Degan Walters > Degan's Quotes

“But it was from him - with his cool, long sideburns and aviator sunglasses, and box of watercolor paints (and artist's paycheck) - from him we learned how to create beauty where none exists, how to be generous beyond our means, how to change a small corner of the world just by making a little dinner for a few friends.”
― Gabrielle Hamilton, Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef

“I was happy, but happy is an adult word. You don't have to ask a child about happy, you see it. They are or they are not. Adults talk about being happy because largely they are not. Talking about it is the same as trying to catch the wind. Much easier to let it blow all over you. This is where I disagree with the philosophers. They talk about passionate things but there is no passion in them. Never talk happiness with a philosopher.”
― Jeanette Winterson, The Passion

“Her fingers moved among barnacles and mussels, blue-black, sharp-edged. Neon red starfish were limp Dalis on the rocks, surrounded by bouquets of stinging anemones and purple bursts of spiny sea urchins.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“Look at that sea, girls--all silver and shadow and vision of things not seen. We couldn't enjoy its loveliness any more if we had millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“The sea always filled her with longing, though for what she was never sure.”
― Cornelia Funke, Inkheart

“There was a single blue line of crayon drawn across every wall in the house. What does it mean? I asked. A pirate needs the sight of the sea, he said and then he pulled his eye patch down and turned and sailed away.”
― Brian Andreas, Story People

“The sea, the snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

“Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.”
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

“Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.”
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

“Work stops at sunset. Darkness falls over the building site. The sky is filled with stars. "There is the blueprint," they say.”
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

“You take delight not in a city's seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours.”
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

“When a man rides a long time through wild regions he feels the desire for a city. Finally he comes to Isidora, a city where the buildings have spiral staircases encrusted with spiral seashells, where perfect telescopes and violins are made, where the foreigner hesitating between two women always encounters a third, where cockfights degenerate into bloody brawls among the bettors. He was thinking of all these things when he desired a city. Isidora, therefore, is the city of his dreams: with one difference. The dreamed-of city contained him as a young man; he arrives at Isidora in his old age. In the square there is the wall where the old men sit and watch the young go by; he is seated in a row with them. Desires are already memories.”
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.”
― Neil Gaiman

“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.”
― Anais Nin

“There is no bad whiskey. There are only some whiskeys that aren't as good as others.”
― Raymond Chandler

“Green was the silence, wet was the light,
the month of June trembled like a butterfly.”
― Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

“Ironically, I believe Picasso was right. I believe we could paint a better world if we learned to see it from all perspectives, as many perspectives as we possibly could. Because diversity is strength. Difference is a teacher. Fear difference, you learn nothing.

Picasso’s mistake was his arrogance. He assumed he could represent all of the perspectives. And our mistake was to invalidate the perspective of a 17-year-old girl because we believed her potential would never equal his.

Hindsight is a gift. Stop wasting my time.

A 17-year-old girl is just never, ever, ever in her prime! Ever. I am in my prime. Would you test your strength out on me?

There is no way anyone would dare test their strength out on me because you all know there is nothing stronger than a broken woman who has rebuilt herself.”
― Hannah Gadsby

“To be rendered powerless does not destroy your humanity. Your resilience is your humanity. The only people who lose their humanity are those who believe they have the right to render another human being powerless. They are the weak. To yield and not break, that is incredible strength.”
― Hannah Gadsby

“Do you know why we have the sunflowers? It’s not because Vincent van Gogh suffered. It’s because Vincent van Gogh had a brother who loved him. Through all the pain, he had a tether, a connection to the world. And that is the focus of the story we need – connection.”
― Hannah Gadsby

“Men will tell you that Gorgons are monsters, but men are fools. They cannot comprehend any beauty beyond what they can see. And what they see is a tiny part of what there is.”
― Natalie Haynes, Stone Blind

“It's important that you know this because he will try to claim there was a battle. But there is no battle to be had between an armed man and a sleeping girl. Don't forget.”
― Natalie Haynes, Stone Blind

“You aren’t monsters,’ Medusa said. ‘Neither are you. Who decides what is a monster?’ ‘I don’t know,’ said Medusa. ‘Men, I suppose.’ ‘So to mortal men, we are monsters. Because of our teeth, our flight, our strength. They fear us, so they call us monsters.”
― Natalie Haynes, Stone Blind

“And in that moment, Andromeda decided that she might not die quietly after all.”
― Natalie Haynes, Stone Blind

“When a war was ended, the men lost their lives. But the women lost everything else.”
― Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships

“Mankind was just so impossibly heavy. There were so many of them and they showed no sign of halting their endless reproduction. Stop, she wanted to cry out, please stop. You cannot all fit on the space between the oceans, you cannot grow enough food on the land beneath the mountains. You cannot graze enough livestock on the grasses around your cities, you cannot build enough homes on the peaks of your hills. You must stop, so that I can rest beneath your ever-increasing weight. She wept fat tears as she heard the cries of newborn children. No more, she said to herself. No more.”
― Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships

“The Greeks invented almost every literary form: tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, history, philosophical dialogue, biography. It’s no accident that the names of these genres are all Greek in origin. In contrast, the Romans invented only one literary form: satire.”
― Natalie Haynes, The Ancient Guide to Modern Life

“Perhaps still more disquieting to modern eyes even than the thousands of disenfranchised women and resident foreigners is the fact that Athens could not have had its democratic systems if it hadn’t also had slavery.”
― Natalie Haynes, The Ancient Guide to Modern Life

“Caesar’s final words, though, were not ‘Et tu, Brute?’, in spite of what Shakespeare would have you believe. He actually spoke his last words in Greek: ‘Kai su, teknon?’ – ‘Even you, my son?”
― Natalie Haynes, The Ancient Guide to Modern Life

“The problem is, essentially, a culture clash: religion doesn’t have modern sensibilities. Quite the reverse: all major religions date back to a time when you didn’t need to respect the lifestyle choices of those you didn’t agree with. You could wage war on them, slaughter them or convert them. Or, if they were more powerful than you, you could be a victim of your faith, martyred, a saint. The idea of everyone agreeing to differ and simply getting on with things is, surely, a decidedly modern ambition.”
― Natalie Haynes, The Ancient Guide to Modern Life