Alison > Alison's Quotes

“No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream--alone.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“Even extreme grief may ultimately vent
itself in violence--but more generally takes the form of apathy”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.”
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“Whatever became of the moment
when one first knew about death? There must have been one, a moment, in childhood, when it first occurred to you that you don't go on forever. It must have been shattering, stamped into one's memory. And yet I can't remember it. It never occurred to me at all. We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the word for it, before we know that there are words,out we come, bloodied and squalling...with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, there's only one direction
and time is its only measure.”
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“Words, words. They're all we have to go on.”
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the word for it. Before we know that there are words. Out we come, bloodied and squalling, with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, there's only one direction. And time is its only measure.”
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“You don't understand the humiliation of it—to be tricked out of the single assumption which makes our existence viable—that somebody is watching...”
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the Universe together into one garment for us.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“I don't talk things, sir,' said Faber. 'I talk the meaning of things. I sit here and know I'm alive.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Light the first page, light the second page. Each becomes a black butterfly...Light the third page, from the second and so on, chain-smoking, chapter by chapter, all the silly things the words mean, all the false promises, all the secondhand notions and time-worn philosophies.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“We have all the things we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“You are never stronger...than when you land on the other side of despair.”
― Zadie Smith, White Teeth

“Forthwith a change came over the waters, and the serenity became less brilliant but more profound”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“Land in a swamp, march through the woods, and in some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed round him,—all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men. There’s no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible…”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“It had ceased to be a blank space of delightful mystery—a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over. It had become a place of darkness”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“Often far away there I thought of these two, guarding the door of Darkness…”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go one of the six-inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech — and nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sight…”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“…Never, never before, did this land, this river, this jungle, the very arch of this blazing sky, appear to me so hopeless and so dark, so impenetrable to human thought, so pitiless to human weakness”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“Dan's last thought before he fell was of her, of how pretty she looked just then, poised as if dancing, her lips parted and her dark braid coming undone”
― Madeleine Roux, Asylum

“China. She will return, standing tall and straight, the milk burned out of her. She will look down on the circle of light we have made in the Pit and she will know that I have kept watch, that I have fought. China will bark and call me sister. In the star-suffocated sky, there is a great waiting silence.

She will know that I am a mother.”
― Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones

“The storm, it has a name now. Like the worst, she’s a woman”
― Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones

“For some reason I see Skeetah when I blink, Skeetah kneeling next to China, always kneeling, always stroking and loving and knowing her. Skeetah’s face when he stood across from Rico, when he told China, Make them know.
I am on him like China.”
― Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones

“I scrub, wipe like I could wipe the love of Manny, the hate of Manny, Manny, away. And then I get up because it is the only thing I can do. I step out of the ditch and brush the ants off because it is the only thing I can do. I follow Randall around the house because it is the only thing I can do; if this is strength, if this is weakness, this is what I do. I hiccup, but tears still run down my face. After Mama died, Daddy said, What are you crying for? Stop crying. Crying ain’t going to change anything. We never stopped crying. We just did it quieter. We hid it. I learned how to cry so that almost no tears leaked out of my eyes, so that I swallowed the hot salty water of them and felt them running down my throat. This was the only thing that we could do. I swallow and squint through the tears, and I run.”
― Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones

“I can remember her saying it.’ He stops rubbing China, leans forward to put his elbows on his knees, rubs his hands together, looks away. ‘But I can’t remember her voice’ he says. ‘I know the exact words she said, can see us sitting there by her lap, but all I can hear is my voice saying it, not hers.’
I want to say that I know her voice. I want to open my mouth and have her voice slide out of me like an impression, to speak Mama alive for him as I hear her. But I can’t.”
― Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones

“I’m sorry’ Daddy says.
I want to say, Yes. Or I know. Or I’m sorry, too. But I squeak, small as a mouse in the room. Wonder where the baby will sleep, wonder if it will lay curled up in the bed with me. If I will teach Junior to give it a bottle, the way Daddy taught us. He is old enough now.
‘How long has it been?’ Daddy asks.
‘I don’t know…’
'When we can, we need to find out… ‘
‘Yes,’ I say, facing him… Junior will feed the baby, sit on the bed with the pillows on both sides to support his arms. He will sit still long enough for that.
‘Make sure everything’s okay.’
I nod.
‘So nothing will go wrong”
― Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones

“For if there is ever a moment when we are most vulnerable, it’s when we’re closest to the idea of the attained desire, and thus farthest from ourselves, which is when we’ll tread through any flame.”
― Chang-rae Lee, On Such a Full Sea