Mary Mraz > Mary's Quotes

“For in grief nothing "stays put." One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?

But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?

How often -- will it be for always? -- how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, "I never realized my loss till this moment"? The same leg is cut off time after time.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“I would die for you. But I won't live for you.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“I need a father. I need a mother. I need some older, wiser being to cry to. I talk to God, but the sky is empty.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three. Even among men lacking all distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“From now on I'm thinking only of me."

Major Danby replied indulgently with a superior smile: "But, Yossarian, suppose everyone felt that way."

"Then," said Yossarian, "I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn't I?”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“When I look up, I see people cashing in. I don't see heaven or saints or angels. I see people cashing in on every decent impulse and every human tragedy.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“Do you know how long a year takes when it's going away?' Dunbar repeated to Clevinger. 'This long.' He snapped his fingers. 'A second ago you were stepping into college with your lungs full of fresh air. Today you're an old man.'

'Old?' asked Clevinger with surprise. 'What are you talking about?'

'Old.'

'I'm not old.'

'You're inches away from death every time you go on a mission. How much older can you be at your age? A half minute before that you were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before that you were a small kid with a ten-week summer vacation that lasted a hundred thousand years and still ended too soon. Zip! They go rocketing by so fast. How the hell else are you ever going to slow down?' Dunbar was almost angry when he finished.

'Well, maybe it is true,' Clevinger conceded unwillingly in a subdued tone. 'Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it's to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?'

'I do,' Dunbar told him.

'Why?' Clevinger asked.

'What else is there?”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“-You have no respect for excessive authority or obsolete traditions. You're dangerous and depraved, and you ought to be taken outside and shot!”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“Let's take a drive into the middle of nowhere with a packet of Marlboro lights and talk about our lives.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“Men," he began his address to the officers, measuring his pauses carefully. "You're American officers. The officers of no other army in the world can make that statement. Think about it.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“When people disagreed with him he urged them to be objective.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“While none of the work we do is very important, it is important that we do a great deal of it.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“Is there no way out of the mind?”
― Sylvia Plath

“The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn't thought about it.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?”
― Albert Camus

“At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman.”
― Albert Camus

“The meaning of life is that it stops.”
― Franz Kafka

“Men are so quick to blame the gods: they say
that we devise their misery. But they
themselves- in their depravity- design
grief greater than the griefs that fate assigns.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“His descent was like nightfall.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“Jessica has a forehead scar from the deep end of a pool. I ask Jessica what drowning feels like and she says not everything feels like something else.”
― Angie Sijun Lou

“Do the gods light this fire in our hearts or does each man's mad desire become his god?”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt”
― Publius Vergilius Maro, The Aeneid

“At the trial of God, we will ask: why did you allow all this?
And the answer will be an echo: why did you allow all this?”
― Ilya Kaminsky, Deaf Republic

“if there is a light then i am going to
swallow it. if there is a god then
i’m going to make him cry.”
― S. Osborn