Virginia > Virginia's Quotes

“it is a serious thing // just to be alive / on this fresh morning / in this broken world.”
― Mary Oliver, Red Bird

“And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., A Man Without a Country

“When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion, then I go out and paint the stars.”
― Vincent van Gogh

“And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“I don't know anything with certainty, but seeing the stars makes me dream.”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“You are twenty. You are not dead, although you were dead. The girl who died. And was resurrected. Children. Witches. Magic. Symbols. Remember the illogic of the fantasy.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.”
― Anais Nin

“In spite of everything, I shall rise again; I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“Talking, talking. Spinning a web of words, pale walls of dreams, between myself and all I see.”
― John Gardner, Grendel

“Everything with me is either worship and passion or pity and understanding. I hate rarely, though when I hate, I hate murderously. For example now, I hate the bank and everything connected with it. I also hate Dutch paintings, penis-sucking, parties, and cold rainy weather. But I am much more preoccupied with loving.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932

“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

“...and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?”
― Vincent Willem van Gogh

“Yet love enters my blood like an I.V.,
dripping in its little white moments.”
― Anne Sexton

“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”
― Mary Oliver

“And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Saints have no moderation, nor do poets, just exuberance.”
― Anne Sexton

“...things get broken, and sometimes they get repaired, and in most cases, you realize that no matter what gets damaged, life rearranges itself to compensate for your loss, sometimes wonderfully.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“And so it goes...”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“If you want to really hurt you parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“He left bloody fingerprints on the rock, but there was something satisfying about that.
I was here. I exist. I’m alive, because I bleed.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Blue Lily, Lily Blue

“Yes, I deserve a spring–I owe nobody nothing.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Writer's Diary

“All I ever really want to know is how other people are making it through life—where do they put their body, hour by hour, and how do they cope inside of it.”
― Miranda July, It Chooses You

“I put my heart and soul into my work, and I have lost my mind in the process.”
― Vincent Willem van Gogh

“You won’t understand what I mean now, but someday you will: the only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you are—not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous, and more forgiving—and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and to try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad—or good—it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all. But the best, as well.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Either I shall find it, or I shall not find it. I examine my note-case. I look in all my pockets. These are the things that forever interrupt the process upon which I am eternally engaged of finding some perfect phrase that fits this moment exactly.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“He experienced the singular pleasure of watching people he loved fall in love with other people he loved.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life