Karsten Baldwin > Karsten's Quotes

“She smiled. She knew she was dying. But it did not matter any longer. She had known something which no human words could ever tell and she knew it now. She had been awaiting it and she felt it, as if it had been, as if she had lived it. Life had been, if only because she had known it could be, and she felt it now as a hymn without sound, deep under the little whole that dripped red drops into the snow, deeper than that from which the red drops came. A moment or an eternity- did it matter? Life, undefeated, existed and could exist. She smiled, her last smile, to so much that had been possible.”
― Ayn Rand, We the Living

“It's strange. There's your life. You begin it, feeling that it's something so precious and rare, so beautiful that it's like a sacred treasure. Now it's over, and it doesn't make any difference to anyone, and it isn't that they are indifferent, it's just that they don't know, they don't know what it means, that treasure of mine, and there's something about it that they should understand. I don't understand it myself, but there's something that should be understood by all of us. Only what is it? What?”
― Ayn Rand, We the Living

“It's a curse, you know, to be able to look higher than you're allowed to reach.”
― Ayn Rand, We the Living

“I could say the night felt magical, but that would be embellishment.
That would be romanticization.
What it actually felt like was life.”
― Nina LaCour, We Are Okay

“I know that I am always alone, even when surrounded by people, so I let the emptiness in.”
― Nina LaCour, We Are Okay

“In this desert, no one, neither he nor his guest, mattered. And yet outside this desert, neither of them, Daru knew, could have truly lived.”
― Albert Camus

“How often it is that the angry man rages denial of what his inner self is telling him.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning 'That path leads ever down into stagnation.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“If you need something to worship, then worship life - all life, every last crawling bit of it! We're all in this beauty together!”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“Constitutions become the ultimate tyranny," Paul said. "They’re organized power on such a scale as to be overwhelming. The constitution is social power mobilized and it has no conscience. It can crush the highest and the lowest, removing all dignity and individuality. It has an unstable balance point and no limitations.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“We have eternity, beloved."
"You may have eternity. I have only now."
"But this is eternity.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“A creature who has spent his life creating one particular representation of his selfdom will die rather than become the antithesis of that representation”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“As with all priests, you learned early to call the truth heresy.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“Cynicism! That, no doubt is a greater crime than heresy.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“Besides, it doesn't matter if it's real. It never does with dreams. They aren't anything anyway but lifesavers to cling to so you don't drown. Life is an ocean, and most everyone's hanging on to some kind of dream to keep afloat.”
― Tim Tharp, The Spectacular Now

“Nothing lasts," she says, and there's a little crack in her voice. "You think it's going to. You think, 'Here's something I can hold on to,' but it always slips away.”
― Tim Tharp, The Spectacular Now

“It's superb to be out in the early, early morning before the sun comes up. There's this sense of being super-alive. You're in on a secret that all the dull, sleeping people don't know about. Unlike them, you're alert and aware of existing right here in this precise moment between what happened and what's going to happen.”
― Tim Tharp, The Spectacular Now

“She's drenched and bedraggled, but I've never loved anyone as much as I love her right now. That's how I know I'll have to give her up.”
― Tim Tharp, The Spectacular Now

“You don't remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened.”
― John Green, An Abundance of Katherines

“That's who you really like. The people you can think out loud in front of.”
― John Green, An Abundance of Katherines

“There's some people in this world who you can just love and love and love no matter what.”
― John Green, An Abundance of Katherines

“If people could see me the way I see myself - if they could live in my memories - would anyone love me?”
― John Green, An Abundance of Katherines

“How do you just stop being terrified of getting left behind and ending up by yourself forever and not meaning anything to the world?”
― John Green, An Abundance of Katherines

“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world...but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“The marks humans leave are too often scars.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“The world is not a wish-granting factory.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars