Maria Zivalich > Maria's Quotes

“In truth, there are only two realities: the one for people who are in love or love each other, and the one for people who are standing outside all that.”
― Charles Baxter, The Feast of Love

“At least with pets, and for all I know , people too, intelligence and quick-wittiness have nothing to do with a talent for being loved, or being kind, nothing at all, less than nothing.”
― Charles Baxter, The Feast of Love

“The worst mistakes I've made have been the ones directed by sweet-natured hopefulness.”
― Charles Baxter, The Feast of Love

“What a midwesterner he was, a thoroughly unhip guy with his heart in the usual place, on the sleeve, in plain sight.”
― Charles Baxter, The Feast of Love

“Making love to him was like going through a car wash, except you came out dirtier and more alive at the other end.”
― Charles Baxter, The Feast of Love

“I'm a big believer in the negligee, that nearly invisible screen standing between you and the object of your desire.”
― Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef

“You must write every single day of your life... You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads... may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”
― Ray Bradbury

“As my mother once said to me, ‘They’re quite crazy, dear – men are. What you look for is one of them whose insanity is large enough, and calm and generous enough, to include you.”
― Charles Baxter, The Feast of Love

“The problem with love and God, the two of them, is how to say anything about them that doesn’t annihilate them instantly with the wrong words, with untruth. . . . In this sense, love and God are equivalents. We feel both, but because we cannot speak clearly about them, we end up–wordless, inarticulate—by denying their existence altogether, and, pfffffft, they die.”
― Charles Baxter, The Feast of Love

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“The body is so beautiful, she says with newly found wonder she senses. So good and so precious. Sweet, this body of ours is sweet. It gives us so much goodness and happiness if we're only good to it, if we only listen to it, because it is so wise. It always knows what we want before we know ourselves, and it knows what's really good for us. If we only understand what it's trying to tell us, our precious body, if we only love it as it is, exactly as it is...”
― David Grossman, Her Body Knows

“If ever there is tomorrow when we're not together... there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we're apart... I'll always be with you.”
― Carter Crocker

“Sin ought to be something exquisite, my dear boy.”
― Emile Zola

“I like good strong words that mean something…”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“Watch and pray, dear, never get tired of trying, and never think it is impossible to conquer your fault.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“Because they are mean is no reason why I should be. I hate such things, and though I think I've a right to be hurt, I don't intend to show it. (Amy March)”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“I am a man without many pleasures in life, a man whose few pleasures are small, but a man whose small pleasures are very important to him. One of them is eating. One reading. Another reading while eating.”
― Amanda Filipacchi, Nude Men

“When you’re in love you don’t have to do a damn thing. You can just be. You can just stay quiet in the world. You don’t have to move an inch.”
― Charles Baxter

“If you're smart, you keep happiness to yourself.”
― Charles Baxter

“A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“It's no good trying to get rid of your own aloneness. You've got to stick to it all your life. Only at times, at times, the gap will be filled in. At times! But you have to wait for the times. Accept your own aloneness and stick to it, all your life. And then accept the times when the gap is filled in, when they come. But they've got to come. You can't force them.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“The purpose of a good education is to show you that there are three sides to a two-sided story.”
― Stanley Fish

“I don't think that most women have to prove that they're real women. You live long enough, you graduate to being real.”
― Charles Baxter, The Feast of Love

“Literature is not an instruction manual.”
― Charles Baxter

“She didn't care if he was telling the truth. Milly felt nothing but she was very good at making men think otherwise. Sometimes, she nearly convinced herself.”
― Roxane Gay, Difficult Women

“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
― Anaïs Nin