Trinity Walker > Trinity's Quotes

“I wandered through the stacks, running my hands along the spines of the books on the shelves, they reminded me of cultured or opinionated guests at a wonderful party, whispering to each other.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“I look at the world and ask what’s in it for me.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“She doubled over, pressing her forearms against her chest, pressing the air out of herself. “I press it within my body,” she said. “As the earth presses a lump of prehistoric dung in heat and crushing weight deep under the ground. I hate him. Hate. I hate him.” She whispered this last, but ferociously. “A jewel is forming inside my body. No, it’s not my heart. This is harder, cold and clean. I wrap myself around this new jewel, cradle it within me.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“The question of good and the nature of evil will always be on of philosophy’s most intriguing problems, up there with the problem of existence itself. I’m not quarreling with your choice of issues, only with your intellectually diminished approach. If evil means to be self-motivated, to be the center of one’s own universe, to live on one’s own terms, then every artiste every thinker, every original mind, is evil. Because we dare to look through our own eyes rather than mouth clichés lent us from the so-called Fathers. To dare to see is to steal fire from the Gods. This is mankind’s destiny, the engine which fuels us as a race.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“You ask me about regret? Let me tell you a few things about regret, my darling. There is no end to it. You cannot find the beginning of the chain that brought us from there to here. Should you regret the whole chain, and the air in between, or each link separately, as if you could uncouple them? Do you regret the beginning which ended so badly, or just the ending itself? I’ve given more thought to this question than you can begin to imagine.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“We swam in the hot aquamarine of the pool late at night, in the clatter of palms and the twinkle of the new-scoured sky. My mother floated on her back, humming to herself. “God, I love this.” She splashed gently with her fingers, letting her body drift in a slow circle. “Isn’t it funny. I’m enjoying my hatred so much more than I ever enjoyed love. Love is temperamental. Tiring. It makes demands. Love uses you. Changes its mind.” Her eyes were closed. Beads of water decorated her face, and her hair spread out from her head like jellyfish tendrils. “But hatred, now. That’s something you can use. Sculpt. Wield. It’s hard or soft, however you need it. Love humiliates you, but hatred cradles you. It’s so soothing. I feel infinitely better now.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“These days, it’s easy to feel that we’ve fallen out of connection with one another and with the earth and with reason and with love. But to read, to write, is to say that we still believe in, at least, the possibility of connection.”
― George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

“Reconsideration is hard; it takes courage.”
― George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

“She is happy again, proud again, a full human being again, at last. She’s happy, but she’s alone. (But is she still lonely?)”
― George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

“Her reverence for the divine, her generosity, her inability not only to do no wrong but even to conceive of doing it.”
― Marcus Aurelius

“Optimism in adversity - especially illness.”
― Marcus Aurelius

“And if I've failed, it's no one's fault but mine. Because I didn't pay attention to what they told me - to what they taught me, practically, step by step.”
― Marcus Aurelius

“Whatever this is that I am, it is flesh and a little spirit and an intelligence.”
― Marcus Aurelius

“Everyone gets one life. Yours is almost used up, and instead of treating yourself with respect, you have entrusted your own happiness to the souls of others.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Don't waste the rest of your time here worrying about other people - unless it affects the common good. It will keep you from doing anything useful.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“The best revenge is to not be like that.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“For times when you feel pain:
See that is doesn't disgrace you, or degrade your intelligence - doesn't keep it from acting rationally or unselfishly.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions - not outside.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Enter their minds, and you'll find the judges you're so afraid of - and how judiciously they judge themselves.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“To my soul:
Are you ever going to achieve goodness? Ever going to be simple, whole, and naked - as plain to see as the body that contains you? Know what an affectionate and loving disposition would feel like? Ever be fulfilled, ever stop desiring - lusting and longing for people and things to enjoy? Or for more time to enjoy them? Or for some other place or country - "a more temperate clime"? Or for people easier to get along with? And instead be satisfied with what you have, and accept the present - all of it.”
― Marcus Aurelius

“To stop talking about what a good man is like, and just be one.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“When faced with people's bad behavior, turn around and ask when you have acted like that.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Learn to ask of all actions, "Why are they doing that?" Starting with your own.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“It's the pursuit of these things, and your attempts to avoid them, that leave you in such turmoil. And yet they aren't seeking you out; you are the one seeking them.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“How much more damage anger and grief do than the things that cause them.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“We need to pay attention to our impulses, making sure they don't go unmoderated, that they benefit others, that they're worthy of us.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“I'm astounded whenever I finish something. Astounded and distress. My perfectionist instinct should inhibit me from finishing; it should inhibit me from even beginning. But I get distracted and start doing something. What I achieve is not the product of an act of my will but of my will's surrender. I begin because I don't have the strength to think; I finish because I don't have the courage to quit.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“...like one of those damp rags use for house-cleaning that are taken to the window to dry but are forgotten, balled-up, on the sill where they slowly leave a stain.”
― Fernando Pessoa

“Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet