madelyn > madelyn's Quotes

“I wrote you a letter in case I died but I threw it away. It was good practice. We have to practice losing everything. We are deer, we are headlights. We are the road where they collide.”
― Richard Siken

“Gestures are all that I have; sometimes they must be grand in nature.”
― Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain

“Do tears not yet spilled
wait in small lakes?

Or are they invisible rivers
that run toward sadness?”
― Pablo Neruda, The Book of Questions

“Yes, life can be lonely for the truly exceptional, darling. So I build my own nest and feather it with thoughts of you.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“I took my morning walk, I took my evening walk, I ate something, I thought about something, I wrote, I napped and dreamt something too, and with all that something, I still have nothing because so much of sum’thing has always been and always will be you.

I miss you.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

“I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late, that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering, and that I was human after all.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“Love of love written by the broken hearted, love of life written by the dead.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

“Who has never killed an hour? Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a premeditated murder of minutes. The violence comes from a combination of giving up, not caring, and a resignation that getting past it is all you can hope to accomplish. So you kill the hour. You do not work, you do not read, you do not daydream. If you sleep it is not because you need to sleep. And when at last it is over, there is no evidence: no weapon, no blood, and no body. The only clue might be the shadows beneath your eyes or a terribly thin line near the corner of your mouth indicating something has been suffered, that in the privacy of your life you have lost something and the loss is too empty to share.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

“Scars are the paler pain of survival received unwillingly and displayed in the language of injury.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

“Being beautiful, was that for men?'
'Yes. Some women say that it is for ourselves. What on earth can we do with it? I could have loved myself whether I was hunchbacked or lame, but to be loved by others, you had to be beautiful.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“Some people reflect light, some deflect it, you by some miracle, seem to collect it.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

“The essence of intelligence was to know when, or if, to expose even the heart's deep need for instruction.”
― Colum McCann, TransAtlantic

“The smell of the earth, so astoundingly fresh: it strikes Brown like a thing he might eat. His ears throb. His body feels as if it is still moving through the air. He is, he thinks, the first man ever to fly and stand at the exact same time. The war out of the machine. He holds the small bag of letters up in salute. On they come, soldiers, people, the light drizzle of gray.
Ireland.
A beautiful country. A bit savage on a man all the same.
Ireland.”
― Colum McCann, TransAtlantic

“The world does not turn without moments of grace. Who cares how small.”
― Colum McCann, TransAtlantic

“He frowned and tutted as he swabbed the vomit from the man's robes, and transferred his irritation to Pelagia's goat, which had entered the room and leapt up onto the table. 'Stupid brute' he shouted at it, and it looked at him impudently with its slotted eyes, as if to say, 'I, at least, am not drunk. I am merely mischievous.”
― Louis de Bernières

“Did you know that childhood is the only time in our lives when insanity is not only permitted to us, but expected?”
― Louis de Bernières, Corelli’s Mandolin

“It is the little rift within the lute;
That by and by will make the music mute;
And ever widening slowly silence all.”
― Alfred Tennyson, Merlin and Vivien

“How do we move through all this beauty without destroying it?”
― Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!

“I thought I should rein my sadness in, keep it small, not let it surround me, or spread to my bloodstream or thereabouts. Turn it into a ball, bullet or pellet. Swallow it quick.”
― Mercè Rodoreda, La plaça del Diamant

“There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always like a sketch. No, "sketch" is not quite a word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“In Vietnamese, the word for missing someone and remembering them is the same: nhớ. Sometimes, when you ask me over the phone, Có nhớ mẹ không? I flinch, thinking you meant, Do you remember me?

I miss you more than I remember you.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“He was pointing at the moon, but I was looking at his hand.”
― Richard Siken

“They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars—on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.”
― Robert Frost, The Poetry of Robert Frost

“Come to me, squeeze my hand, know my loneliness, and give me the love, the strength to prevail on the perilous road before me.”
― Dang Thuy Tram

“I want to grow a flower for every time someone tells me “F*** you.” Then I’ll go back to that person and pin the flower on their lapel in a gesture of friendship. And while they are looking down on it in astonishment, I’ll bunch up my knuckles and punch them in the face.”
― Jarod Kintz, I Want Two apply for a job at our country's largest funeral home, and then wear a suit and noose to the job interview.

“I’ve never written, though I thought I wrote, never loved, though I thought I loved, never done anything but wait outside the closed door.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Lover

“Very early in my life it was too late.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Lover

“We accept the love we think we deserve.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“We who think we are about to die will laugh at anything.”
― Terry Pratchett, Night Watch