Niamh > Niamh's Quotes

“Was it the infinite sadness of her eyes that drew him or the mirror of himself that he found in the gorgeous clarity of her mind?”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

“Her philosophy is carpe diem for herself and laissez faire for others.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

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

“Man is diminished if he lives without knowledge of his past; without hope of a future he becomes a beast.”
― P.D. James, The Children of Men

“History, which interprets the past to understand the present and confront the future is the least rewarding discipline for a dying species. ”
― P.D. James, The Children of Men

“Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another?
We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“I am a citizen of the world.”
― Sylvia Beach

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“It's a disease. Nobody thinks or feels or cares any more; nobody gets excited or believes in anything except their own comfortable little God damn mediocrity.”
― Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road

“She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Don't let the bastards grind you down.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale