JENNY > JENNY's Quotes

“You want to know what Classics are?" said a drunk Dean of Admissions to me at a faculty party a couple of years ago. "I'll tell you what Classics are. Wars and homos.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Whenever you see flies or insects in a still life—a wilted petal, a black spot on the apple—the painter is giving you a secret message. He’s telling you that living things don’t last—it’s all temporary. Death in life. That’s why they’re called natures mortes. Maybe you don’t see it at first with all the beauty and bloom, the little speck of rot. But if you look closer—there it is.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“Some people may opt out. Their child turns out to be whatever it is that they find impossible to face—for some, the wrong religion; for some, the wrong sexuality; for some, a drug addict. They close the door. Click. Like in mafia movies: “I have no son. He is dead to me.” I have a son and he will never be dead to me.”
― David Sheff, Beautiful Boy: A Heartbreaking Memoir of a Father's Struggle with His Son's Addiction and the Journey to Recovery

“Even now, does not an East-end worker live in such artificial conditions as practically to be cut off from the natural surface of the earth?”
― H.G. Wells, The Time Machine

“an Italian can never be ignored, least of all when he has a grievance.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“There was a language in the world that everyone understood, a language the boy had used throughout the time that he was trying to improve things at the shop. It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away - a man is not a piece of fruit.”
― Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman: Text and Criticism

“I don't say he's a great man. Willie Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall in his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person.”
― Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

“Figure it out. Work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it, and there's nobody to live in it.”
― Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

“I stopped in the middle of that building and I saw — the sky. I saw the things that I love in this world. The work and the food and time time to sit and smoke. And I looked at the pen and said to myself, what the hell am I grabbing this for? Why am I trying to become what I don't want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am! Why can't I say that, Willy?”
― Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

“Sometimes he wakes so far from himself that he can’t even remember who he is. “Where am I?” he asks, desperate, and then, “Who am I? Who am I?”
And then he hears, so close to his ear that it is as if the voice is originating inside his own head, Willem’s whispered incantation. “You’re Jude St. Francis. You are my oldest, dearest friend. You’re the son of Harold Stein and Julia Altman. You’re the friend of Malcolm Irvine, of Jean-Baptiste Marion, of Richard Goldfarb, of Andy Contractor, of Lucien Voigt, of Citizen van Straaten, of Rhodes Arrowsmith, of Elijah Kozma, of Phaedra de los Santos, of the Henry Youngs.
“You’re a New Yorker. You live in SoHo. You volunteer for an arts organization; you volunteer for a food kitchen.
“You’re a swimmer. You’re a baker. You’re a cook. You’re a reader. You have a beautiful voice, though you never sing anymore. You’re an excellent pianist. You’re an art collector. You write me lovely messages when I’m away. You’re patient. You’re generous. You’re the best listener I know. You’re the smartest person I know, in every way. You’re the bravest person I know, in every way.
“You’re a lawyer. You’re the chair of the litigation department at Rosen Pritchard and Klein. You love your job; you work hard at it.
“You’re a mathematician. You’re a logician. You’ve tried to teach me, again and again.
“You were treated horribly. You came out on the other end. You were always you.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Friendship was witnessing another’s slow drip of miseries, and long bouts of boredom, and occasional triumphs. It was feeling honored by the privilege of getting to be present for another person’s most dismal moments, and knowing that you could be dismal around him in return.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“It is also then that I wish I believed in some sort of life after life, that in another universe, maybe on a small red planet where we have not legs but tails, where we paddle through the atmosphere like seals, where the air itself is sustenance, composed of trillions of molecules of protein and sugar and all one has to do is open one's mouth and inhale in order to remain alive and healthy, maybe you two are there together, floating through the climate. Or maybe he is closer still: maybe he is that gray cat that has begun to sit outside our neighbor's house, purring when I reach out my hand to it; maybe he is that new puppy I see tugging at the end of my other neighbor's leash; maybe he is that toddler I saw running through the square a few months ago, shrieking with joy, his parents huffing after him; maybe he is that flower that suddenly bloomed on the rhododendron bush I thought had died long ago; maybe he is that cloud, that wave, that rain, that mist. It isn't only that he died, or how he died; it is what he died believing. And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“But let's not speak of what might have been. Let us speak instead of what is. You are whole.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

“It is a horrible, terrible thing, the worst thing, to watch somebody you love die right in front of you and not be able to do nothing about it.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

“I have already been loved,” said Edward. “I have been loved by a girl named Abilene. I have been loved by a fisherman and his wife and a hobo and his dog. I have been loved by a boy who played the harmonica and by a girl who died. Don’t talk to me about love,” he said. “I have known love.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

“Whatever can die is beautiful — more beautiful than a unicorn, who lives forever, and who is the most beautiful creature in the world. Do you understand me?”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“there never is a happy ending because nothing ever ends.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“...she will remember them all when men are fairy tales in books written by rabbits.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“Then what is magic for?" Prince Lír demanded wildly. "What use is wizardry if it cannot save a unicorn?" He gripped the magician's shoulder hard, to keep from falling.

Schmedrick did not turn his head. With a touch of sad mockery in his voice, he said, "That's what heroes are for.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“- and you are truly human now. You can love, and fear, and forbid things to be what they are, and overact.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“You're in the story with the rest of us now, and you must go with it, whether you will or no.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“This body is dying. I can feel it rotting all around me. How can anything that is going to die be real? How can it be truly beautiful?”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“I’m a magician with no magic, and that’s no one at all.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“But no hero can stand before her, no god can wrestle her down, no magic can keep her out--or in, for she's no prisoner of ours. Even while we exhibit her here, she is walking among you, touching and taking. For Elli is Old Age.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“and wondered at Arachne's new web, which was like a fisherman's net with the dripping moon in it. Each of them took it for a real web, but only the spider believed that it held the real moon.”
― Peter S. Beagle

“Journeys end in lovers meeting; I have spent an all but sleepless night, I have told lies and made a fool of myself, and the very air tastes like wine. I have been frightened half out of my foolish wits, but I have somehow earned this joy; I have been waiting for it for so long.”
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

“Don't do it, Eleanor told the little girl; insist on your cup of stars; once they have trapped you into being like everyone else you will never see your cup of stars again; don't do it; and the little girl glanced at her, and smiled a little subtle, dimpling, wholly comprehending smile, and shook her head stubbornly at the glass. Brave girl, Eleanor thought; wise, brave girl.”
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

“There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty - unless she is wed to something more meaningful - is always superficial.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History