Violeta > Violeta's Quotes

“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown I back, throat to the stars, "more like deer than human being." To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“As they say, history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Testaments

“It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“There are such things as ghosts. People everywhere have always known that. And we believe in them every bit as much as Homer did. Only now, we call them by different names. Memory. The unconscious.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“But how,” said Charles, who was close to tears, “how can you possibly justify cold-blooded murder?’
Henry lit a cigarette. “I prefer to think of it,” he had said, “as redistribution of matter.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“You don’t believe the sky is falling until a chunk of it falls on you.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Testaments

“We accept the love we think we deserve.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“The universe is seeming really huge right now. I need something to hold on to.”
― E. Lockhart, We Were Liars

“Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest. I was standing on the lawn and I fell. The bullet hole opened wide and my heart rolled out of my rib cage and down into a flower bed. Blood gushed rhythmically from my open wound,
then from my eyes,
my ears,
my mouth.
It tasted like salt and failure. The bright red shame of being unloved soaked the grass in front of our house, the bricks of the path, the steps of the porch. My heart spasmed among the peonies like a trout.”
― E. Lockhart, We Were Liars

“It doesn't matter if one of us is desperately, desperately in love. So much in love, that equally desperate measures must be taken”
― E. Lockhart, We Were Liars

“Problems always start long before you really, really see them.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“No matter how hard we try to ignore it, the mind always knows truth and wants clarity.”
― Toni Morrison, God Help the Child

“Taught me a lesson I should have known all along. What you do to children matters. And they might never forget.”
― Toni Morrison, God Help the Child

“There is nothing more dangerous, nothing more powerful, nothing more necessary and essential for survival than the lies we tell ourselves. I”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“If there's a feeling to home, it's this. A place where there are no secrets, where nothing stays buried; not the past and not yourself. Where you can be all the versions of you, see it all reflected back at you as you walk the same stairs, the same halls, the same rooms. Feel the ghost of your mother as you sit at the kitchen table, hear the words of your father circling round and round after dinner, and your brother stopping by, wishing you'd be a little better, a little stronger.... It's four walls echoing back everything you've ever been and everything you've ever done, and it's the people who stay despite it all. Through it all. For it all.”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“The darkness lives in everyone. She knew this better than anyone. Everyone had two faces, and she looked deep into us until she found it.”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“But here’s the thing I’ve learned about leaving—you can’t really go back.”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“Four legs good, two legs bad.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“The only good human being is a dead one.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“Several of them would have protested if they could have found the right arguments.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“Gregor erschrak, als er seine antwortende Stimme hörte, die wohl unverkennbar seine frühere war, in die sich aber, wie von unten her, ein nicht zu unterdrückendes, schmerzliches Piepsen mischte, das die Worte förmlich nur im ersten Augenblick in ihrer Deutlichkeit beließ, um sie im Nachklang derart zu zerstören, daß man nicht wußte, ob man recht gehört hatte.”
― Franz Kafka, Die Verwandlung

“Als Gregor schon zur Hälfte aus dem Bette ragte – die neue Methode war mehr ein Spiel als eine Anstrengung, er brauchte immer nur ruckweise zu schaukeln – , fiel ihm ein, wie einfach alles wäre, wenn man ihm zu Hilfe käme.”
― Franz Kafka, Die Verwandlung

“Die schwere Verwundung Gregors, an der er über einen Monat litt -- der
Apfel blieb, da ihn niemand zu entfernen wagte, als sichtbares Andenken
im Fleische sitzen --, schien selbst den Vater daran erinnert zu haben,
daß Gregor trotz seiner gegenwärtigen traurigen und ekelhaften Gestalt
ein Familienglied war, das man nicht wie einen Feind behandeln durfte,
sondern dem gegenüber es das Gebot der Familienpflicht war, den
Widerwillen hinunterzuschlucken und zu dulden, nichts als dulden.”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis