NZ > NZ's Quotes

“I would live your life so much better than you, if I had your face.”
― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face

“The older we get, the more subtly we must undertake the double exercise of shedding aspects of ourselves so that we have the capacity to develop new ones.”
― Philip Kennicott, Counterpoint: A Memoir of Bach and Mourning

“That day, I came to a stark realization. I was afraid of men, and the harder I fought, the more intense the fear became. I can't think of an experience that is more harrowing than a woman being sexually harassed or assaulted by a man.”
― Zahra Hankir, Our Women on the Ground: Essays by Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World

“First, parents are not intermediaries between God and children. Secondly, all children are to come to God's truth as individual moral agents independent of, and if necessary, even in conflict with the views of their parents. Finally, even if children are expected to disobey erring parents, they are simultaneously reminded to care for and be fair to them.”
― Asma Barlas, Believing Women in Islam: A Brief Introduction

“I listen to them talk in a language I've never heard before. I don't have to understand everything. The blue-violet voices wind around me, protecting me from my fear. I am covered with a think rind of safety, like an orange.”
― Zeyn Joukhadar, The Map of Salt and Stars

“The moment you first encounter a particular book is the right time to read it.”
― Marie Kondo, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

“The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn’t the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness.”
― Albert Camus

“In real life, love has to be possible. Even if it is not returned right away, love can only survive when the hope exists that you will be able to win over the person you desire.”
― Paulo Coelho, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

“I repented and atoned as best I knew how; for twenty years I lived as an upright man, I offered prayers and fasted and gave alms to those less fortunate and made a pilgrimage to Mecca, and yet I was still haunted by guilt. Allah is all-merciful, so I knew the failing to be mine.”
― Ted Chiang, The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate

“My message to you is this: Pretend that you have free will. It’s essential that you behave as if your decisions matter, even though you know they don’t. The reality isn’t important; what’s important is your belief, and believing the lie is the only way to avoid a waking coma. Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has.

(story: What's Expected of Us)”
― Ted Chiang, What's Expected of Us

“This is one of those moments that I want to bottle up and keep with me forever. Not because it's extraordinary, or because it's the kind of thing you would find in a Bollywood movie.

But because it's the kind of moment I could never have dreamed of having in a million years.”
― Adiba Jaigirdar, The Henna Wars

“Men say that there are two unrepresentable things: death and the feminine sex. That's because they need femininity to be associated with death; it's the jitters that gives them a hard-on! for themselves! They need to be afraid of us. Look at the trembling Perseuses moving backward toward us, clad in apotropes. What lovely backs! Not another minute to lose. Let's get out of here.”
― Hélène Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa

“I wouldn't describe myself as lacking in confidence, but I would just say that - the ghosts you chase you never catch.”
― John Malkovich

“There’s a joke that I once heard a comedienne tell. It goes like this: “I’m not sure if I’m ready to have children. I asked a friend of mine who has children, ‘Suppose I do have kids. What if when they grow up, they blame me for everything that’s wrong with their lives?’ She laughed and said, ‘What do you mean, if?’ ”
― Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others

“Be patient. Your future will come to you and lie down at your feet like a dog who knows and loves you no matter what you are.’ ”
― Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others

“He understood how life was an undeserved bounty, how even the most virtuous were not worthy of the glories of the mortal plane. For him the mystery was solved, because he understood that everything in life is love, even pain, especially pain.”
― Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others

“My whole life is made up of: "I'm sorry". I feel like I have to apologize to people, to things, to life itself. It's like, "I'm sorry to be here". I don't want to disturb anyone. But in my work, in the clothes I create, I'm actually telling people that I'm here. So, I guess I'm disturbing them, after all.”
― Yohji Yamamoto, Yohji Yamamoto: Talking to Myself

“It's really hard to put into words things that are just a little bit not okay.”
― Sayaka Murata, Earthlings

“She said nothing, she only looked at me without a word. But it hurts more, it hurts more when they don't blame!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“He replies, in a tone betraying that his patience has nearly expired, that they're in Tel Aviv and in the northwest Negev. Then I ask him if, as a Palestinian, I can enter these museums and archives? And he responds, before putting down the receiver, that he doesn't see what would prevent me. And I don't see what would prevent me either, except for my identity card. The site of the incident, and the museums and archives documenting it, are located outside Area C, according to the military's division of the country, and not only that, but they're quite far away, close to the border with Egypt, while the longest trip I can embark on with my green identity card, which shows I'm from Area A, is from my house to my new job. Legally, though, anyone from Area A can go to Area B, if there aren't exceptional political or military circumstances that prevent one from doing so. But nowadays, such exceptional circumstances are in fact the norm, and many people from Area A don't even consider going to Area B. In recent years, I haven't even gone as far as Oalandiya checkpoint, which separates Area A and Area B, so how can I even think of going to a place so far that it's almost in Area D?”
― Adania Shibli, Minor Detail

“Why are you stingy with yourselves? Why are you holding back? What are you saving for—for another time? There are no other times. There is only now. Right now.”
― George Balanchine

“Killing myself was a matter of such indifference to me that I felt like waiting for a moment when it would make some difference.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man