Astrid > Astrid's Quotes

“Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry.”
― Jack Kerouac

“There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“All great and precious things are lonely.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.”
― Ernest Hemingway, Men Without Women

“As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt, use it-don't cheat with it.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Beauty was not everything. Beauty had this penalty — it came too readily, came too completely. It stilled life — froze it.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“I want to undress you, vulgarize you a bit.”
― Henry Miller, A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller, 1932-1953

“Things I forgot to tell you:

That I love you, and that when I awake in the morning I use my intelligence to discover more ways of appreciating you.

That when June comes back she will love you more because I have loved you. There are new leaves on the tip and climax of your already overrich head.

That I love you.
That I love you.
That I love you.

I have become an idiot like Gertrude Stein. That’s what love does to intelligent women. They cannot write letters anymore.”
― Anaïs Nin, A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller, 1932-1953

“Let me be, was all I wanted. Be what I am, no matter how I am.”
― Henry Miller, Stand Still Like the Hummingbird

“So therefore I dedicate myself, to my art, my sleep, my dreams, my labors, my suffrances, my loneliness, my unique madness, my endless absorption and hunger because I cannot dedicate myself to any fellow being.”
― Jack Kerouac

“Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.

A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.

A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master...”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“Only describe, don't explain.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein

“I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessness―in a landscape selected at random―is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude to whom it may concern―to the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to tender ghosts humoring a lucky mortal.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“In the time of your life, live—so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches. Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding place and let it be free and unashamed.

Place in matter and in flesh the least of the values, for these are the things that hold death and must pass away. Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption. Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world. Ignore the obvious, for it is unworthy of the clear eye and the kindly heart.

Be the inferior of no man, or of any men be superior. Remember that every man is a variation of yourself. No man's guilt is not yours, nor is any man's innocence a thing apart. Despise evil and ungodliness, but not men of ungodliness or evil. These, understand. Have no shame in being kindly and gentle but if the time comes in the time of your life to kill, kill and have no regret.

In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.”
― William Saroyan, The time of your life

“Wherever snow falls, or water flows, or birds fly, wherever day and night meet in twilight, wherever the blue heaven is hung by clouds, or sown with stars, wherever are forms with transparent boundaries, wherever are outlets into celestial space, wherever is danger, and awe, and love, there is Beauty, plenteous as rain, shed for thee, and though thou shouldest walk the world over, thou shalt not be able to find a condition inopportune or ignoble.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson