Dana > Dana's Quotes

“Don't let the bastards grind you down.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it”
― Flannery O' Connor, Wise Blood

“We are described into corners, and then we must describe ourselves out of corners.”
― Salman Rushdie

“What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.”
― Salman Rushdie

“A poet's work . . . to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

“Life has vanquished death and even the furniture celebrates.”
― Salman Rushdie

“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”
― Michael Cunningham, The Hours

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to matter very much, do they?”
― Virginia Woolf

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“For it would seem - her case proved it - that we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“The truth is, I often like women. I like their unconventionality. I like their completeness. I like their anonymity.”
― Virginia Woolf

“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”
― Virginia Woolf

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes makes its way to the surface.”
― Virginia Woolf

“But then anyone who's worth anything reads just what he likes, as the mood takes him, and with extravagant enthusiasm.”
― Virginia Woolf