Lillie > Lillie's Quotes

“Don't watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.”
― Sam Levenson

“We’ve died so many times now that we can only wonder why we still care.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“I’ve been rereading your story. I think it’s about me in a way that might not be flattering, but that’s okay. We dream and dream of being seen as we really are and then finally someone looks at us and sees us truly and we fail to measure up. Anyway: story received, story included. You looked at me long enough to see something mysterioso under all the gruff and bluster. Thanks. Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them.”
― Richard Siken

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
― Mark Twain

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“I have a history of making decisions very quickly about men. I have always fallen in love fast and without measuring risks. I have a tendency not only to see the best in everyone, but to assume that everyone is emotionally capable of reaching his highest potential. I have fallen in love more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man, rather than with the man himself, and I have hung on to the relationship for a long time (sometimes far too long) waiting for the man to ascend to his own greatness. Many times in romance I have been a victim of my own optimism.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.”
― Stanley Kunitz, The Collected Poems

“Darling,
do you remember
the man you married?
Touch me,
remind me who I am.”
― Stanley Kunitz

“When they shall paint our sockets gray
And light us like a stinking fuse,
Remember that we once could say,
Yesterday we had a world to lose.”
― Stanley Kunitz, The Collected Poems

“Whatever you choose to claim
of me is always yours;
nothing is truly mine
except my name. I only
borrowed this dust.”
― Stanley Kunitz

“Old myths, old gods, old heroes have never died.
They are only sleeping at the bottom of your mind,
waiting for our call. We have need for them.
They represent the wisdom of our race.”
― Stanley Kunitz

“Everything you write makes you better. But if you really need a tip, here’s one: a good story begins in opposition to its ending. That means you work out how it finishes first, and then begin the story as far away from that point.”
― Chris Wooding

“You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together to make a creature that will do what I say or love me back.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story.”
― Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

“You'd break your heart to make it bigger, so why not crack your skull when the mind swells.”
― Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

“I know history. There are many names in history

but none of them are ours.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“What is a ghost?

Something dead
that seems to be alive.

Something dead
that doesn't know it's dead.”
― Richard Siken

“Bird 1: This is the wrong story.
Bird 2: All stories are the wrong story when you are impatient.”
― Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

“Will you forgive me these November days?”
― Anna Akhmatova, Rosary

“This creature kneeling
dusted with snow, its teeth
grinding together, sound of old stones
at the bottom of a river

You lugged it to the barn
I held the lantern,
we leaned over it
as if it were being born.

The sheep hangs upside down from the rope,
a long fruit covered with wool and rotting.
It waits for the dead wagon
to harvest it.

Mournful November
this is the image
you invent for me,
the dead sheep came out of your head, a legacy:

Kill what you can’t save
what you can’t eat throw out
what you can’t throw out bury

What you can’t bury give away
what you can’t give away you must carry with you,
it is always heavier than you thought.”
― Margaret Atwood, You are Happy

“Spanish rain,
A maiden’s dress,
Apothecary pills
And ancient thrills;
Melancholy kills
A girl’s caress.”
― Roman Payne

“I don’t mean to sound pessimistic. I only do because I can see how wrong my choices were. Don’t do it like this. Don’t enter believing yourself a node in a grand undertaking, that your past and your trauma will define your future, that individuals don’t matter. The most radical thing I ever did was love him, and I wasn’t even the first person in this story to do that. But you can get it right, if you try. You will have hope, and you have been forgiven. Forgiveness, which takes you back to the person you were and lets you reset them. Hope, which exists in a future in which you are new. Forgiveness and hope are miracles. They let you change your life. They are time-travel.”
― Kaliane Bradley, The Ministry of Time

“I had always thought of joy as a shouting, flamboyant thing, that tossed breath into the sky like a ball. Instead it robbed me of my speech and my air. I was pinned in place by joy and I didn't know what to do.
"Come here," he said, and pulled me into his arms.
I pressed my face against his neck. My body sparked, and I couldn't move, except to lean into him. I was filled with happiness, so enormous and terrifying it was as if I'd committed a crime to get it. No one had given me permission to feel this way, and I thought I might not be allowed it. He combed his fingers though my hair and I was frightened with happiness, harrowed by it. There was no way that anyone could feel this much without also knowing they were going to lose it.”
― Kaliane Bradley, The Ministry of Time