M. > M.'s Quotes

“The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.”
― William H. Gass, A Temple of Texts

“Yes, we call it recursive, the act of reading, of looping the loop, of continually returning to an earlier group of words, behaving like Penelope by moving our mind back and forth, forth and back, reweaving what’s unwoven, undoing what’s been done; and language, which regularly returns us to its origin, which starts us off again on the same journey, older, altered, Columbus one more time, but better prepared each later voyage, knowing a bit more, ready for more, equal to a greater range of tasks, calmer, confident—after all, we’ve come this way before, have habits that help, and a favoring wind—language like that is the language which takes us inside, inside the sentence—inside—inside the mind—inside—inside, where meanings meet and are modified, reviewed and revised, where no perception, no need, no feeling or thought need be scanted or shunted aside.”
― William H. Gass, A Temple of Texts

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.”
― James Baldwin

“Revenge, the sweetest morsel to the mouth that ever was cooked in hell.”
― Walter Scott, The Heart of Mid-Lothian

“العوام هم قوَة المستبد وقوته، بهم عليهم يصول ويطول، يأسرهم فيتهللون لشوكته، ويغصب أموالهم فيحمدونه علي ابقائه حياتهم، ويغري بعضهم علي بعض فيفتخرون بسياسته، واذا اسرف في اموالهم يقولون كريما، واذا قتل منهم ولم يمثل يعتبرونه رحيما”
― عبد الرحمن الكواكبي, طبائع الاستبداد ومصارع الاستعباد

“If you live to be one hundred, you've got it made. Very few people die past that age. ”
― George Burns

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.”
― Bernard M. Baruch

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”
― Joseph Brodsky

“So, I guess we are who we are for alot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines
he wrote a poem
And he called it "Chops"
because that was the name of his dog

And that's what it was all about
And his teacher gave him an A
and a gold star
And his mother hung it on the kitchen door
and read it to his aunts
That was the year Father Tracy
took all the kids to the zoo

And he let them sing on the bus
And his little sister was born
with tiny toenails and no hair
And his mother and father kissed a lot
And the girl around the corner sent him a
Valentine signed with a row of X's

and he had to ask his father what the X's meant
And his father always tucked him in bed at night
And was always there to do it

Once on a piece of white paper with blue lines
he wrote a poem
And he called it "Autumn"

because that was the name of the season
And that's what it was all about
And his teacher gave him an A
and asked him to write more clearly
And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door
because of its new paint

And the kids told him
that Father Tracy smoked cigars
And left butts on the pews
And sometimes they would burn holes
That was the year his sister got glasses
with thick lenses and black frames
And the girl around the corner laughed

when he asked her to go see Santa Claus
And the kids told him why
his mother and father kissed a lot
And his father never tucked him in bed at night
And his father got mad
when he cried for him to do it.


Once on a paper torn from his notebook
he wrote a poem
And he called it "Innocence: A Question"
because that was the question about his girl
And that's what it was all about
And his professor gave him an A

and a strange steady look
And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door
because he never showed her
That was the year that Father Tracy died
And he forgot how the end
of the Apostle's Creed went

And he caught his sister
making out on the back porch
And his mother and father never kissed
or even talked
And the girl around the corner
wore too much makeup
That made him cough when he kissed her

but he kissed her anyway
because that was the thing to do
And at three a.m. he tucked himself into bed
his father snoring soundly

That's why on the back of a brown paper bag
he tried another poem

And he called it "Absolutely Nothing"
Because that's what it was really all about
And he gave himself an A
and a slash on each damned wrist
And he hung it on the bathroom door
because this time he didn't think

he could reach the kitchen.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“القراءة المبالغ فيها لا تجعلنا اذكياء , بعض الناس يبتلعون الكتب و هم يفعلون ذلك بدون فاصل للتفكير ,و هو ضروري لكي يُهضم المقروء و يُبني و يُتبني و يُفهم . عندما يتحدث اليك الناس يخرجون من افواههم قطعاً من هيجل و هايديجر او ماركس في حالة اوليه غير مصاغة جيدا , عند القراءة فان المساهمة الشخصية ضرورية مثلما هو ضروري للنحلة العمل الداخلي و الزمن , لكي تحول الرحيق الازهار المتجمعة الي عسل”
― علي عزت بيجوفيتش

“Sometimes you read a book so special that you want to carry it around with you for months after you've finished just to stay near it.”
― Markus Zusak

“Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Big things are often just little things that people notice.”
― Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger

“I have great faith in fools - self-confidence my friends will call it.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Marginalia

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend”
― Albert Camus

“Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”
― Carter Crocker

“I think if I've learned anything about friendship, it's to hang in, stay connected, fight for them, and let them fight for you. Don't walk away, don't be distracted, don't be too busy or tired, don't take them for granted. Friends are part of the glue that holds life and faith together. Powerful stuff.”
― Jon Katz

“and yet a child’s utter innocence is but its blank ignorance, and the innocence more or less wanes as intelligence waxes.”
― Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor

“Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity.”
― Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor

“The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.”
― Tom Waits

“The unforgettable thing in his life is usually not a thing he has done or left undone, but a thing done to him—some insolence or cruelty for which he could not, or did not, avenge himself.”
― Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson, or, an Oxford love story

“Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best. Genius must always have lapses proportionate to its triumphs.”
― Max Beerbohm

“Our hero's unreasoning rage was fed by a not unreasonable jealousy. It was clear to him that Zuleika had forgotten his existence. To-day, as soon as he had killed her love, she had shown him how much less to her was his love than the crowd's. And now again it was only the crowd she cared for. He followed with his eyes her long slender figure as she threaded her way in and out of the crowd, sinuously, confidingly, producing a penny from one lad's elbow, a threepenny-bit from between another's neck and collar, half a crown from another's hair, and always repeating in that flute-like voice of hers: "Well, this is rather queer!”
― Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson