Lyra > Lyra's Quotes

“We are never prepared for what we expect.”
― James A. Michener, Caravans

“Say I Am You

I am dust particles in sunlight.
I am the round sun.

To the bits of dust I say, Stay.
To the sun, Keep moving.

I am morning mist, and the breathing of evening.

I am wind in the top of a grove, and surf on the cliff.

Mast, rudder, helmsman, and keel,
I am also the coral reef they founder on.

I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branches.
Silence, thought, and voice.

The musical air coming through a flute,
a spark of a stone, a flickering in metal.

Both candle and the moth crazy around it.

Rose, and the nightingale lost in the fragrance.

I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy,
the evolutionary intelligence, the lift,

and the falling away. What is, and what isn't.

You who know Jelaluddin, You the one in all,

say who I am. Say I am You.”
― Rumi

“If these are ‘talents’ – the ability to sing, or to quickly comprehend and reproduce musical notation – what kind of a thing is ‘talent’? A commodity? A gift? A prize? A reward? For what?”
― Zadie Smith, NW

“There can be no happiness without fairness,”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“You see, you cannot draw lines and compartments, and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping-stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“You know, Maneck, the human face has limited space. My mother used to say, if you fill your face with laughing, there will be no room for crying.’ ‘What a nice saying,’ he answered”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“Right now, Dinabai’s face, and Om’s, and mine are all occupied. Worrying about work and money, and where to sleep tonight. But that does not mean we are not sad. It may not show on the face, but it’s sitting inside here.’ He placed his hand over his heart. ‘In here, there is limitless room – happiness, kindness, sorrow, anger, friendship”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“But too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart, as my favourite poet has written.’ ‘Who’s that?’ ‘W. B. Yeats. And I think that sometimes normal behaviour has to be suppressed, in order to carry on.’ ‘I’m not sure,’ said Maneck. ‘Wouldn’t it be better to respond honestly instead of hiding it? Maybe if everyone in the country was angry or upset, it might change things, force the politicians to behave properly.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“Although she has claim, she is not claimed. In the place where long grass opens, the girl who waited to be loved and cry shame erupts into her separate parts, to make it easy for the chewing laughter to swallow her all away.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“used to. But now I prefer to think that God is a giant quiltmaker. With an infinite variety of designs. And the quilt is grown so big and confusing, the pattern is impossible to see, the squares and diamonds and triangles don’t fit well together anymore, it’s all become meaningless. So He has abandoned it.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“Not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you. Dirty you so bad you couldn’t like yourself anymore. Dirty you so bad you forgot who you were and couldn’t think it up.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“Sometimes words are more powerful than guns. And sometimes silence is more powerful than words. It is the things that are not said that are important.”
― Christie Watson, Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away

“We want justice! We want justice!’ We chanted at the Western Oil Company building; the mirrored glass showed our reflections multiplied as though we were millions. This gave us courage and we shouted louder, even when the men with guns also multiplied. Then we started singing. I copied the women around me as closely as possible. Grandma had taught me many songs but I did not know that one. We sang in unison, like a choir that had been practising all year for that one song. Grandma started it. It was an Ijaw song called Wo Ekilemo. Praise him. Her voice was low and quiet, but one by one we joined in. The sound of us women singing was so powerful that the glass moved on the expensive windows, and people inside the building started shutting the windows, even the high-up ones. The slams made us sing even louder. I imagined the white men on the other side of the windows, watching us as they drank their tea. I wondered if they understood why we were protesting. I wondered if they even cared. The security men waving their guns started swaying, as if their bodies were disobeying their commands. They were Ijaw, too, you see. They removed their hats, and rocked from side to side. I sang loudly until the part that said ‘I have overcome death, poverty and sickness’. I could not sing that part. My mind kept flashing to Ezikiel’s face. But then I joined in again, and our voices rose so high I thought they might reach Allah’s ears. Then we all took off our clothes. ‘There is nothing more powerful than a naked woman,’ Grandma said. ‘Nothing in the world.”
― Christie Watson, Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away

“The Germans are not a race of psychopaths, Alma. They’re normal people like you and me, but with fanaticism, power, and impunity, anyone can turn into a monster, like the SS at Auschwitz,” he told his sister. “Do you think that, given the opportunity, you’d also behave like a monster, Samuel?” “I don’t think it, Alma, I know it. I’ve been a soldier all my life. I’ve been to war. I’ve interrogated prisoners, a large number of them. But I assume you don’t want details.”
― Isabel Allende, The Japanese Lover

“Why be so attached to what we are bound to lose anyway?”
― Isabel Allende, The Japanese Lover

“especially like your autumn trees, gracefully letting their leaves fall. That is how I would like to shed my own leaves in this autumn of life, easily and elegantly.”
― Isabel Allende, The Japanese Lover

“but had always felt she was a visitor. She felt disconnected and different everywhere else too, but far from being a problem this gave her a sense of pride, as it added to her view of herself as a distant, mysterious artist vaguely superior to the rest of mortals.”
― Isabel Allende, The Japanese Lover

“We all have demons in the dark recesses of our soul, but if we bring them out into the light, they grow smaller and weaker, they fall silent and eventually leave us in peace.”
― Isabel Allende, The Japanese Lover

“The nightmares of the past were like dust that had settled along the way: the slightest gust sent them billowing up once more.”
― Isabel Allende, The Japanese Lover

“shared pain is more bearable.”
― Isabel Allende, The Japanese Lover

“My Nini wanted to get another dog, as much like Daisy as possible, but my Popo said that it was not a question of replacing her, but of trying to live without her. “I can’t, Popo. I loved her so much!” I sobbed inconsolably. “That affection is inside you, Maya, not in Daisy. You can give it to other animals, and what’s left over you can give to me,”
― Isabel Allende, Maya’s Notebook

“the thirty-some years since then, his mind had eliminated that experience from his memory. He remembered it as if he’d read it in a book, not as something personal, although he has scars and burn marks on his body and can’t lift his arms above shoulder height, because”
― Isabel Allende, Maya’s Notebook

“you don’t need photos to remember the people who matter to you.”
― Isabel Allende, Maya’s Notebook

“our demons lose their power when we pull them out of the depths where they hide and look them in the face in broad daylight. But”
― Isabel Allende, Maya’s Notebook

“Sometimes I am assaulted by the memory of a scene from that time on the street, a memory that flares up inside me and leaves me trembling. Other times I wake up sweating with images in my head, as vivid as if they were real. In the dream I see myself running naked, screaming voicelessly, in a labyrinth of narrow alleys that coil like serpents, buildings with blank doors and windows, not a soul to ask for help, my body burning, my feet bleeding, bile in my mouth, all alone.”
― Isabel Allende, Maya’s Notebook

“how much more dangerous the world was for women, how we should cross the street if a man’s coming toward us and there’s nobody else around and avoid them completely if they’re in a group, watch our backs, look to both sides, turn invisible.”
― Isabel Allende, Maya’s Notebook

“Since we’re going to suffer, let’s clench our teeth,” she said. Pain like that, pain of the soul, does not go away with remedies, therapy, or vacations; you simply endure it deep down, fully, as you should. I would have done well to follow my Nini’s example, instead of denying that I was suffering and stifling the howl that was stuck in my chest.”
― Isabel Allende, Maya’s Notebook

“Daniel’s natural, understated happiness, like the happiness of cats,”
― Isabel Allende, Maya’s Notebook

“been able to plan his future with the irrational confidence of someone who hasn’t really suffered. He’s”
― Isabel Allende, Maya’s Notebook

“Like a luminous spiderweb, Popo. The threads of that web connect everything that exists. I can’t explain it to you. When you die, you’re going to travel like that comet, and I’ll be right behind, attached to your tail.” “We’ll be astral dust.”
― Isabel Allende, Maya’s Notebook