Katie's quotes

(showing 1-50 of 50)

"This is my letter to the world
That never wrote to me"
— Emily Dickinson

47 people liked it

"To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else."
— Emily Dickinson

tags: inspirational
90 people liked it

"I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there's a pair of us?
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one's name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!"
— Emily Dickinson

58 people liked it

"The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself. "
— Virginia Woolf

30 people liked it

"An offering for the sake of offering, perhaps. Anyhow, it was her gift. Nothing else had she of the slightest importance; could not think, write, even play the piano. She muddled Armenians and Turks; loved success; hated discomfort; must be liked; talked oceans of nonsense: and to this day, ask her what the Equator was, and she did not know.

All the same, that one day should follow another; Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday; that one should wake up in the morning; see the sky; walk in the park; meet Hugh Whitbread; then suddenly in came Peter; then these roses; it was enough. After that, how unbelievable death was!-that it must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she had loved it all; how, every instant . . ."
— Virginia Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway)

tags: interiority, subjectivity, women, woolf
24 people liked it

"Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others."
— Virginia Woolf (A Room of One's Own)

27 people liked it

"I talk too much because I have been made so miserable by what you are keeping hushed."
— Djuna Barnes (Nightwood)

9 people liked it

"I decline to accept the end of man... I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among the creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail."
— William Faulkner

46 people liked it

"Don't be 'a writer'. Be writing."
— William Faulkner

32 people liked it

"Pouring out liquor is like burning books."
— William Faulkner

45 people liked it

"The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence."
— Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar)

tags: depression, silence
106 people liked it

"The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn't thought about it."
— Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar)

53 people liked it

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my eyes and all is born again."
— Sylvia Plath

136 people liked it

"What did my arms do before they held you?"
— Sylvia Plath

51 people liked it

"Backward we traveled to reclaim the day
Before we fell, like Icarus, undone;
All we find are altars in decay
And profane words scrawled black across the sun."
— Sylvia Plath (The Collected Poems)

35 people liked it

"whisper of yellow globes
gleaming on lamp posts that sway
like bootleg licker drinkers in the fog

and let your breath be moist against me
like bright beads on yellow globes

telephone the power-house
that the main wires are insulate

(her words play up and down
dewy corridors of billboards)

then with your tongue remove the tape
and press your lips to mine
till they are incandescent "
— Jean Toomer

2 people liked it

"Thank everyone who calls out your faults, your anger, your impatience, your egotism; do this consciously, voluntarily."
— Jean Toomer

tags: rabp
2 people liked it

"If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."
— Toni Morrison

tags: books, writing
1,139 people liked it

"At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough."
— Toni Morrison

34 people liked it

"I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked [James] Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of Dublin. Never. And I don't know why I should be asked to explain your life to you. We have splendid writers to do that, but I am not one of them. It is that business of being universal, a word hopelessly stripped of meaning for me. Faulkner wrote what I suppose could be called regional literature and had it published all over the world. That's what I wish to do. If I tried to write a universal novel, it would be water. Behind this question is the suggestion that to write for black people is somehow to diminish the writing. From my perspective there are only black people. When I say 'people,' that's what I mean."
— Toni Morrison

tags: morrison, race, toni, writing
35 people liked it

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
— Dr. Seuss

tags: be-yourself, confidence, individuality, those-who-matter
18,672 people liked it

"Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth."
— Mark Twain

tags: dance, heaven, hurt, inspirational, life, love, sing
16,421 people liked it

"Be the change that you wish to see in the world."
— Mahatma Gandhi

tags: action, change, inspirational, philosophy, wish
11,799 people liked it

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."
— Maya Angelou

tags: life
11,512 people liked it

"A room without books is like a body without a soul."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero

tags: books, soul
11,393 people liked it

"Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

tags: confidence, inspirational, wisdom
10,660 people liked it

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

tags: humor, insanity, life
9,792 people liked it

"So many books, so little time."
— Frank Zappa

tags: books, humor
9,555 people liked it

"Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend."
— Albert Camus

tags: friends, friendship
9,694 people liked it

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."
— Abraham Lincoln

tags: wisdom
9,485 people liked it

"You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough"
— Mae West

tags: humor, life
9,125 people liked it

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
— Mark Twain

tags: action, actions, disappointed, disappointment, discover, dream, dreams, explore, sail
7,975 people liked it

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

tags: activism, apathy, hate, indifference, love, opposite, philosophy
7,303 people liked it

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."
— Groucho Marx (The Essential Groucho)

tags: animals, books, dogs, friends, humor
6,787 people liked it

"Women are like teabags; you never know how strong they are until they're put in hot water."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

tags: women
7,191 people liked it

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."
— Robert Frost

tags: life
7,322 people liked it

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
— Martin Luther King Jr.

tags: darkness, drive-out, hate, inspirational, light, love, peace
7,126 people liked it

"Whenever I feel the need to exercise, I lie down until it goes away."
— Robert Maynard Hutchins

tags: exercise, humor, laziness
5,996 people liked it

"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by frost."
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring)

tags: frost, glitter, gold, lost, poetry, roots, strength, strong, wander, wither
6,373 people liked it

"If you don't stand for something you will fall for anything."
— Malcolm X

tags: belief, integrity
6,746 people liked it

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."
— Mark Twain

tags: literacy
6,238 people liked it

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye."
— Miss Piggy

tags: humor
5,847 people liked it

"Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow."
— Mark Twain

tags: humor, procrastination
5,740 people liked it

"A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you."
— Elbert Hubbard

tags: friend, friendship, knowledge, love
6,640 people liked it

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
— Douglas Adams

tags: deadlines, humor, work
5,450 people liked it

"A day without sunshine is like, you know, night."
— Steve Martin

tags: humor, obvious
5,559 people liked it

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."
— Oscar Wilde

tags: enemies, forgiveness, strategy
6,396 people liked it

"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends. To appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."
— Bessie Anderson Stanley

4,872 people liked it

"If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that."
— Stephen King

tags: reading, writing
949 people liked it

"The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly."
— Siddhārtha Gautama

tags: inspirational
816 people liked it

Katie's profile »

all quotes
add a quote

Katie's quotes

tags from Katie's quotes