Famous Quotes Ipsum

Youth is wasted on the young. personally, i would sooner have written alice in wonderland than the whole encyclopedia britannica. he had a word, too. love, he called it. but i had been used to words for a long time. i knew that that word was like the other, just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that any more than for pride or fear. this is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. there is always a little corner which remains a secret to the world - and is only known to those two..

My first thought about art, as a child, was that the artist brings something into the world that didn't exist before, and that he does it without destroying something else, a kind of refutation of the conservation of matter. that still seems to me its central magic, its core of joy. to talk to each other is but a more animated and audible thinking. we are wise, wise women. we are giggling girls. truth is in the eye of the beholder. peace begins with a smile. sleeping is curiously addictive. you are part of the world, but not in it, and somehow that just seems right. it seems enough. besides, i didn't have anything to fear anymore. maybe all post-suicidals feel that way. it's really great - it gives you a real sense of, not bravery exactly, and not recklessness, quite, but something in between the two. if i'd survived my own best attempts at dying, it probably just wasn't in the cards for me to perish young. the body of b. franklin, / printer, / like the cover of an old book, / its contents torn out / and / stripped of its lettering and gilding, / lies here / food for worms, / but the work shall not be lost, / for it will, as he believed / appear once more / in a new and more elegant edition / revised and corrected / by the author. we don't say everything that we could / so that we can say later / "oh, you misunderstood" but to stand in the sun and melt into the wind? it's really a wonder that i haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. yet i keep them, because in spite of everything i still believe that people are really good at heart. i simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. he who has a 'why' to live can bear almost any 'how'. little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune, but great minds rise above it. as we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties, the inmost strength of the heart is developed. maybe that's not exactly how it happened. but that's the way it should have happened. and that's the way i like to remember it. a memory without a blot of contamination must be an exquisite treasure, an inexhaustible source of pure refreshment everybody loves a hero / an image to create / the antithesis of everything / inside ourselves we hate / but you'd better close your eyes / when it's time for them to die / because you'd hate to think the life you'd built upon them was a lie.

The engine that gives its mysterious inner life to a work of art must be the subterranean expression of a wish, working its way to the surface of a narrative. when you come to the edge of all the light you know, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen: there will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly. i don't want my hair cut! i don't want my eyebrows up or down. i want them right where they are! i'm leaving now, and if anyone so much as makes a move to stop me, there'll be plenty of hair cut and it won't be mine! lolita is famous, not i. i am an obscure, doubly obscure, novelist with an unpronounceable last name. my understanding of truth can change from day to day, and my commitment must be to truth rather than to consistency. the truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. a day is a miniature eternity. who shall measure the heat and violence of the poet's heart when caught tangled in a woman's body? there has never been an answer. there never will be an answer. that's the answer. we say that the hour of death cannot be forecast, but when we say this we imagine that hour as placed in an obscure and distant future. it never occurs to us that it has any connection with the day already begun or that death could arrive this same afternoon, this afternoon which is so certain and which has every hour filled in advance. i try to draw the line but it ends up running down the middle of me most of the time. beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. the least we can do is try to be there. there is something very wonderful in music. words are wonderful enough; but music is even more wonderful. it speaks not to our thoughts as words do; it speaks straight to our hearts and spirits, to the very core and root of our souls. music soothes us, stirs us up; it puts noble feelings in us; it melts us to tears; we know not how - it is a language by itself, just as perfect, in its way, as speech, as words. little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune, but great minds rise above it. if we build a society based on honoring the earth, we build a society which is sustainable, and has the capacity to support all life forms. they took all the trees / and put them in a tree museum / and they charged all the people / a dollar and a half just to see 'em / don't it always seem to go / that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone / they paved paradise / and put up a parking lot what is life? it is the flash of a firefly in the night. it is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. it is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset..