Mark Stein > Mark's Quotes

“Because they knew each other's thoughts, they even quarrelled without speaking.”
― Bruce Chatwin, On the Black Hill

“Would that be dangerous, to not look while being looked at?”
― Helen Oyeyemi, The Icarus Girl

“be a person with knowledge not just opinions”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“Loss isn't an absence after all. It is a presence. A strong presence right next to me. I look at it. It doesn't look like anything, that's what is so strange. It just fits in.”
― Jackie Kay, Trumpet

“privilege is about context and circumstance”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“As a general rule of biology, migratory species are less 'aggressive' than sedentary ones.

There is one obvious reason why this should be so. The migration itself, like the pilgrimage, is the hard journey: a 'leveller' on which the 'fit' survive and stragglers fall by the wayside.

The journey thus pre-empts the need for hierarchies and shows of dominance. The 'dictators' of the animal kingdom are those who live in an ambience of plenty. The anarchists, as always, are the 'gentlemen of the road'.”
― Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines

“... ageing is nothing to be ashamed of

especially when the entire human race is in it together”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“To leave a whisper of myself in the world, my ghost, a magna opera of words.”
― Bernardine Evaristo, The Emperor's Babe

“I have tried my best to keep my country alive by writing about it.”
― Nuruddin Farah

“women who miraculously spend their working day wearing bondage-tight skirts and vertiginous, destabilizing heels which make their feet look bound the erogenous zones of crushed muscles and cramped bones, encased in upmarket strippers’ heels and if she has to cripple herself to signal her education, talent, intellect, skills and leadership potential then so be it”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“I pictured a low timber house with a shingled roof, caulked against storms, with blazing log fires inside and the walls lined with all the best books, somewhere to live when the rest of the world blew up.”
― Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia

“To lose a passport was the least of one’s worries. To lose a notebook was a catastrophe”
― Bruce Chatwin

“gender is one of the biggest lies of our civilization”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“it’s important to counterbalance the state of being cerebral with the state of being corporeal”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“When the love of your life dies, the problem is not that some part of you dies too, which it does, but that some part of you is still alive.”
― Jackie Kay, Trumpet

“Genuine love is rarely an emotional space where needs are instantly gratified. To know love we have to invest time and commitment...'dreaming that love will save us, solve all our problems or provide a steady state of bliss or security only keeps us stuck in wishful fantasy, undermining the real power of the love -- which is to transform us.' Many people want love to function like a drug, giving them an immediate and sustained high. They want to do nothing, just passively receive the good feeling.”
― bell hooks

“One person's craziness is another person's reality.”
― Tim Burton

“I laugh at the way some people think graffiti is all selfish tagging and vandalism. Thoughtful street art is like good fiction – it speaks out on behalf of everyone, for us all to see.”
― Carla H. Krueger