Marla's quotes

(showing 1-50 of 79)

"Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse-Five)

319 people liked it

"Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead."
— Kurt Vonnegut

108 people liked it

"All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber."
— Kurt Vonnegut

tags: existentialism, life, philosophy, wisdom
104 people liked it

"Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go around looking for it, and I think it can be poisonous. I wish people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, 'Please-a little less love, and a little more common decency."
— Kurt Vonnegut

55 people liked it

"It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like "Poo-tee-weet?"
— Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse-Five)

10 people liked it

"All right - I'll tell you what you did for me: you went for happy, silly, beautiful walks with me."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Bluebeard)

21 people liked it

"The biggest truth to face now - what is probably making me unfunny now for the remainder of my life - is that I don't think people give a damn whether the planet goes or not. It seems to me as if everyone is living as members of Alcoholics Anonymous do, day by day. And a few more days will be enough. I know of very few people who are dreaming of a world for their grandchildren."
— Kurt Vonnegut (A Man Without a Country)

7 people liked it

"Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you'll look back and realize they were big things."
— Kurt Vonnegut

33 people liked it

"Everything about life is a joke. Don't you know that?"
— Kurt Vonnegut (Bluebeard)

9 people liked it

"
 'Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. And intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you'll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way.'
"
— Janet Fitch (White Oleander)

tags: loneliness
99 people liked it

"Don't attach yourself to anyone who shows you the least bit of attention because you're lonely. Lonliness is the human condition. No one is ever going to fill that space. The best thing you can do it know yourself... know what you want."
— Janet Fitch

31 people liked it

"I know what you are learning to endure. There is nothing to be done. Just make sure nothing is wasted. Take notes, remember it all, every insult, every tear. Tattoo it on the inside of your mind. In life, knowledge of the poisons is essential. I've told you, nobody becomes an artist unless they have to"
— Janet Fitch

tags: fitch, janet, oleander, white
8 people liked it

"I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when their right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust noone but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together."
— Marilyn Monroe

tags: monroe
1,884 people liked it

"A wise girl kisses but doesn't love, listens but doesn't believe, and leaves before she is left."
— Marilyn Monroe

880 people liked it

"If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire)

tags: integrity
3,730 people liked it

"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)

tags: dumbledore
1,000 people liked it

"It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince)

tags: fear, unknown
361 people liked it

"The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first."
— Jim Morrison

tags: freedom, individuality, inspirational, mask, personality, revolution, truth
207 people liked it

"Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood."
— George Orwell (1984)

tags: truth
76 people liked it

"I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are."
— Philip Pullman (The Amber Spyglass)

tags: malone, mary, morality
72 people liked it

"Even if it means oblivion, friends, I'll welcome it, because it won't be nothing. We'll be alive again in a thousand blades of grass, and a million leaves; we'll be falling in the raindrops and blowing in the fresh breeze; we'll be glittering in the dew under the stars and the moon out there in the physical world, which is our true home and always was."
— Philip Pullman (The Amber Spyglass)

12 people liked it

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
— Oscar Wilde (Lady Windermere's Fan)

tags: inspirational, optimism, perception, pessimism
4,937 people liked it

"Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

tags: books, morality, reading, writing
739 people liked it

"You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray and Three Stories)

tags: sin
697 people liked it

"Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

tags: life, surrealistic
393 people liked it

"Illusion is the first of all pleasures"
— Oscar Wilde

41 people liked it

"Yet each man kills the thing he loves, from all let this be heard. Some does it with a bitter look, some with a flattering word. The coward does it with a kiss the brave man with the sword."
— Oscar Wilde

14 people liked it

"A passion for pleasure is the secret of remaining young."
— Oscar Wilde

17 people liked it

"We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible."
— Oscar Wilde

tags: experience, life
5 people liked it

"Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

tags: aesthetics
34 people liked it

"We women, as some one says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes..."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

9 people liked it

"We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love."
— Tom Robbins

tags: love, sex
516 people liked it

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference."
— Elie Wiesel

tags: activism, apathy, hate, indifference, love, opposite, philosophy
7,031 people liked it

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable."
— C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves)

tags: love
1,533 people liked it

"Everyone, at some point in their lives, wakes up in the middle of the night with the feeling that they are all alone in the world, and that nobody loves them now and that nobody will ever love them, and that they will never have a decent night's sleep again and will spend their lives wandering blearily around a loveless landscape, hoping desperately that their circumstances will improve, but suspecting, in their heart of hearts, that they will remain unloved forever. The best thing to do in these circumstances is to wake somebody else up, so that they can feel this way, too."
— Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)

tags: love
427 people liked it

"Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
— Albert Einstein

tags: humor, insanity, life
9,364 people liked it

"Reality continues to ruin my life."
— Bill Watterson (The Complete Calvin and Hobbes)

tags: calvin-and-hobbes, humor, life
2,609 people liked it

"...but better to be hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie."
— Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner)

tags: life
548 people liked it

"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it."
— Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)

tags: better, empathy, life
337 people liked it

"There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be..."
— John Lennon

tags: beatles, destiny, fate, life
188 people liked it

"The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think."
— Horace Walpole

tags: comedy, emotions, life, perspective, thinking, tragedy
70 people liked it

"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could."
— Louise Erdrich (The Painted Drum: A Novel)

tags: heartbreak, life, living, love, strength
112 people liked it

"...the only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)

tags: chance, happiness, risk
211 people liked it

"With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy."
— Max Ehrmann (Desiderata: A Poem for a Way of Life)

tags: happiness, inspirational, philosophical
112 people liked it

"Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand."
— Aldous Huxley (Brave New World)

tags: happiness
77 people liked it

"When you know better you do better."
— Oprah Winfrey

tags: education, intelligence, knowledge, wisdom
191 people liked it

"The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection."
— George Orwell

tags: humananity, truth, wisdom
102 people liked it

"Risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing."
— Leo Buscaglia

tags: inspiration, wisdom
73 people liked it

"Maybe he felt the need to suffer; maybe he felt the need to atone for those few hours of uncharacteristic abandon"
— Paul Verhaeghen

1 person liked it