Victoria > Victoria's Quotes

“It was her first book, an indigo cover with a silver moonflower, an art nouveau flower, I traced my finger along the silver line like smoke, whiplash curves. ... I touched the pages her hands touched, I pressed them to my lips, the soft thick old paper, yellow now, fragile as skin. I stuck my nose between the bindings and smelled all the readings she had given, the smell of unfiltered cigarettes and the espresso machine, beaches and incense and whispered words in the night. I could hear her voice rising from the pages. The cover curled outward like sails.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“She was sitting cross-legged on her bed in her white kimono, writing in a notebook with an ink pen she dipped in a bottle. 'Never let a man stay the night,' she told me. 'Dawn has a way of casting a pall on any night magic.' The night magic sounded lovely. Someday I would have lovers and write a poem after.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“The sound of her laughter was sticky as sap, the smell of night-blooming jasmine soft as a milk bath.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“I want to taste and glory in each day, and never be afraid to experience pain; and never shut myself up in a numb core of nonfeeling, or stop questioning and criticizing life and take the easy way out. To learn and think: to think and live; to live and learn: this always, with new insight, new understanding, and new love.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“If the portraits of our absent friends are pleasant to us, which renew our memory of them and relieve our regret for their absence by a false and empty consolation, how much more pleasant are letters which bring us the written characters of the absent friend.”
― Héloïse d'Argenteuil, The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“make love
like you have no
secrets
like you’ve
never been
left
never been
hurt
like the world
don’t owe you a
single
wretched
thing.”
― Warsan Shire

“To my daughter I will say, when the men come, set yourself on fire.”
― Warsan Shire, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth

“Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.”
― Novalis

“Philosophy is really nostalgia, the desire to be at home.”
― Novalis

“Life must not be a novel that is given to us, but one that is made by us. ”
― Novalis, Philosophical Writings

“Then she added a sentence I will always remember: “the beauty of mind Cerullo had from childhood never found an outlet, Greco, it has all ended up in her face, in her breasts, in her thighs, in her ass, places where it soon fades and will be as if she never had it.”
― Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend

“Watch out for intellect,
because it knows so much it knows nothing
and leaves you hanging upside down,
mouthing knowledge as your heart
falls out of your mouth.”
― Anne Sexton, The Complete Poems

“[T]hink of love as a state of grace: not the means to anything but the alpha and omega, an end in itself.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

“The gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment may be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”
― Brad Pitt

“Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women's history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.”
― Naomi Wolf

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
― H. Jackson Brown Jr., P.S. I Love You

“Such wounds to the heart will probably never heal. But we cannot simply sit and stare at our wounds forever.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.”
― James Joyce, Dubliners

“The beauty of mind that Cerullo had from childhood didn’t find an outlet, Greco, and it has all ended up in her face, in her breasts, in her thighs, in her ass, places where it soon fades and it will be as if she had never had it.”
― Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet