E.J. > E.J.'s Quotes

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
― George Orwell

“The essential quality of life is living' the essential quality of living is change; change is evolution; and we are part of it.”
― John Wyndham, The Chrysalids

“Every word I say has chains round its ankles; every thought I think is weighted with heavy weights.”
― Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight

“But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“My job is unbearable to me because it conflicts with my only desire and my only calling, which is literature. Since I am nothing but literature and can and want to be nothing else, my job will never take possession of me, it may, however, shatter me completely, and this is by no means a remote possibility.”
― Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

“It bothers me a lot that I don’t seem to own any real feelings anymore, but always have to pretend that I do by copying other people’s reactions. It’s as if I’m only moved by things that come to me indirectly. I can cry when I see a picture in the newspaper of an unfortunate family that’s been evicted, but when I see the same ordinary sight in reality, it doesn’t touch me. I’m moved by poetry and lyrical prose, now as always – but the things that are described leave me completely cold. I don’t think very much of reality.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, Childhood

“Sometimes, immersed in his books, there would come to him the awareness of all that he did not know, of all that he had not read; and the serenity for which he labored was shattered as he realized the little time he had in life to read so much, to learn what he had to know.”
― John Williams, Stoner

“We all want things we can't have. Being a decent human being is accepting that.”
― John Fowles, The Collector