Ozy > Ozy's Quotes

“Do we still exist if the last person who remembers us as children has passed away?”
― Georgi Gospodinov, Death and the Gardener

“So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”
― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays With Morrie

“Everyone is smart in different ways. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life thinking that it's stupid.”
― Lynda Mullaly Hunt, Fish in a Tree

“Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

“It is quite a revelation to discover that the place you wanted to escape to is the exact same place you escaped from. That the prison wasn't the place, but the perspective.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“Writing gives you power to shape your own world when the real one hurts too much.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“And looking around the room, I remember thinking that my reading differences were like dragging a concrete block around every day, and how I felt sorry for myself. Now I realise that everyone has their own blocks to drag around. And they all feel heavy.”
― Lynda Mullaly Hunt, Fish in a Tree

“Until now I had known that Latin was a dead language.
Now I know that it is the language of death.
Death speaks Latin.”
― Georgi Gospodinov, Death and the Gardener

“Want whatever you want more fiercely. Be more difficult and demanding. Or you’ll never make a life that uses you.”
― Michael Cunningham, A Home at the End of the World

“We think we don't deserve love, we think if we let it in we'll become too soft. But a wise man named Levine said it right. He said, "Love is the only rational act.”
― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays With Morrie

“Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.”
― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson

“How can you ever be prepared to die?
"Do what the Buddhists do. Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be?”
― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays With Morrie

“Why does no one teach us what to do with the deaths of others?
Why does no one teach us how to die, how we should die?”
― Georgi Gospodinov, Death and the Gardener

“Why is it so hard to think about dying?
"Because," Morrie continued, "most of us all walk around as if we're sleepwalking. We really don't experience the world fully, because we're half-asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do.”
― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays With Morrie

“The culture doesn't encourage you to think about such things until you're about to die. We're so wrapped up with egotistical things, career, family, having enough money, meeting the mortgage, getting a new car, fixing the radiator when it breaks -we're involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going. So we don't get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying, Is this all? Is this all I wanted? Is something missing?”
― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays With Morrie

“The culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it.”
― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays With Morrie

“What more can we want as writers than such immortality? Don't ghosts just want to be remembered?”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“Confronted as we are by the mystery of literature, and by its inenarrable power, we are behooved to discover the source of the power and mystery. And yet, finally, what can avail? The work of literature throws before us a profound veil which we cannot plumb. And we are but votaries before it, helpless in its sway. Who would have the temerity to lift that veil aside, to discover the undiscoverable, to reach the unreachable? The strongest of us are but the puniest weaklings, are but tinkling cymbals and sounding brass, before the eternal mystery.”
― John Williams, Stoner