Quotations
"'And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.'" -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince (Translated by Katherine Woods)
"Perhaps the reason he wanted to be alone was because he felt isolated from everybody since his talk with Dumbledore. An invisible barrier separated him from the rest of the world." -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
"As if each generation of parents commits atrocities against their children which by God's decree remain invisible to the rest of the world." -John Updike, "Flight," Pigeon Feathers
"But often now this body she wore…this body, with all its capacities, seemed nothing – nothing at all. She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible, unseen; unknown; there being no more marrying, no more having of children now, but only this astonishing and rather solemn progress with the rest of them, up Bond Street, this being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa any more; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway." -Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
"O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy." -William Blake, "The Sick Rose" (Songs of Experience)
"…All I want is to tell you stories about my life.
For each new friend we make, the past becomes an unintended
secret.
An invisible hallway unfolds behind each friend's body, hidden from
view by that friend's newness.
It makes me lonely." -Ken Chen, "3. The Invisible Memoir"
Quotations
"Life is a gift horse in my opinion." -J.D. Salinger, "Teddy," Nine Stories
"Blame it or praise it, there is no denying the wild horse in us. To gallop intemperately; fall on the sand tired out; to feel the earth spin; to have — positively — a rush of friendship for stones and grasses, as if humanity were over, and as for men and women, let them go hang — there is no getting over the fact that this desire seizes us pretty often." -Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room
Norfolk: …to climb steep hills
Requires slow pace at first: anger is like
A full-hot horse, who being allow'd his way,
Self-mettle tires him. -William Shakespeare, Henry VIII
King Richard III: A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!
-William Shakespeare, Richard III
Quotations
"'...between them was a fathomless abyss which thought itself could not cross.'" -L.M. Montgomery, The Story Girl
"When they turned, Pelletier and Espinoza saw an older woman in a white blouse and black skirt, a woman with a figure like Marlene Dietrich, as Pelletier would say much later, a woman who despite her years was still as strong willed as ever, a woman who didn't cling to the edge of the abyss but plunged into it with curiosity and elegance. A woman who plunged into the abyss sitting down." -Roberto Bolaño, 2666 (Translated by Natasha Wimmer)
"He staggered and fell, grasped vainly at the stone, and slid into the abyss. 'Fly, you fools!' he cried, and was gone." -J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
"To feel anything strongly was to create an abyss between oneself and others who feel strongly perhaps but differently." -Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out
Quotations
"'That doesn't sound very attractive,' laughed Anne. 'I like people to have a little nonsense about them.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island
"Well, everybody has, or should have, a pet nonsense in her life. I did not think mine was any sillier than some others I knew, and to myself I admitted that it was very sweet." -L.M. Montgomery, "The Letters"
"'I don't know so much about nonsense, but there was nothing light-hearted in their romance: they came together under the shadow of a life's disaster, like knight and maiden meeting to exchange vows amongst haunted ruins. The starlight was good enough for that story, a light so fain and remote that it cannot resolve shadows into shapes, and show the other shore of a stream.'" -Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim
"'For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words Bother me.'" -A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
"'All talk would be nonsense, I suppose, if it were written down,' she said, stirring her coffee.
Maggie stopped the machine for a moment and smiled.
'And even if it isn't,' she said." -Virginia Woolf, The Years
Quotation
"Very gently and quietly, almost as if it were the blood singing in her veins, or the water of the stream running over stones, Rachel became conscious of a new feeling within her. She wondered for a moment what it was, and then said to herself, with a little surprise at recognising in her own person so famous a thing:
'This is happiness, I suppose.'" -Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out
Quotations
"If they substituted 'Lust' for 'Love' in the popular songs it would come nearer the truth." -Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
"Once cannot bring children into a world like this. One cannot perpetuate suffering, or increase the breed of these lustful animals, who have no lasting emotions, but only whims and vanities, eddying them now this way, now that." -Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
"…Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out
of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness." -Robert Creeley, "The Rain"
"…'Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,
But Lust's effect is tempest after sun;
Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain,
Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done;
Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies;
Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies…" -William Shakespeare, "Venus and Adonis"
Quotations
"And the strongest feeling within me, if truth be told, is that which makes a sufferer curse those who do not suffer and seek to drag them down. I confess that I so despise and envy your untroubled ignorance that I want finally to force upon you the truth of my words…." -Douglas Hill, "True Believer" from Hidden Turnings
"…when anybody says 'How future ages will envy me,' it is safe to say that they are extremely uneasy at the present moment." -Virginia Woolf, Orlando
"And I know what it feels like to want something, believe me. I well know what desire feels like." -Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
"…The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!— that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.…" -Edgar Allan Poe, "Annabel Lee"
Apemantus: Like madness is the glory of this life.
As this pomp shows to a little oil and root.
We make ourselves fools, to disport ourselves;
And spend our flatteries, to drink those men
Upon whose age we void it up again,
With poisonous spite and envy.
Who lives that's not depraved or depraves?
Who dies, that bears not one spurn to their graves
Of their friends' gift?
I should fear those that dance before me now
Would one day stamp upon me: 't has been done;
Men shut their doors against a setting sun. -William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens
Quotations
"…nothing seemed impossible in the beginning…" -Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
"'Now, too, the time is coming when we shall leave school and wear long skirts. I shall wear necklaces and a white dress without sleeves at night. There will be parties in brilliant rooms; and one man will single me out and will tell me what he has told no other person. He will like me better than Susan or Rhoda. He will find in me some quality, some peculiar thing. But I shall not let myself be attached to one person only. I do not want to be fixed, to be pinioned. I tremble, I quiver, like the leaf in the hedge, as I sit dangling my feet, on the edge of the bed, with a new day to break open. I have fifty years, I have sixty years to spend. I have not yet broken into my hoard. This is the beginning.'" -Virginia Woolf, The Waves
Richard: No matter what you start with it ends up being so much less.
-The Hours
Quotations
"'That's the worst of growing up, and I'm beginning to realize it. The things you wanted so much when you were a child don't seem half so wonderful to you when you get them.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
"'You must pay the penalty of growing-up, Paul. You must leave fairyland behind you.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island
"She was beginning to learn how full of silent little tragedies life is." -L.M. Montgomery, Pat of Silver Bush
"For there is no bond more lasting than that formed by the mutual confidences of that magic time when youth is slipping from the sheath of childhood and beginning to wonder what lies for it beyond those misty hills that bound the golden road." -L.M. Montgomery, The Golden Road
"Altogether I had no regrets, I told myself sadly that growing up was not the painless process one would have thought it to be. -Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
"Isn't it true that you start your life a sweet child believing in everything under your father's roof? Then comes the day of the Laodiceans, when you know you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, and with visage of a gruesome grieving ghost you go shuddering through nightmare life." -Jack Kerouac, On the Road
"'I am growing up,' she thought, taking her taper at last. 'I am losing some illusions,' she said, shutting Queen Mary's book, 'perhaps to acquire others,' and she descended among the tombs where the bones of her ancestors lay." -Virginia Woolf, Orlando
Quotations
"To-night everything seemed to drift through her consciousness in a dreamy, jumbled procession of delight, big and little things, past and present, all tangled up together." -L.M. Montgomery, Magic for Marigold
"'I believe the present matters — not the past! The past must go. If we keep the past alive, we end, I think, by distorting it. We see it in exaggerated terms — a false perspective.'" -Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot's Christmas
"…dreaming of the past which is, Mrs. Vallance thought, somehow so much more real than the present. But why!" -Virginia Woolf, "Ancestors"
"The past is slipping away and the present is a constant affront."
