Ajay > Ajay's Quotes

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Hands are for other human hands to hold.”
― Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk

“Silence can be either protest or consent, but most times it’s fear.”
― Paul Beatty, The Sellout

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“He needed me to do what sons do for their fathers: bear witness that they’re substantial, that they’re not hollow, not ringing absences. That they count for something when little else seems to.”
― Richard Ford, Canada

“We do not always like the people we love- we do not always have that choice.”
― Anne Enright, The Gathering

“There is a moment when you realise that you and your parent are not the same person, and it usually occurs when you are both consumed by a similar passion.”
― Hisham Matar, The Return

“Modern man does not experience himself as a part of nature but as an outside force destined to dominate and conquer it. He even talks of a battle with nature, forgetting that, if he won the battle, he would find himself on the losing side.”
― Ernst F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: The classic call for human-scale economics which is now more relevant than ever

“Hell is the absence of the people you long for.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

“First we only want to be seen, but once we’re seen, that’s not enough anymore. After that, we want to be remembered.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

“The only way to fall asleep is to stop trying to fall asleep. Sleep is a horizon: the harder you row toward it, the faster it recedes.”
― Anthony Doerr, Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World

“As I work on yet another draft of my story, I try to remember these lessons. A journal entry is for its writer; it helps its writer refine, perceive, and process the world. But a story—a finished piece of writing—is for its reader; it should help its reader refine, perceive, and process the world—the one particular world of the story, which”
― Anthony Doerr, Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World

“To be a parent and take an occasional day off from being a parent is a special kind of joy—a lightening, a sweetness made sweeter by its impermanence.”
― Anthony Doerr, Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World

“Not-knowing is always more thrilling than knowing. Not-knowing is where hope and art and possibility and invention come from. It is not-knowing, that old, old thing, that allows everything to be renewed.”
― Anthony Doerr, Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World

“No mother is ever, completely, a child's idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way around as well.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“I know I please where I must please the most.”
― Sophocles, Antigone

“At the age of five, Gustav Perle was certain of only one thing: he loved his mother.”
― Rose Tremain, The Gustav Sonata

“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“We lie best when we lie to ourselves.”
― Stephen King, It

“We've loved each other so long I've never been a man and not loved her.”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“Why was it, she sometimes wondered, that in dreams we can't do the simplest things?”
― George Saunders, Tenth of December

“A world without me is inconceivable.”
― J.M. Coetzee

“It is astonishing how strong you become, when you've spent a lot of time being other people's weaknesses.”
― Sharanya Manivannan, The High Priestess Never Marries

“I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful the earth is, is to see it as the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

“Like all walls it was ambiguous, two faced. What was inside it and what was outside it depended upon which side you were on.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

“You can’t crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed

“Anything dead coming back to life hurts.”
― Toni Morrison

“And now from the vantage of his years a terrible swoon comes down on him; Cynthia, for a moment, descends all the way through him. This is not a rare occurrence. He will never lose the feeling of the love that they had together, or the nausea of its absence. Hate is not the answer to love; death is its answer.”
― Kevin Barry, Night Boat to Tangier