Eric > Eric's Quotes

“But pity was not action. It was not love. Pity, like passion, was no more than a kind of instinct.”
― Shūsaku Endō, Silence

“How come the past tense is always longer?”
― Ocean Vuong, Time Is a Mother

“To him love was no union between two otherwise incomplete halves, but more like the gravity that locked two bodies into the same orbit”
― Ronan Hession, Panenka

“...the human being to lack that second skin we call egoism has not yet been born, it lasts much longer than the other one, that bleeds so readily.”
― José Saramago, Blindness

“Let me pull myself out of these waters. But they heap themselves on me; they sweep me between their great shoulders; I am turned; I am tumbled; I am stretched, among these long lights, these long waves, these endless paths, with people pursuing, pursuing.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“Don't be too quick to draw conclusions from what happens to you; simply let it happen. Otherwise it will be too easy for you to look with blame... at your past, which naturally has a share with everything that now meets you.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“His only solace and support was in the thought of that other man who had also tasted fear and trembling. And then there was joy in the thought that he was not alone.”
― Shūsaku Endō, Silence

“It is easy enough to die for the good and beautiful; the hard thing is to die for the miserable and corrupt.”
― Shūsaku Endō, Silence

“I removed the patch to satisfy my curiosity and just at that moment I went blind”
― José Saramago, Blindness

“Fear can cause blindness...we were already blind the moment we turned blind, fear struck us blind, fear will keep us blind”
― José Saramago, Blindness

“I am not one and simple, but complex and many.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“Blindness is also this, to live in a world where all hope is gone.”
― José Saramago, Blindness

“No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man can store up in his ghostly heart.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“I shouted to the cop who pulled us over for dreaming.

I'm not high, officer, I just don't believe in time.

Tomorrow, partly cloudy with a chance.”
― Ocean Vuong, Time Is a Mother

“To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

“Life should always be like that. Resting safely, with someone looking over you, attending to the little indulgences that loved people enjoy”
― Ronan Hession, Panenka

“Life is such a strange thing, she thinks, once she has stopped laughing. Even after certain things have happened to them, no matter how awful the experience, people still go on eating and drinking, going to the toilet and washing themselves - living, in other words. And sometimes they even laugh out loud. And they probably have these same thoughts, too, and when they do it must make them cheerlessly recall all the sadness they'd briefly managed to forget.”
― Han Kang, The Vegetarian

“Or perhaps it was simply that things were happening inside her, terrible things, which no one else could even guess at, and thus it was impossible for her to engage with everyday life at the same time. If so, she would naturally have no energy left, not just for curiosity or interest but indeed for any meaningful response to all the humdrum minutiae that went on on the surface.”
― Han Kang, The Vegetarian

“Time was a wave, almost cruel in its relentlessness as it whisked her life downstream, a life she had to constantly strain to keep from breaking apart.”
― Han Kang, The Vegetarian

“From the very beginning, and throughout the whole of our affair, I had the privilege of knowing what we all find out in the end: the man we love is a complete stranger.”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“At the risk of losing your forever remarkably candid friendship, let me tell you something. Confusion is a luxury. Where only the very very young can possibly afford. And you are not that young anymore.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“And yet - when one begins to search for the crucial, the definitive moment, the moment which changed all others, one finds one-self pressing, in great pain, through a maze of false signals and abruptly locking doors.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“Tell me, he said, "What is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. what are they waiting for?"

"Well […] I guess people wait in order to make sure of what they feel."

"And when you have waited—-has it made you sure?”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford and you are not that young anymore”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room