-Nora Ephron, "I Remember Nothing" from I Remember Nothing
"But no, the quest of time past is more difficult than you think, and time present is eaten up by such plaintive searchings. The film of your days and nights is wound up tight in you, never to be re-run — and the occasional flashbacks are faint, blurred, unreal, as if seen through falling snow. Now, you begin to get scared. You don't believe in God, or a life-after-death, so you can't hope for sugar plums when your non-existent soul rises." -Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
"…The past and present wilt — I have fill'd them, emptied them,
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future…." -Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself" (Section 51)
Quotations
"…having learned that people cannot be moulded like clay…" -Louisa May Alcott, Jo's Boys
"'…Nature has but little clay…like that of which she moulded you.'" -Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Quotations
"'Isn't it queer that the things we writhe over at night are seldom wicked things? Just humiliating ones.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Windy Poplars
"'Be merciful to the failures, Emily. Satirise wickedness if you must — but pity weakness.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Emily Climbs
"'It's the fools that make all the trouble in the world, not the wicked.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Jane of Lantern Hill
"'I do not know whether it ought to be so, but certainly silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way. Wickedness is always wickedness, but folly is not always folly.'" -Jane Austen, Emma
"'He was one of those creatures that are just simmering all the time with a silly sort of wickedness. Miserable devils that have no business to live at all.'" -Joseph Conrad, "The Secret Sharer"
"'People aren't either wicked or noble,' the hook-handed man said. 'They're like chef salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.'" -Lemony Snicket, The Grim Grotto
"'I'm afraid that's the wicked way of the world,' Dewey said, with a shake of his head. 'Everything's covered in smoke and mirrors…'" -Lemony Snicket, The Penultimate Peril
"He would argue with her about killing themselves; and explain how wicked people were; how he could see them making up lies as they passed in the street. He knew all their thoughts, he said; he knew everything. He knew the meaning of the world, he said." -Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
Quotations
"'I'm so glad you're here, Anne,' said Miss Lavendar, nibbling at her candy. 'If you weren't I should be blue…very blue…almost navy blue. Dreams and make-believes are all very well in the daytime and the sunshine, but when dark and storm come they fail to satisfy. One wants real things then. But you don't know this…seventeen never knows it. At seventeen dreams do satisfy because you think the realities are waiting for you further on.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlead
"And after breakfast there was an hour when Jane discovered that the hardest work in the world is waiting." -L.M. Montgomery, Jane of Lantern Hill
"…for action is always easier than quiet waiting." -Louisa May Alcott, Jo's Boys
"'…when people are waiting, they are bad judges of time, and every half minute seems like five.'" -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
"'I waited. I listened. Nothing came, nothing, I cried then with a sudden conviction of complete desertion, Now there is nothing. No fin breaks the waste of this immeasurable sea. Life has destroyed me. No echo comes when I speak, no varied words. This is more truly death than the death of friends, than the death of youth. I am the swathed figure in the hairdresser's shop taking up only so much space.'" -Virginia Woolf, The Waves
"Away down into the shadowy depth of the Real I once lived.
I thought that to seem was to be.
But the waters of Marah were beautiful, yet they were bitter.
I waited, and hoped, and prayed;
Counting the heart-throbs and the tears that answered them.
Through my earnest pleadings for the True, I learned that the mildest mercy of life was a smiling sneer;
And that the business of the world was to lash with vengeance all who dared to be what their God had made them.
Smother back tears to the red blood of the heart!
Crush out things called souls!
No room for them here!…" -Adah Isaacs Menken, "Myself"
"…She had to decide.
Do you wait for god to tell you what to do.
Or do you panic." -Kazim Ali, "Carlisle"
Quotations
"'Dead?' said Sophie. She had a silly impulse to add, But she was alive an hour ago! And she stopped herself, because death is like that: people are alive until they die." -Diana Wynne Jones, Howl's Moving Castle
"'Among the tortures and devastations of life is this then — our friends are not able to finish their stories.'" -Virginia Woolf, The Waves
Random Musing
And once again, I find that Diana Wynne Jones' quote about death is spot on and sadly appropriate for the times. Chip Switzer, another Novi High School alum, passed away yesterday. He died peacefully in his sleep. He was twenty years old. He wasn't my friend, but he was an unfailingly kind person, and his passing away so suddenly is yet another (and at this point unnecessary) reminder of this world's constant, torturous transience. My thoughts and prayers are with his friends and family.
Quotations
"Little, silly, dreamy, happy, ignorant Fourteen! Always thinking that something great and wonderful and beautiful lay in the years ahead." -L.M. Montgomery, Emily's Quest
"'Her ignorance made the unknown infinitely vast.'" -Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim
"The comforts of ignorance seemed utterly denied her." -Virginia Woolf, Orlando
"Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives." -Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Quotation
"It is so beautiful, so exciting, this love, that I tremble on the verge of it, and offer, quite out of my own habit, to look for a brooch on a beach; also it is the stupidest, the most barbaric of human passions, and turns a nice young man with a profile like a gem (Paul's was exquisite) into a bully with a crowbar (he was swaggering, he was insolent) in the Middle End Road. Yet, she said to herself, from the dawn of time odes have been sung to love; wreaths heaped and roses; and if you asked nine people out of ten they would say they wanted nothing but this; while the women, judging from her own experience, would all the time be feeling, This is not what we want; there is nothing more tedious, puerile, and inhumane than love; yet it is also beautiful and necessary." -Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
