you might have to begin again."
"I don't think I know Strawberry Thief," Sadie said.
"One moment," Mrs. Watanabe said. Mrs. Watanabe went into her bedroom, and she returned with a little footstool that was upholstered in a reproduction of Strawberry Thief. The pattern depicted birds and strawberries in a garden, and although Sadie hadn't known the name, she recognized the print when she saw it.
"This was William Morris's garden. These were his strawberries. Those were birds he knew. No designer had ever used red or yellow in an indigo discharge dyeing technique before. He must have had to start over many times to get the colors right. This fabric is not just a fabric. It's the story of failure and of perseverance, of the discipline of a craftsman, of the life of an artist.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“They say success kills relationships, but the lack of it will do it just as quickly.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“he realized that he had made a grave miscalculation when he had ended the friendship with Sadie. His mistake had been in thinking the world would be filled with Sadie Greens, people like her. It was not.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“The way to turn an ex-lover into a friend is to never stop loving them, to know that when one phase of a relationship ends it can transform into something else. It is to acknowledge that love is both a constant and a variable at the same time.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“Why wouldn’t you tell someone you loved them? Once you loved someone, you repeated it until they were tired of hearing it. You said it until it ceased to have meaning. Why not? Of course, you goddamn did.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“Sam's doctor said to him, "The good news is that the pain is in your head."
But I am in my head, Sam thought.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“But it is worth noting that to be good at something is not quite the same as loving it.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“To allow yourself to play with another person is no small risk. It means allowing yourself to be open, to be exposed, to be hurt. It is the human equivalent of the dog rolling on its back---I know you won't hurt me, even though you can. It is the dog putting its mouth around your hand and never biting down. To play requires trust and love. Many years later, as Sam would controversially say in an interview with the gaming website Kotaku, "There is no more intimate act than play, even sex." The internet responded: no one who had had good sex would ever say that, and there must be something seriously wrong with Sam.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“There is a time for any fledgling artist where one's taste exceeds one's abilities. The only way to get through this period is to make things anyway.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“He loved the intimacy of being in a tight group of people who had come together, miraculously, for a brief period in time, for the purpose of making art.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“Why do you keep coming?" she asked.
"Because," he said. Click on this word, he thought, and you will find links to everything it means. Because you are my oldest friend. Because, once, when I was at my lowest, you saved me. Because I might have died without you or ended up in a children's psychiatric hospital. Because I owe you. Because, selfishly, I see a future where we make fantastic games together, if you can manage to get out of bed. "Because," he repeated.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“Zweisamkeit’ is the feeling of being alone even when you’re with other people.” Simon turned to look in his husband’s eyes. “Before I met you, I felt this constantly. I felt it with my family, my friends, and every boyfriend I ever had. I felt it so often that I thought this was the nature of living. To be alive was to accept that you were fundamentally alone.” Simon’s eyes were moist. “I know I’m impossible, and I know you don’t care about German words or marriage. All I can say is, I love you and thank you for marrying me anyway.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow