Famous Quotes Ipsum

The artist's life is in his work, and this is the place to observe him. curiosity is braver than rage. exploration is a nobler calling than combat. the unknown beckons to us, singing its siren song and making our hearts pound with fear and desire. in tereza's eyes, books were the emblems of a secret brotherhood. for she had but a single weapon against the world of crudity surrounding her: the books she took out of the municipal library, and above all, the novels. she had read any number of them, from fielding to thomas mann. they not only offered her the possibility of an imaginary escape from a life she found unsatisfying; they also had a meaning for her as physical objects: she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. it had the same significance for her as an elegant cane for the dandy a century ago. it differentiated her from the others. we do not write in order to be understood, we write in order to understand. power consists.... in deciding which stories will be told. there is a certain kind of kid who is so in love with words that she kisses the pictures of authors on the jackets of books. i was one. all i ever wanted was to be a writer. though this yearning now seems like aspiring to be a blacksmith in the age of the automobile, my childhood image of what a writer did bestowed superhuman powers on the profession. a writer sat privately at her desk and made public things happen. the power was godlike. the sense of accomplishment had to be the same. making words slant across the page was like making rain. flowers grew in ink. hurricanes and revolutions were stirred up by the sound of pen scratching paper. lolita is famous, not i. i am an obscure, doubly obscure, novelist with an unpronounceable last name. your daughter has a quick and witty tongue. does a hero know she's a hero if no one tells her? do you know a hero no one else knows? a hero doesn't have to save a busload of school kids from certain disaster; or score the winning point in the big game. a hero can be anyone who inspires you, anyone you look up to ,anyone who cheers you on, makes you feel better than you were before - just as they made themselves better then they were before. do you know a hero? tell her. then tell everyone else. hell has no fury like women's fury. never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow. in languages that form the word 'compassion' not from the root 'suffering' but from the root 'feeling', the word is used in approximately the same way, but to contend that it designates a bad or inferior sentiment is difficult. the secret strength of its etymology floods the word with another light and gives it a broader meaning: to have compassion (co-feeling) means not only to be able to live with others' misfortune but also able to feel with him any emotion - joy, anxiety, happiness, pain. this kind of compassion therefore signifies the maximal capacity of affective imaginations, the art of emotional telepathy. in the hierarchy of sentiments, then, it is supreme. there is no greater hell than to be a prisoner of fear. the soul is an emanation of the divinity, a part of the soul of the world, a ray from the source of light. it comes from without into the human body, as into a temporary abode, it goes out of it anew; it wanders in ethereal regions, it returns to visit.... it passes into other habitations, for the soul is immortal. in our minds we can understand the highest god, but so long as we are in human bodies living in this rich and varied world, we need images that we can see and touch and love. and each one of them shows us a part of that supreme power, and all the parts together give us a glimpse of the whole. so the people who insist there is only one god are right, and so are those who honor the many, but they are right in different ways. i discovered i scream the same way whether i'm about to be devoured by a great white or if a piece of seaweed touches my foot. give me a museum and i'll fill it. the form of government most suitable to the artist is no government at all. the flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all. my piano is a universe. those eighty-eight keys arrange the seven planets in musical scales, an aural cosmos. you'll remember me like a melody / yeah, i'll haunt the world inside you nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it. it is beautiful that our lives coincided for so long. it is possible to live twenty-four hours a day in a state of love. every movement, every glance, every thought, and every word can be infused with love. watching stars without you, my soul cries a pain stabbed my heart as it did every time i saw a girl i loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world. i'm at peace with the world. i'm completely serene. i've discovered my purpose in life. i know why i was put here and why everything exists... i am here so everybody can do what i want. once everybody accepts it, they'll be serene too..