Valjeanne Jeffers > Valjeanne's Quotes

“Then you must tell 'em dat love ain't somethin' lak uh grindstone dat's de same thing everywhere and do de same thing tuh everything it touch. Love is lak de sea. It's uh movin' thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it's different with every shore.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“The one that sang, old Janine, was always whispering into the g***** microphone before she sang. She'd say, 'And now we like to geeve you our impression of Vooly Voo Fransay. Eet ees the story of leetle Fransh girl who comes to a beeg ceety, just like New York, and falls een love wees a leetle boy from Brookleen. We hope you like eet.' Then, when she was all done whispering and being cute as hell, she'd sing some dopey song, half in English and half in French, and drive all the phonies in the place mad with joy.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Man leave the past in the past. That's where it belongs. The trouble with addicts is that they carry bad memories around with them - like old luggage. And in that luggage that's where they carry their blueprint for living. You got to decide what's worth keeping, and then set the rest of it on the curb for the garbage.
-Joseph”
― Valjeanne Jeffers, Immortal

“i found god in myself
and i loved her
i loved her fiercely”
― Ntozake Shange

“The earth has its music for those who will listen”
― Reginald Vincent Holmes, Fireside Fancies

“If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.”
― Audre Lorde

“Religion is for people who're afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those who've already been there.”
― Vine Deloria Jr.

“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.”
― Narcotics Anonymous

“I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.”
― Marilyn Monroe

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.”
― Albert Einstein

“The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house”
― Audre Lorde

“Integrity is the lifeblood of democracy.
Deceit is a poison in its veins.”
― Edward M. Kennedy

“The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dreams shall never die.”
― Edward M. Kennedy

“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent”
― Victor Hugo

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
― Oscar Wilde

“She wore her sexuality with an older woman's ease, and not like an awkward purse, never knowing how to hold it, where to hang it, or when to just put it down.”
― zadie smith

“Find your self love. Find that precious thing inside you that
makes you want to live. And when you’ve found it, hold on to it with one
hand, and use the other to claw your way back home.
-Ripple”
― Valjeanne Jeffers, The Time of Legend

“Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but ... life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”
― Gabriel García Márquez

“Nobody deserves your tears, but whoever deserves them will not make you cry.”
― Gabriel García Márquez

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories

“Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been.”
― Mark Twain

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
― Elizabeth Appell

“Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.”
― Joyce Carol Oates

“I never change, I simply become more myself.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Solstice

“With fiction, there’s no reason why everything you write shouldn’t be amazing. Nobody’s stopping you from making up better stuff.”
― Wells Tower

“It was a pleasure to burn.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, "Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody." ... [My dark side says,] I am no good... I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved." Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen